Teflon Doug

He's loved of the distracted multitude,

Who like not in their judgment, but their eyes

- Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 3

It is deeply disappointing to discover that Ontario Premier Doug Ford is continuing to show ongoing strength in the polls. Indeed, those polls suggest the above quote from Hamlet is an appropriate explanation of public sentiment toward the retail salesman often called "Teflon Doug."

What explains the popularity of a man mired in scandal thanks to his intimate relationship with big developers? Robert Benzie offers this:

In new polling for the Star, Abacus Data found voters are so far willing to forgive — if not quite forget — transgressions that would have derailed the electoral careers of others.

...the Tories are confident about the two-term premier’s skills on the stump and his ability to connect with Ontarians in their everyday lives.

Pollster David Colletto says:

He’s polarizing in the sense that if you don’t like him, you don’t like him. And there’s a lot of Ontarians who don’t like Doug Ford,” said Coletto.

“But he has enough who do and they think he’s just a friendly, nice guy who isn’t perfect, but admits mistakes when he makes them and tries to fix them,” the pollster said.

“He’s forgiven because he asks for forgiveness.”

Revealingly, when asked how to describe Ford, 44 per cent of respondents felt he was “friendly,” while 20 per cent said he was “mean.”

Similarly, 39 per cent said he “gets things done” while 38 per cent insisted he “fails to deliver”; 38 per cent said he is “normal” while 28 per cent said he’s “weird”; and 37 per cent said he “admits mistakes and corrects them” while 38 per cent said he “refuses to admit mistakes.”

“That’s a winner — during the last campaign that became his new brand: the guy who gets things done,” said Coletto, hearkening to the Tories’ successful 2022 re-election slogan, Get It Done.

Apparently, Ford's mastery of retail politics makes him a winner:

“It’s service above self. He’s very easy to talk to,” said Borecky, a retired program analyst.

To Coletto, “that is at the core of Doug Ford’s brand,” the perception of a folksy populist that has developed since he came to office in 2018.

“He is the guy who will call you back. You run into him in the airport or on the street, he’s going to shake your hand, he wants to meet you — he’s that ultimate retail politician,” he said.

Unfortunately, from my perspective, there is also a darker reason for Ford's ongoing popularity: people's general ignorance of what is going on around them. Matt Gurney writes: 

The average voter and citizen doesn’t spend much time paying attention to the news. They might be able to name Olivia Chow as the mayor of Toronto, but there’s a good chance they don’t know who their local councillor is. They almost certainly know that Justin Trudeau is the prime minister, but it’s not a given that they know he’s a Liberal.

A Maru poll from last year pegged the number of Canadians who were hyper-engaged in the news at 16 per cent, and that felt about right to me.

The catastrophes in our long-term care homes during the pandemic may not have registered with them because they were busy managing the pandemic’s effects on their own lives. The Greenbelt scandal is probably something they’ve heard mentioned but haven’t looked into deeply. The closing of the Science Centre, if it registered at all, was probably forgotten in days. And so on.

So there you go. Unscrupulous politicians (is that a redundancy?) count on a superficial citizenry, one that is easily manipulated by smiling faces, catchy phrases and inflammatory rhetoric.

Truly, they are an autocrat's dream.