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Selley: It sounds to me like “someone on the left,” as Jonathan puts it, would do exactly what the federal and various provincial New Democrats have done in recent years: Embrace, or pretend to embrace, fiscal conservatism as an overall ethos and try to cram into it however much social progress, as they envision it, will fit. But I’m not convinced this race has much of anything at all to do with ideology. When you look at the polls, you see evidence that not insignificant numbers of Ford in 2010 voters might become Chow in 2014 voters — and I’m sorry, but that makes no bloody sense on any kind of philosophical or policymaking basis. (It’s a bit baffling why Olivia Chow would even want to be mayor having been elected on a respect-for-taxpayer mandate.) Ford became a juggernaut in the absence of a credible fiscal conservative candidate. He might well have triumphed even if there had been one in the race, but so too might have someone like John Tory, who has a much more credible and sober claim to that title. I sense no desire for a return to green-roofs-and-bike-lanes liberalism under the clamshell, and I doubt any serious candidate will try to latch on to that kind of message. As such, I think what’s shaping up here is above all else a battle of personalities. That might be more interesting to watch than edifying.

Goldsbie: People who spend any significant time considering issues tend to view politics on a two-dimensional plane, in which candidates and policies are grouped fairly neatly in one corner or another. It can be easy to forget that a non-trivial portion of the population votes not on personality or ideology or even name recognition but on certain intangible qualities of identification: can you see yourself in a candidate and/or can you see that candidate representing your circumstances? That’s how you have voters who swing back and forth between left-wing and right-wing populists without fully appreciating the distinction.