Depending on your perspective, London either leads the crowd, or follows, when it comes to politics.
If the country swings to the Liberals or Conservatives in federal elections, so goes the London region. The same phenomenon occurs when the province votes.
In recent times, London and its hinterland have seldom found themselves at odds with the political sentiment of the country or province.
Perhaps that's why so many products are test-marketed in London. If they succeed in London, the thinking goes, the'll succeed in the bigger world.
So it came as a surprise that London and its surrounding counties didn't really go with the winner in last weekend's election of a new leader for Ontario's Progressive Conservatives. The party chose John Tory, a Toronto businessperson and a lawyer, to succeed Ernie Eves. Tory nearly won on the first count of votes on the preferential ballot, then prevailed on the second.
Tory had spent much time in Southwestern Ontario in the weeks before the vote, but Conservatives in the region failed to warm to him as they did elsewhere.
Tory placed first in 20 of the 22 Toronto ridings, and racked up the most votes in the "905" communities surrounding Toronto. He also took the most votes in Northern Ontario ridings and took 15 of 16 ridings across Central Ontario.
Some pundits said Tory was the most urban of the three candidates, so his appeal to cities was obvious.
But as Guy Giorno, chair of the rules and appeals committee for the leadership contest, wrote in the National Post: "To pigeon-hole him as a candidate with urban appeal is to ignore the regional breadth and diversity of his support."
So what happened in the 10-riding London region? On the first tally, Tory captured four ridings; London-North Centre, Sarnia-Lambton, Perth-Middlesex and Huron-Bruce.
The surprise was the strong finish by Frank Klees, the MPP from Oak Ridges north of Toronto, a former transportation minister and least well-known of the three candidates.
Klees ran third provincewide and was dropped for the second round of counting. But Klees took top spot in five ridings; London West, London-Fanshawe, Elgin-Middlesex-London, Lambton-Kent-Middlesex and Chatham-Kent-Essex.
Jim Flaherty, the Whitby lawyer and former finance minister, placed second to Tory on both first and second counts provincewide.
In the region, however, he took Oxford riding, with 227 votes to 132 for Tory and 35 for Klees. On the second count, most Klees supporters allocated their next choice to Flaherty.
What does it all mean, that the London region was "out of synch" with the rest of the province on this vote? In the hunt for answers, we turned to two party operatives and an academic.
Ernie Hardeman, the MPP for Oxford, campaigned hard for Flaherty. He said support for Klees and Flaherty was "not an anti-John (Tory) vote." In rural Ontario, Hardeman said, Tory was more closely associated with Toronto than his rivals, partly because of his run for Toronto mayor last fall.
At the same time, he said, area Conservatives were more familiar with Flaherty and Klees, who were members of the last Conservative government. Tory has not held office.
Hardeman said Flaherty and Klees seemed to have stronger organizations in the London region than Tory. The Oxford MPP said he knows some party members voted for Flaherty even though he wasn't going to win, "but they wanted their voice heard."
Hardeman will help Tory understand rural and farm issues because Tory has asked him to retain his post as agriculture critic.
In the Klees camp, Nick Kouvalis of McGregor in Essex County, was a campaigner who gathered and analysed results. He studied ridings from Windsor to Brant and Guelph and found the popular vote leader was Flaherty with 36.5 per cent, followed by Tory with 35.11 per cent and Klees with 28.26 per cent.
He, too, attributed the strength of the Flaherty and Klees campaigns to their organizations.
"How John Tory will play in rural communities with Conservatives who supported Frank Klees and Jim Flaherty is a question many people are asking," Kouvalis conceded.
"In my opinion, these numbers for the Southwest show that the new leader and the party have strong organizers in the Southwest (no matter who they supported) that they can draw from to have a successful (provincial election) campaign in 2007."
Paul Nesbitt-Larking, a political scientist at Huron University College, University of Western Ontario, also sees positives in the situation.
"Nothing succeeds like success and the Conservatives are famous for rallying around a successful leader," he said.
Nevertheless, Nesbitt-Larking concedes, "it's striking how well Frank Klees did." And he said Tory would do well to listen to rural Ontario and the Southwest, to which Klees was able to appeal so successfully.
The uncharacteristic behaviour of the London region may have been an aberration. And Nesbitt-Larking is probably correct.
If Conservatives in the Southwest are anxious to unseat the McGuinty Liberals at Queen's Park in three years time, Tory will have to grow on them.