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The Manitoba election is on September 10 and while most
polling suggests an easy PC win, it may be closer than it appears. The most recent poll from Mainstreet Research
has an overall margin of nine points - 43% to the NDP's 34% with the Liberals
trailing at 15% and the Greens at 6%. The Free Press headlined it Poll Predicts
Tory Majority.
However, this same poll actually gives the NDP a six point
lead in the City of Winnipeg (an earlier poll suggested the parties were tied
in the city) while the PCs have a thirty point margin in the rest of the
province. This is significant. The PCs
win by enormous margins in rural Manitoba, sometimes by greater than sixty
percentage points - a vast number of
'wasted' votes.
When I apply my seat calculation forecast using the regional
numbers from the survey I get a PC majority but a tight one. Of the 57
constituencies the PCs would win 30, the NDP 24 and the Liberals 3. There is nothing certain about these numbers.
One should expect both polling error and errors from the seat forecasting
methodology. However, if the poll is right about a real NDP lead in the city
then this election may be closer than has generally been thought. At the
individual riding level I see quite a few close margins with tight PC leads
(and a few NDP). Several are suburban Winnipeg seats formerly held by the NDP
under Gary Doer and Greg Selinger.
The PCs have not run this campaign as if they were coasting
to a comfortable victory. They know that polling suggests that PC Premier Brian
Pallister is personally unpopular. In addition the NDP with some effect has been campaigning strongly against cuts to health care.
The PCs have used attack ads including some that I
think qualify as dirty politics. For example, the PCs have
been running an ad attacking NDP leader Wab Kinew. For the moment you can see it here on Youtube. Kinew engaged in serious misbehaviour in his youth, which
he described in a memoir, The Reason You Walk. He has acknowledged his misdeeds but is a different person, in particular because he has overcome his alcohol addiction.
The image in the ad, which
appears for 4½ seconds, is not long
enough to read but long enough to get the impression of someone really
terrible. You will note the "charged with" outnumbers the "convicted"
but that is the idea, to conflate the two and leave an impression of someone
unfit to be premier. The political goal
of this ad, which clearly says that Kinew's background makes him unqualified to
lead, is to sow doubts about him in precisely those previously NDP suburban
Winnipeg constituencies where the PCs do not have safe leads.
Something that has had next to no discussion in this
campaign is anti-indigenous racism in Manitoba. Clearly it exists and will have
at least some negative impact on the NDP among the non-indigenous population.
How large an impact it might have is a subject for conjecture, but it will no
doubt matter to some extent.
I don't really see how the PCs can lose at this point but if
the NDP keeps the outcome close, it can matter in Manitoba's political future. The Pawley NDP government was re-elected in 1986 with just 30 seats. I think a government needs 31 to be assured a full term of four years. Two years after the 1986 election at a point where their popularity had plummeted, the NDP lost a budget vote. In the subsequent election they ended up in third place.
