Saskatchewan election 2020

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What actually happened to the NDP's historic strength here?

Well they are still the only credible opposition party and will presumably return to power some day. You know how Canadian voters are

But the thing to understand is that Saskatchewan used to have extremely polarised politics and now it doesn't and the NDP not quite yet managed to adjust. Although the Saskatchewan CCF (and then NDP) was consistently the most moderate of the provincial parties (very Fabian, actually), even a moderate socialist party is considerably more radical than the most radical liberal party. Against this, the designated anti-socialist party in the province (the label changed - Liberals in the 1960s, PCs by the 1980s - but the politics didn't) was always amongst the most right-wing of major Canadian provincial political parties.

This system held from the 1940s until the 1990s, when the last PC government collapsed in a welter of corruption scandals,* gross economic mismanagement and heinous administrative incompetence. The NDP then spent the next sixteen years cleaning things up. They did a good job, as they always do, but they had little choice but to make some very unpopular decisions along the way that tarnished their inherited reputation somewhat. Meanwhile, the province's opposition forces around a new label, the Saskatchewan Party. At first it was very right-wing and the NDP were able to beat it off in the old fashioned way a couple of times, but it then did something new: it swung towards a sort of populist middle, promising not to dismantle the province's social democratic legacy while also promising low taxes. In office it has been able to get away with doing this because of the oil boom.

Against this the NDP have struggled, but they've made it worse for themselves by running some diabolically poor election campaigns; tone-deaf barely covers it. They ought to have made solid progress last time round, for instance, but managed to make such a mess of the campaign that yet again...

_{*Really bad stuff as well. Most of their leading figures, including ex-Premier Grant Devine, ended up in prison.}

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I mean the last two elections the Saskatchewan NDP won saw them poll rather poorly in the countryside. They won those elections because they dominated in the urban parts of the province, which, by the way, now contain a majority of its population. They could definitely do with polling better in the countryside, but they also need to poll a lot better in the cities: their current malaise is province-wide, rather than being a countryside problem.

Ditto UK.  If Labour wins in 2024, it will mean winning several traditional Tory constituencies in London and London commuter belt.  The urban or semi-urban Red wall seats they would win back, but rural ones likely gone for good.

The only constituencies that Labour lost last year that are 'rural' in the sense that much of Saskatchewan is would be Ynys Môn and Stroud, and even then they are quite different. And there's no seat that Labour lost last year that it is implausible to see Labour ever regaining, especially as Labour is most unlikely to ever again go into an election with its image and priorities largely being shaped by the legacy of the (actually pretty old now!) New Urban Left. Not that this has much bearing on the politics of Saskatchewan.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Of course, winning some of those seats requires huge swings. Take Yorkton for example, which has voted for the winning party in every election since 1964, making it the province's best bellwether. The Sask Party won it in 2016 by 50 points.

Ah, most of my Canadian relations live in that area. Anyway, yes, that's the rub. Of course, the Sask Party led across the province by more than 30pts last time so winning an election would require huge swings no matter. Of course in Canada...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

There has actually been a last-minute glut (well, compared to what we had...) of polls, all showing a broadly similar picture: Saskatchewan Party on 55-56%, NDP on 36-38%, others nowhere.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I would ignore popular vote figures for now - significantly more postal votes have been cast in the cities than in the sticks and they have not been counted tonight.

Anyway the scores at present are Saskatchewan Party 46, NDP 15. This is a change of five seats on the 2016 election. Of course with so much left to count and the seats being so small, much can yet shift.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

All polls reporting

The Sask Party is now up 50-11 in seats, with Meili personally trailing.

Unless rescued by the mail in ballots, Meili's left wing socialist approach has to be considered a complete failure.

Their poll ratings crashed back down to what has been the usual sad range almost as soon as he became leader and it isn't as if it is normal for the Sask NDP to be led from its left so there might even be something to that. Of course the 'normal' approach failed horribly nine years ago, but then it could be argued that was down to its deathly dull execution and the bad luck of trying it against Wall's remarkable honeymoon period rather than the approach itself. Other than the obvious, the most striking feature of recent provincial elections in Saskatchewan has been low turnouts (by Saskatchewan standards, at least) and it seems reasonable to suggest that an increase back to what was normal would be beneficial to the NDP. But the party needs to seem credible, else the sort of voters in question (it is very clear) just won't bother.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I thought the problem in 2011 was that Lingenfelter was seen as being on the right of the party, but that he campaigned on the left, so that there was something of a credibility problem.

I think he was genuinely stuck at how to campaign against an incumbent conservative government that was relatively moderate rather than frankly feral, and tried to press left-populist buttons in an incredibly unconvincing way out of desperation - which, of course, pleased exactly no one.