New Brunswick provincial election 2020

[DC Al Fine]

https://twitter.com/Global_NB/status/1295414805189230593

And they're off!

New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs has called a snap election after all-party talks about a potential agreement to avoid toppling his minority government until 2022 broke down.

This is Canada's first election since the pandemic and a very risky gamble on Higgs' part.

[DC Al Fine]

LOh yeah, please throw some $$$ at the polling gofundme. I fear most of the major pollsters are going to completely ignore this one, and the Narrative poll that's probably going to come out in the next week is likely going to be one of those month-long ones that's totally useless.

Maritime provincial elections are funny that way. Between the lack of decent polling, relative lack of voter polarization (although that's changing in NB), the candidate based races,  and the sometimes leftish Tories and rightish Liberals, it can feel a bit like watching a 1950's campaign in real time

[DC Al Fine]

Leger is apparently in the field, so we should have some sort of idea of how the race is shaping up soon.

[DC Al Fine]

This poll was taken over 18 days. Narrative's writeup says:

"When looking at voting intentions pre- and post-election call, there are a few notable differences, in
that after the election was called voters indicated they are less likely to vote PC, more likely to vote for
the Green Party, and as likely to vote for the Liberals."

This jibes with the Google trends I've been monitoring, which right now according to my hastily whipped up model, say something along the lines of 35-28-20-10-7.

L'Acadie Nouvelle (who I assume commissioned the Leger poll) said they have one coming out Saturday morning. Mainstreet is in the field too....I know cause I was polled by them today.

Any guesses as to why your model has PA in double digits while, the polls have them way down?

[DC Al Fine]

Pretty solid job by the Greens/PA/NDP considering the circumstances.

[DC Al Fine]

I'm not surprised Coons did this but if the NDP wants to be taken seriously there may have to be a lot of outside the box thinking. Thomasin has a better opportunity than ever to do a loud, shoot first ask questions later, online heavy campaign that could make some noise. He needs to use the few resources on hand, like the young candidates you mentioned. Cait Grogan is smart, funny, and has a following. Use her! Put her in the spotlight! Do something!

as far as I'm concerned, Cait Grogan is the de facto leader of the NDP. She crashed a Higgs event yesterday and got the media coverage. Too bad she wasn't running in Higgs riding, I think she may have had a chance somewhere in SJ proper.

Like I said before, the NDP won't come close to winning a seat but they can take this as a learning experience so they can really be ready next time.

Do you think their showing in Bathurst East-Nepisiguit-Saint-Isidore was a one-off? I was reading that their candidate last cycle was a well known local blueberry farmer that became disgruntled with the party after the election.

The NDP don't appear to have a candidate, so yes

Pretty solid job by the Greens/PA/NDP considering the circumstances.

Yup, and in one of the 2 missing Green seats, they had one who backed out and the replacement (who I only first heard about yesterday) probably couldn't get enough signatures in time. In both ridings there's an NDP candidate so progressive voters at least have somewhere to go.

PA was never going to run in most of those northern Acadian seats anyway.

Story time: Ex-NDP MLA Paul MacEwan once started a regionalist/hard left party called Cape Breton Labour. In order to have the party name appear on the ballot, you had to run more candidates than Cape Breton had seats. They ran a few candidates on the mainland to hit the requirement, where they got something like 20 votes each.

[DC Al Fine]

I noticed that Kris Austin is campaigning in his own riding today. Not a good sign for PANB.

[DC Al Fine]

Vickers fighting with the moderator about seeing his hand was so cringeworthy.

Oh? What happened exactly?

[DC Al Fine]

Just watched the clip *cringe*

[DC Al Fine]

Liberals drop a candidate of their own over a bozo eruption:
https://twitter.com/silasjvbrown/status/1303124563207823361

How extremely "liberal" of him

Maritime politics for better or worse are stuck in the 70's as far as ideological sorting goes. You get leftish Tories and socon Libs that you wouldn't see in the rest of the North America or UK. Heck, I vote Liberal provincially  New Brunswick probably has the most pronounced ideological divide in Atlantic Canada, and you still get stuff like this.

[DC Al Fine]

I noticed a recurring pattern from the CBC reports on campaign announcements. My recollection of the People's Alliance campaign themes: anti-bilingualism, poverty, rural healthcare funding. For the NDP: stopping that private abortion clinic from closing, defund the police. If thatt's not a commentary on shifting coalitions and political realignment, I don't know what is....

The Greens seem to have more of a mix of "old left" and "new left" issues it seems , which I think will benefit them.

[DC Al Fine]

Doubt it. Memramcook is too francophone and Sackville is too much of a college town.

Yes. It's not totally unwinnable, but if the Tories win that seat, any talk of paths to a majority would be redundant.

[DC Al Fine]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/elections-new-brunswick-voting-campaign-trail-1.5715630

In very weird news, the candidate the Liberals dropped for making homophobic remarks, is an openly gay man who will marry a man in a few days. The candidate in question is continuing his campaign and will sit as an independent on the off chance he wins.

[DC Al Fine]

My guess:

PC: 26
Lib: 17
Green: 4
PA: 2

[DC Al Fine]

CBC projects a Tory majority.

[DC Al Fine]

What happened here? A PC held seat voted Liberal by 80+% of the vote!

The sole Tory francophone MLA holding this seat (who had a huge personal vote), crossed the floor shortly before the election (he ran in another Liberal safe seat) over healthcare cuts in the area. That and the Tories collapsed with Francophones in general.

[DC Al Fine]

Some quick takeaways:

Tories: Justin Trudeau is watching you and taking notes.

Liberals: Vickers again proves that being good at X doesn't make you good at politics, and that you should never bet against local factors in the Maritimes. The Liberals lack of support with Anglos gives them a difficult path to victory next time. The Greens have taken a good chunk of the progressive left vote, the PA is also an outlet for rural anti-Toryism now  and the Tories have hoovered up much of the rest. Not sure which group they should focus on picking off next time.

Greens: Slightly disappointing given previous polling, but they are in a good position for next time. Another party wondering what group to focus on next time; rural Franco interests or, urban progressive ones.

People's Alliance: Avoiding getting Clegged was helpful and they have some openings should the Tories falter. Conroy seems prominent enough to avoid the party turning into a personalist vehicle.

NDP: Unequivocally a bad night, despite what some Redditors are saying. At least now they have four years to rebuild without worrying about a surprise election. My unsolicited advice: Talk about bread and butter issues more. Running on abortion and defunding the police, makes you seem like a meme, especially in a place like NB. When the right wing populists are talking about poverty more than you... it's not a good sign.

[DC Al Fine]

What exactly do the Greens stand for in NB? They seem like just a second Liberal party and they don’t even talk much about the environment

They're a typical Liberal party while the actual NB Liberals are a second Conservative party.

Kind of surprised to hear that from you. Aren't you libertarianish? Or is this more like "the Liberals and Tories are both in the Irvings' pocket" sentiment that I hear from my NB friends?