Election Writ 11/4: State of play in Nova Scotia
And a last look at the U.S. polls.
Welcome to the Election Writ, a special-edition newsletter to get you up-to-date on the ongoing campaign in Nova Scotia.
The election is on in Nova Scotia, so the Election Writ is back!
As you’ll see below, we have some new polls out already for Nova Scotia so the contours of this race are starting to come into focus. But before we get into the polls of where things stand today, let’s start by setting the table for this campaign using the results of the 2021 election.
It was an upset victory for Tim Houston’s Progressive Conservatives, as the incumbent Liberals under rookie premier Iain Rankin entered the campaign with a big lead in the polls. The PCs won 31 seats, the Liberals 17 and the NDP, then under Gary Burill, won six. The PCs won the provincewide vote by a little under two percentage points.
The polls have shifted dramatically since then, so the electoral map will probably look very different once the votes are counted. Nevertheless, let’s map out the easiest path to 28 seats and a majority government for each of the three major parties based on where things stood last time.
In the map below, the ridings coloured in dark blue are the 28 seats the PCs won by the largest margins in the last election. These 28 ridings are the easiest path to another majority government for the PCs. The three light blue ridings show seats numbered 29th to 31st — seats won by narrow margins that padded the PC majority. The three light purple seats show the PCs’ byelection gain in Preston and the two seats represented by former Liberal MLAs who crossed the floor and are now running as PCs.
This map shows how the PC majority was largely built on the rural mainland and Cape Breton. But the five seats won in the suburbs of Halifax were also decisive. The PCs can win again by holding what they have. Their margin for error has been bolstered by Preston and the two floor-crossers, but the path for the PCs is pretty simple. If they can continue to dominate rural Nova Scotia and add a few suburban Halifax seats to the mix, they should have no trouble securing a second mandate.
Things are a little more complicated for the opposition parties, especially considering how public opinion has shifted since 2021. The NDP has largely held their vote but have some big margins to overcome, while the Liberals have lost a lot of their support — they’ll have to get it back before they can dream of forming government.
The map below shows the easiest path to 28 seats for the Liberals, which includes holding the 14 seats they won in the last election (dark red), the three they have lost in byelections or floor-crossers (purple) and the 11 seats where the Liberals came closest to beating the PCs (nine, blue) and NDP (two, orange).
The Liberal path requires winning some of the broader Halifax region, but primarily holding what they managed to win in and around Halifax in 2021. The Liberals need to make gains in and around Sydney, as well as taking PC seats in Lunenburg, Kings and Hants counties. The margins they need to overcome aren’t huge, as the Liberals lost the seat that would be their 28th by just under 10 points. But the party is further back in the polls today than it was in 2021.
The NDP is not further back than last time, but the map is far tougher for the New Democrats. Liberal support is more uniformly spread out in Nova Scotia, so a rising tide can lift many more Liberal boats. The NDP vote is concentrated in just a few parts of the province, so the gains the NDP has to make to get to 28 seats are enormous.
The map below shows the easiest path to 28 seats for the New Democrats — undoubtedly the toughest path of three parties. It means holding the six seats won in 2021 (orange) and flipping the 13 PC seats (blue) and nine Liberal seats (red) in which the NDP was closest to winning.
The key to the NDP’s path back to government (the NDP’s Darrell Dexter had one term between 2009 and 2013) is Halifax. The party needs to virtually sweep the city and its outskirts, which primarily means winning seats from the Liberals in Clayton Park and Bedford and from the PCs in Sackville and Dartmouth. With a few exceptions, outside of Halifax the NDP has to go through the PCs, primarily in Lunenburg County and the South Shore. Expanding their holdings in Sydney is also important for the NDP.
When we look at these three maps, it’s clear where the election will be decided. It won’t be on the North Shore or in most of the southwest, where the PCs are dominant, nor on Cape Breton Island outside of the Sydney area. Instead, the election will come down to the cities of Halifax and Sydney, as well as Kings, Hants and Lunenburg counties.
Now, to what is in this instalment of the Election Writ:
News on how the first week of the Nova Scotia campaign unfolded.
Two polls on the state of the race in the province, plus a last projection for the U.S. election before tomorrow’s vote.
Tim Houston’s PCs in a solid majority position if the election were held today.
This week in Nova Scotia election history.