New Brunswick’s election is little more than four months away, but the outcome is no easier to predict than it was last year.
The polls show Susan Holt’s opposition Liberals and Blaine Higgs’s governing Progressive Conservatives within a few points of one another, with no trend suggesting that public opinion is moving in one direction or the other. Each party has their regions of strength, but they are also closely contesting the parts of New Brunswick that decide election winners.
There’s the wild card of the Greens, who hold three seats in the legislature, and the polling phantom of the New Democrats, still registering double-digit support despite not clearing 2% of the vote in 2020.
So, it’s a toss-up with lots to be settled — meaning the next few months, and the last weeks of the campaign, will matter.
Welcome to this edition of the Grenier Political Report, where I bring together electoral precedent, public opinion polls, fundraising and political geography to rate upcoming elections according to a simple grade: likely, lean or toss.
Likely means that all signs point to a party winning a majority government. Lean means that a party is the favourite and could win either a majority or minority, but it is by no means a certainty. Toss means that we can’t say anything more than that the election is a toss-up between two or more parties.
Grenier Political Report for New Brunswick, E-133
The Liberals hold a narrow lead in the rare provincial polls conducted in New Brunswick, but their vote is traditionally inefficient. Those same polls suggest that the Liberal vote might be getting more efficient as support for the party grows in the anglophone south. Holt outpolls Higgs by a wider margin than her party does the PCs, which could boost Liberal support over the course of the campaign. But the PCs still have a good electoral map, strong bases of support and robust fundraising — and a potential trump card to play: Justin Trudeau.
Let’s dive into what makes the New Brunswick election so tough to call, and what factors could decide its outcome in October.
