Weekly Writ 10/30: What went down in Saskatchewan
Polls miss the mark, but the election still came down to a few seats.
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Let’s go back about a year.
If I told you then that the final polls of the 2024 Saskatchewan campaign will show the race to be a toss-up, that the TV networks will take hours to make their final call and that the election will end up being decided by four or five seats, you’d think I was off my rocker.
But that’s exactly what happened.
Scott Moe and the Saskatchewan Party secured their fifth consecutive victory and will probably finish with a majority of ballots cast — an astounding achievement for a 17-year-old government in an anti-incumbent time. But politics are graded on a curve. The Sask. Party had gotten used to beating the NDP by a margin of two-to-one. The NDP had gotten used to losing, so much so that the party debated changing its name. The brand was clearly not working anymore.
Against those standards, the results mark a significant shift in Saskatchewan politics. The Sask. Party is no longer invincible. The NDP is no longer doomed to remain in opposition. On election night, Scott Moe acknowledged the message he received from voters. His victory speech was not boastful. It was humble. Voters didn’t want to boot the Sask. Party from office, but they did want to send a message: winning government has to be earned, it is not a birthright.
Lots of votes still have to be counted. Elections Saskatchewan has about 20,400 mail-in votes to count today and as many as 12,000 more to count on November 9, depending on what is delivered between now and then. The Saskatchewan New Democrats performed very well in the mail-in vote in the last election, and the B.C. New Democrats have done the same in their election this year. The popular vote margin will shrink a little and it’s possible the NDP could still flip one, two or even three seats when all is said and done.
But based on the preliminary count, the Sask. Party held on with 53% of the vote and 35 seats. That represents a drop of 13 seats from the 2020 election and nearly eight points in support. It’s the lowest number of seats the Sask. Party has won since the 2003 election, when it was still in opposition. And, depending what the final count looks like, the party’s share of the vote could also end up below Brad Wall’s performance in 2007 when he formed a government with just under 51% of ballots cast.
The NDP captured 39.5% of the vote, a gain of eight points since 2020. It doubled its caucus to 26. Both of those scores are the best the party has managed since it last won an election in 2003.
There’s a very good chance that the mail ballots will flip the result in Saskatoon Westview, where David Buckingham of the Sask. Party has a 31-vote lead over the NDP’s April ChiefCalf. With between 291 and 484 mail ballots to count, the NDP should be able to cover that 31-vote margin. (Based on the results of the mail vote in 2020 and the swing in support we’ve seen in the in-person voting, the NDP should win the mail vote by a margin of 20 or 30 points.)
Flipping Prince Albert Carlton (125-vote margin with between 197 and 324 mail votes to count) and Saskatoon Willowgrove (255-vote margin with between 660 and 1085 to count) will be tougher. But the NDP could end the count with around 41% of the vote and between 27 and 29 seats — unthinkable just a few months ago.
The rural-urban divide in Saskatchewan is stark. If the NDP flips Saskatoon Westview, they will win 25 of 26 seats in Regina and Saskatoon. If they flip Saskatoon Willowgrove as well, they will have swept the two cities entirely. They also won the two seats in the far north, where the Indigenous vote tips the balance squarely in the NDP’s favour. But the party remains unelectable (at least, for now) in rural southern Saskatchewan.
The NDP didn’t necessarily need any of those seats, however. If we’re looking for the part of the province that decided the outcome, it has to be the two smaller cities of Prince Albert and Moose Jaw. The Sask. Party won the two cities (in the preliminary count) by a margin of 54% to 42%. Even a very generous distribution of the mail vote to the NDP would still give the Sask. Party a 10-point win in the two cities.
The Sask. Party’s margin in 2020 in Prince Albert and Moose Jaw was about 17.5 percentage points, meaning there was only a net swing of about 7.5 points in the two cities. That’s less than half the swing we’re likely to see in the province as a whole. The Sask. Party lost ground in Saskatchewan’s third and fourth cities, but not enough to cost them government. In fact, these two cities are why Scott Moe will remain premier.
There will be time to grade the pollsters once all the ballots are finally counted. But Saskatchewan will be a black mark on what has otherwise been a good year for the polls. They were dead-on in British Columbia, even down to the regional level. They were good in New Brunswick in a difficult environment. But they were bad in Saskatchewan.
Assuming we end up with a Sask. Party victory of around 10 points in the popular vote, the net error for those pollsters who were entirely in the field in the last 10 days of the campaign will be between 12 and 15 points. That’s two-to-three times what would be acceptable. Much of that error is likely to have occurred outside the two big cities, where the NDP under-performed expectations. Why that is (and why pollsters have made the same error in Saskatchewan in two consecutive elections) will take a little more time (and data) to answer.
But the polls did tell us that this was going to be an election to watch — and it was.
Now, to what is in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ
News on Nova Scotia’s writ drop and how Blaine Higgs’s tenure as PC leader stacks up to his predecessors. We also have an update to the Prediction Contest, a winner in British Columbia, a leadership race in Manitoba and some debate moderators named. Plus: how much money did Naheed Nenshi raise when he won the Alberta NDP leadership?
Polls show the Conservative lead is holding steady.
Donald Trump holds the electoral college edge in the U.S. election projection.
Robert Stanfield wins the 1956 Nova Scotia election in the #EveryElectionProject.