Mandryk: Liberals will need more than a few NDP votes to win here

Article content

Saskatchewan is now rife with stories of NDP voters flocking to the Liberals to stop Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives that New Democrats feel are too aligned with U.S. President Donald Trump’s Republicans.

It is an interesting narrative — seemingly, a bit of a microcosm of what this 2025 election is all about.

But is it reality? Is it enough to make a difference?

Article content

According to the national polls, it appears to be enough to take a governing federal Liberal Party that was teetering on the edge of the abyss to possibly forming a fourth-term majority under Mark Carney.

How bad is it for the NDP? There have been polls suggesting federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh may be in danger of losing his own Burnaby South seat.

And if you believe the political chatter, it’s even happening here in Saskatchewan — the birthplace of medicare ruled for two decades by Tommy Douglas’s Co-operative Federation (CCF) and for decades after that under the NDP rule of Allan Blakeney, Roy Romanow and Lorne Calvert.

This begs questions:

Is it reality? Are old-school New Democrats here truly abandoning their traditional convictions and flocking to the Liberals just to stop Poilievre who they see as too aligned with Trump?

And how much of this talk becomes political reality when the votes are counted Monday?

Well, some of it might come to fruition. Polls showing New Democrats propping up Liberals is a reality elsewhere in Canada. There is reason to believe it’s enough of a reality to give the Liberals a win.

Article content

Article content

But little in politics is either simple or straightforward or consistent everywhere. It can get complicated rather quickly.

For starters, there’s the question of whether what we are seeing in the opinion polls will fully translate to the polling booth.

We do know that Canadians have voted at advance polls in record numbers. But how are they voting. Did dedicated early voters come to the advanced polls to vote Liberal? What about Conservative support?

Those same opinion polls were not so long suggesting Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives have established a pretty solid following of frustrated blue-collar voters. Where will that vote go?

And what of this recent Liberal surge? Will newfound and presumably soft support in the polling show up in the voting booth?

Presumably, this is happening because of the fear and anger stirred up by Trump and a consistent belief that Carney is better suited to address that situation than the right-wing Poilievre, who has been telling us Canada is broken.

Article content

At least anecdotally, some people will tell you the exact same thing is happening in Saskatchewan. But, unfortunately for Liberals here, Saskatchewan isn’t much like the rest of Canada.

Here, it would take almost all the the NDP vote moving to the Liberals to make much of a difference.

Eight of the 14 Saskatchewan Conservative candidates in 2021 got a majority of more than 50 per cent of the vote in their ridings. No Conservative candidate received less than 45 per cent. In other words, Conservatives don’t have to do much to win again.

By contrast, the Liberals averaged slightly less than 11 per cent of the popular vote and only two Liberal candidates in Regina—Wascana and in Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River (where Buckley Belanger is again running for the party and may have a better chance because of boundary changes) finished with more than 25 per cent of the vote.

As for the NDP, its Saskatchewan candidates in 2021 averaged 20.5 per cent of the popular vote.

Article content

Interestingly, four of them (Saskatoon West, Saskatoon—Grassland and Saskatoon—University and Regina—Wascana) got substantially more that average. But in these ridings, the Conservative candidate averaged 47.5 per cent of the popular vote.

(In Regina Wascana in 2021, Michael Kram received 49.9 per cent of the popular vote — 23 percentage points ahead of the Liberal runner-up.)

Perhaps the NDP swing to the Liberals is the formula for Carney’s election win. But it is going take a huge swing to make a difference in Saskatchewan.

Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.

Our websites are your destination for up-to-the-minute Saskatchewan news, so make sure to bookmark thestarphoenix.com and leaderpost.com. For Regina Leader-Post newsletters click here; for Saskatoon StarPhoenix newsletters click here

Article content