Is NDP Manitoba’s natural governing party?

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This article was published 29/01/2015 (3945 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The image of the NDP as Manitoba’s natural governing party seems hollow in light of the polls and the current infighting in the party. They suggest a party in decline, doomed to lose the next election. Yet, whatever happens in that election, the NDP will have a better claim to the label of natural governing party than will the becalmed federal Liberals of recent years.

The Liberals governed Canada for 72 per cent of the 110 years between 1896 and 2006, but the NDP in Manitoba has won a higher percentage of outright majorities since Ed Schreyer led his party into office in 1969 than have the Liberals since 1921, when more than two parties appeared in Parliament for the first time.

Schreyer revolutionized provincial politics by bringing into the NDP fold former Liberals, Progressive Conservatives and even some Social Crediters, as well as many members of ethnic groups that had never voted for the party, such as Franco-Manitobans and Mennonites. As a result, the NDP leapfrogged over the Liberals. The Liberals have never recovered except for a brief period in the 1980s after NDP backbencher Jim Walding brought his government down on a budget vote and then-Liberal leader Sharon Carstairs became popular for opposing the Meech Lake accord. However, the Liberals quickly undid themselves, and Gary Doer’s deft persistence resurrected the NDP, which has not looked back since it won office in the last century.

The provincial NDP’s status is more secure in the long term than the federal Liberals’, no matter what the results of the next provincial election. This is because the NDP has succeeded in polarizing the provincial electorate by capturing the votes of most of Manitoba’s federal Liberals.

The two elections of 2011 provide evidence. Despite the so-called Orange Wave and Jack Layton’s popularity in the federal election, the federal NDP lost two of its four Manitoba seats, the only province in which it suffered a setback. A few short months later, however, the party won more seats in the provincial election, 37, than any party had ever won. Just as the federal Liberals will benefit in the coming election by capturing the votes of many provincial NDP supporters, the provincial NDP will continue to retain the votes of many federal Liberals. The first-past-the-post electoral system encourages strategic voting and a polarized political landscape.

The Manitoba NDP has won four consecutive majorities. To be sure, the next election may diminish and humble the NDP, but the party has ensconced itself as the default option for the moment Conservative governments discredit themselves, as did the Sterling Lyon and Gary Filmon administrations. No one but Schreyer could have led the NDP to victory in 1969; the party swept into office on his coattails, but it was the party’s coattails that swept his successor, Howard Pawley, into the premier’s office in 1981.

The ideologically charged and polarized Manitoba party system is quite different from the multi-party context in which the federal Liberals had their historic success. The struggling provincial Liberals, preaching fiscal responsibility and compassionate social policy, have not been able to offer anything the NDP has not. The NDP has captured and successfully held much of Manitoba’s ideological middle ground as a centre-left party.

The NDP benefits, too, from the quirks of the electoral system and the party’s efficient distribution of votes. In 2011, the party won Kewatinook, Flin Flon, and Thompson, for example, with combined pluralities of 3,262 votes while the Conservatives won Arthur-Virden, Midland and Morris with combined pluralities of 10,284. These numbers indicate many Conservative votes are wasted votes. Moreover, as Winnipeg, the NDP’s base, continues to grow faster than the province, the party’s advantage will increase.

The NDP has also benefited from supporting the causes of social movements, environmentalists, unions, feminists, gays and lesbians, public-sector workers, the growing number of First Nations peoples, post-secondary students and the newer ethnic groups such as Filipinos. The party’s relatively activist policies in areas such as social inclusion, child care, health care and poverty resonate with female voters, who disproportionately support the party. The ever-growing number of public-sector dependents and clients also brightens NDP prospects. Farmers, a group historically unsympathetic to the party — it has never won a seat in the agriculturally rich rural southwest — are constantly shrinking in numbers while post-secondary students, a group that disproportionately supports the NDP, have constantly increased in numbers.

A generation of new voters in the next election, most likely to occur next year, will have known only an NDP government in their politically conscious lives. To them, the “natural” political order will be an NDP government. This does not mean the NDP will prevail in the next election. The odds it will do so are remarkably long. However, the NDP long ago left its position on the margins of provincial politics. It is now deeply embedded in the provincial political culture, worthy of being known as Manitoba’s natural governing party for the foreseeable future.

Nelson Wiseman is the director of the Canadian Studies Program and professor of political science at the University of Toronto.