Tories ahead at halfway point

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This article was published 01/04/2016 (3484 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Liberals are stumbling, the NDP effort lacks spark and the Progressive Conservatives appear to be cruising to victory.

Those are conclusions of a panel of political experts interviewed by the Free Press as the Manitoba election campaign reaches its midway point today.

They say while the result isn’t carved in stone — a scandal could arise or PC Leader Brian Pallister could make a deadly error in one of several upcoming leadership debates — a pattern has developed that, if unchecked, would see a wave of Tory blue sweep the province April 19.

Pallister is running a cautious, “boring” front-runner campaign, which is a solid strategy when you’re well ahead in the polls, said Royce Koop, a political scientist at the University of Manitoba.

On the campaign trail, he’s been relaxed, content to repeat long-standing PC promises and point to grievances with the NDP. And he’s been smiling — more than he has since becoming leader, by acclamation, of a then-discouraged Tory party in 2012.

Every day on his Facebook page there are more pictures of a smiling Pallister, Koop said. “I’ve never seen him smiling so much and it’s such a natural easy smile from him, too. I think he thinks he’s got it in the bag. He’s acting that way.”

Meanwhile, the governing NDP, in power since 1999, seems to lack the killer instinct it had in 2011, when it attacked Pallister’s predecessor, Hugh McFadyen, mercilessly, including in a prominent TV ad in which McFadyen was called “too big a risk” by fake job interviewers, even if he was a sharp dresser (“Nice suit, though”).

Koop said the biggest shock of the election so far is that Premier Greg Selinger and company have not been more aggressive in trying to change the fact that the polls had them in third place heading into the campaign.

“They haven’t really done much in terms of attacking, in terms of presenting head-turning policies. It’s just a very surprising, unintuitive set of behaviour from Selinger and the NDP,” he said.

“It honestly seems to me like Selinger… doesn’t think he’s going to win,” Koop added. “That’s honestly the kind of campaign that I’m seeing from him.”

Many of Selinger’s campaign promises have revolved around familiar themes, including the need for major investments in infrastructure and the public health-care system. Even when the NDP has ventured into new territory, such as halving patient costs for ambulances or turning student loans into grants, one or the other of the opposition parties has beat it to the punch.

Kelly Saunders, a political scientist at Brandon University, said there’s a sense the NDP is tired.

“It’s really a government that has run out of ideas,” she said.

In western Manitoba, she said, the campaign is creating barely a ripple of excitement, as if the result is a foregone conclusion. Brandon East, an NDP stronghold so solid it remained NDP orange in 1988 — when the party was reduced to 12 seats — is likely to fall to the Tories, as are such bellwether constituencies as Dauphin and Swan River. All other seats in western Manitoba are already Tory blue.

Saunders said the biggest surprise has been the failure of the Liberals to catch fire. “I really thought this would be the Liberals’ chance to really come out as a real game-changer in this election campaign.”

Going into the race, the Grits under Rana Bokhari were riding high on the national party’s coattails. Their polling numbers had risen to second place (behind the Tories) by Christmas. They were in a position to make big gains by attracting swing voters uncomfortable with Pallister. But Saunders said the Liberals are disorganized, lack vision and a good plan. They have failed to properly vet candidates and couldn’t field a full roster of 57, falling short by five. In some instances, the failure to properly check nomination papers cost them a candidate, “a really amateur mistake,” Saunders said.

Bokhari has come under criticism for lacking specifics and failing to present a realistic fiscal plan. This week, her campaign was hurt when a Brandon Liberal candidate said there were “too many hospitals” in Manitoba and said two in Winnipeg should be closed. The candidate later called the comment a “publicity stunt” — but the damage was done.

Christopher Adams, a Winnipeg political scientist, said it will be interesting to see whether those stumbles translate into lower polling numbers when a Probe Research poll for the Free Press is released in about a week’s time.

“I think some of the Liberal votes will be going back to the NDP,” Adams said, noting Bokhari’s candidates lack resources to compete with the other parties.

There were those who wondered before the campaign began how Bokhari would perform with limited resources and no battle experience.

“I think some of the worries about the Liberals have come to fruition,” he said.

In some constituencies, Adams said, a Liberal decline would see votes return to the NDP. In others, they could go to the Tories.

Adams said the PCs have run a careful and well-organized campaign. They may be too cautious, keeping Pallister out of some town hall meetings that have attracted both Selinger and Bokhari, he said.

The Tories were the first to have nominated candidates in all 57 constituencies, Adams noted. “They look very efficient. They have a record number — for them — of women candidates (20). They haven’t had MLAs or candidates speaking off-message.”

Pallister’s only false step occurred early in the campaign when he said savings could be found all through government, including in health and education. “There are no sacred cows here,” he said, a line the NDP jumped on.

Despite NDP efforts to exploit the remark, it doesn’t seem to have stuck with voters.

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“He’s not saying anything that is controversial,” Koop said of Pallister. “It looks like he might have slipped up a bit by talking about sacred cows. But (he) quickly corrected himself, and he’s just run a kind of bland campaign. That’s what you expect from someone as far ahead as he is.”

A Probe Research poll at the end of 2015 pegged PC support among decided voters at 43 per cent, compared with 29 per cent for the Liberals and 22 per cent for the NDP. Surveys taken since then have confirmed the big Tory lead.

Saunders said it will be interesting to see if the NDP gets tough. “Are they going to find it within themselves to really launch a full-out frontal attack on the Conservatives and really try to displace them (as the odds-on winners)? Or are they going to just try to scramble for whatever seats they can get and try to outdo the Liberals in some urban seats?”

If the second half of the election campaign is a replay of the first, the outcome is clear, Saunders said. “We could see quite a blue wave sweep across the province.”

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca