Kinew sticks to script as Tory surge in poll erases NDP lead

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/06/2023 (811 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

NDP Leader Wab Kinew says he’s unfazed by a poll showing a resurgence in support for Manitoba’s governing Tories.

“I think that the only poll that really matters is the one that’s going to be held on Oct. 3, election day,” he said Wednesday in a scrum with reporters at The Forks where he was participating in Indigenous Peoples Day ceremonies.

A Free Press-Probe Research Inc. poll published Tuesday showed that after leading since December 2020, his party and the Progressive Conservatives are now deadlocked with 41 per cent support provincially, while the New Democrats’ strong lead in Winnipeg has shrunk.

“What these results are informative of is there’s a desire for change in Manitoba,” Kinew said outside the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

It’s the second-consecutive quarterly poll indicating a rise in support for the Tories, who’ve languished behind the NDP, even after replacing an unpopular leader in Brian Pallister in 2021 with Heather Stefanson, who became Manitoba’s first woman to lead the government.

When asked why he thinks the NDP’s lead has slipped, if he’s worried, and what he plans to do about it, Kinew repeatedly pointed to an Angus Reid Institute survey that’s consistently shown Stefanson dead-last for popularity among Canada’s premiers, with the support of just 25 per cent of Manitobans.

“Heather Stefanson is the least-popular premier in the country, which shows that so many Manitobans want change,” he said.

But he dismissed the findings of another Angus Reid survey conducted May 30-June 3 that found 51 per cent of Manitobans view him unfavourably.

“Still far ahead of Premier Stefanson in that same poll,” he noted.

That poll found 66 per cent view Stefanson unfavourably.

“Our team has been laser-focused on plans for health care, making life more affordable,” said Kinew, adding his is the only team that can replace her government.

Brandon University political science professor Kelly Saunders said Kinew might want to direct some of that focus on the PCs’ negative messaging about him and his party, which has helped to lift support for the Tories in the last two Free Press/Probe Research polls.

“These polls that are showing that the gap is closing; the Tories are beginning to recover some of their lost ground,” Saunders said. “Some of the Tory tactics, in terms of how they’ve been trying to frame him as a leader and his party — that they’re radical, they’re like the (former premier Greg) Selinger government” that lost to Pallister’s Tories in 2016 after raising the provincial sales tax.

“Everybody remembers those days, and some of that is working. (Kinew) has got to take that seriously and try to find ways to counter that and break through some of that negative messaging that, at least in the polls as of today, is finding its mark a little bit on the NDP and on Kinew, in particular.”

While the Liberals and Green party are trailing in support, with 10 and five per cent, respectively, an increased number of undecided voters is significant, Saunders said.

“That means that people are not really all that thrilled with the options before them,” she said. “They’re not so crazy about the Conservatives, but they’re still somewhat reluctant to fully embrace Wab Kinew and the NDP. You would think, in that kind of scenario, that it would be easy for a moderate, centrist, middle-of-the-road party to kind of come up the middle, but that doesn’t seem to be happening.”

That will happen, once the writ is dropped, said Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont.

“Campaigns matter and we’ve shown that, consistently, in every campaign I’ve run as leader,” he said, dismissing the attention paid to polls.

“If we actually care about elections being about issues or character or what people are going to do, then I think we need to pay more attention to that and less about asking people what they think they would do if there’s an election tomorrow, which there isn’t.”

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca