Support wanes ‘a little’ for NDP

While support has cooled slightly for the New Democrats as they near the halfway point of their mandate, Premier Wab Kinew and his party continue to enjoy a healthy lead over the official Opposition, a new poll shows.

“I think we’ve all been kind of waiting for this very long, extended honeymoon to start to wane a little bit for the NDP, and I think we are maybe starting to see that in these latest numbers,” Probe Research partner Mary Agnes Welch said.

“The NDP have dropped slightly in support — they are still massively ahead, massively popular — but we are maybe starting to see some chinks in that armour develop.”

Welch outlined the results of a Probe Research poll commissioned by the Free Press that includes responses from 1,000 Manitobans, captured between Sept. 4 and Sept. 14.

It found support for the NDP has dipped both in Winnipeg and beyond the Perimeter Highway, but overall, remains at 53 per cent. That’s down from 57 per cent in June, but still above the 45 per cent on election day in October 2023.

Support for the NDP in Winnipeg shrunk to 57 per cent from 62 per cent four months ago, reaching the lowest level since June 2024.

In rural Manitoba, support for the party dropped to 47 per cent from 50 per cent during the same period.

In Winnipeg, the opposition Progressive Conservatives jumped two percentage points to 27 per cent support, the Liberals were up by 1 point to 12 per cent and the Greens were up two points to three per cent.

The PC party had its largest gain in rural Manitoba, rising three percentage points to 44 per cent. That follows their narrow victory over the NDP in the Spruce Woods byelection Aug. 26.

Overall support for the Tories is 34 per cent, up two points since June.

“They have gone up just the tiniest smidge, which is good news for them because they’ve been on a slide for months,” Welch said. “The Tories are still really deeply in the doldrums, but we are seeing, maybe, just the shine wearing off a little bit on the NDP.”

The Tories remain less popular than on election day two years ago, when they garnered 42 per cent support overall and 32 per cent in Winnipeg.

Previous Probe polls show the NDP has weathered marginal dips in overall support and rebounded several times since the party took office. The PCs, however, declined overall for roughly one year after the election, and have remained mostly static since then.

Christopher Adams, adjunct professor in the department of political science at the University of Manitoba, said the poll results continue to show surprising levels of support for the NDP, even if the “euphoria has been dampened” over the past few months.

“Wab Kinew continues to draw support, showing himself to be a charismatic leader. He hasn’t had major problems in terms of scandals and things like that. He also is facing a hobbled Opposition,” he said.

The Tories were without an official leader following the resignation of former premier Heather Stefanson in May 2024. Party members voted Obby Khan in as leader in April, after a hotly contested race against challenger Wally Daudrich.

The latest Probe poll shows Khan’s net approval rating is slightly negative, with 34 per cent of respondents approving of his performance and 39 per cent disapproving.

However, he has the backing of eight in 10 PC voters, it shows.

“I’ve only been leader for four months. I think Manitobans are still really getting to know me as leader and my positive vision… for a new era of the PC party,” Khan said.

“I have to, as the leader of the party, rebuild trust with Manitobans and that’s a journey we have started… I think support levels are already changing, and they are going to continue to change.”

Kinew remains the more popular leader, with a 63 per cent approval rating (down from 67 per cent in September 2024). One-third of current PC voters and more than 80 per cent of Manitoba Liberals praised his leadership, the poll found.

A statement from an NDP spokesperson said, “These numbers confirm what we just saw in the Spruce Woods byelection: Manitobans continue to put their trust in our team to deliver on their priorities, fixing health care, lowering costs, and keeping communities safe.”

Manitobans, even those who strongly support the New Democrats, likely expect improvements promised by the government to take hold in the second half of its mandate, Welch said.

Those include pledges to reduce health care wait times, boost economic growth and make ground on homelessness and crime, Welch said.

“I think the expectations for the premier and the NDP government are so high, they are so outsized, that the risk is there is almost no place to go but disappointment,” she said.

“It’s important not to lose the forest through the trees. Wab Kinew is still out-polling the Tories by exponential amounts,” Welch said.

The poll results were weighted slightly by age, gender, region and education level to reflect the provincial population, based on census data. It has a margin of error of 3.1 points.

tyler.searle@freepress.mb.ca