Close call in Spruce Woods should prompt Tory soul-searching

Opinion

The Progressive Conservative party may have hung on to Spruce Woods in Tuesday’s byelection. But if anyone in the Tory camp is celebrating, they’re missing the bigger picture. This wasn’t a win so much as a warning.

Spruce Woods has been a safe Tory seat since it was first contested in 2011. The PCs have never come close to losing it.

In the 2023 election, they carried it comfortably, winning by more than 3,000 votes and 61 per cent support, even as they were nearly wiped off the electoral map in Winnipeg.

Yet this week, what should have been a routine byelection victory turned into a nail-biter. The PCs barely scraped by.

On paper, yes, the Tories got the win (they won by only 70 votes). But in reality, the message from voters was pretty clear: the party’s rural base may not be as ironclad as they think it is. If that base starts to erode, the PCs could be in serious trouble.

Granted, caution should be used when analyzing byelection results. They’re a different beast than general elections.

Safe seat

Voters aren’t choosing a government or deciding who’s going to be premier. Often, they use a byelection to send a message — to the government of the day or to the party that holds the seat.

Sometimes it’s just a protest vote. People feel freer to park their vote elsewhere, knowing it won’t change who’s in charge.

That could certainly be part of what happened in Spruce Woods. Some conservative-leaning voters may have wanted to let the PCs know they’re not happy with the direction (or lack of direction) the party is taking.

Still, this result can’t be dismissed as just a protest. The Tories lost a massive chunk of support in one of their safest seats. That’s not nothing. The fact it happened in a constituency that is smack dab in the middle of traditional conservative territory should set off alarm bells for the PC caucus and its new leader, Obby Khan.

The PCs can’t afford to lose ground in rural Manitoba. If they’re going to have any hope of forming government again, the road back runs through rural seats such as Spruce Woods. Those constituencies are the foundation of the party. If that foundation starts to crack, it’s difficult to see how they build a credible path to power.

This wasn’t the first warning sign for the Tories. The PCs lost the Winnipeg riding of Tuxedo in a byelection last year by just over 600 votes – a constituency they’ve held for decades.

According to two years of Probe Research polling, Tory support outside Winnipeg has dropped from 56 per cent in the 2023 election to 41 per cent in June 2025. Most of that support has gone to the NDP, which had its share rise to 50 per cent from 36 per cent during the same period.

So, why the shift in Spruce Woods? There’s no single explanation. Some of it may be a signal that some Tory-minded voters are still unhappy with the racist tactics the PC party used during the provincial election, including its “stand firm” billboards against searching the Prairie Green Landfill for the remains of Indigenous women Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran.

Some may be economic — concerns about affordability, health care or the state of rural infrastructure. There’s no doubt the amount of time Premier Wab Kinew and some NDP cabinet ministers spent in Spruce Woods during the byelection (and the millions in government announcements prior to the blackout period) had an impact.

Whatever the reason, the PCs can’t shrug this off. If they want to be competitive in the next election, they need to take a hard look at why their support has softened in rural Manitoba.

The NDP, meanwhile, should be heartened by what happened in Spruce Woods. Even though they didn’t win, they’ve shown they can be competitive in a constituency that has never been friendly turf. That matters.

Kinew’s strategy has been clear: solidify NDP dominance in Winnipeg and start chipping away at Tory support in rural Manitoba. If Tuesday’s byelection is any indication, that strategy might be working.

Again, a single byelection doesn’t tell the whole story. Manitoba voters may make very different choices when they’re scheduled to head to the polls in 2027.

By then, plenty will have changed — economically, politically, and socially. But political parties ignore trends at their peril. Right now, the trend for the PCs is flashing red.

Politics is all about momentum. For the NDP, Tuesday’s result is a boost, even if they didn’t capture the seat. For the PCs, it’s a warning shot across the bow. They may still own most of rural Manitoba today, but as Spruce Woods — and recent polling — showed, those voters are not locked down. They’re willing to look elsewhere.

If the Progressive Conservatives want to rebuild and contend for government again, they’ll need to stop taking rural Manitoba for granted. Otherwise, Tuesday’s squeaker in Spruce Woods might look less like an anomaly and more like the beginning of the end of their rural dominance.

If that happens, the PCs can kiss goodbye any hope of returning to power in the short to medium-term.

tom.brodbeck@freepress.mb.ca