The tricky question of politics and election calls

You cannot fault Progressive Conservative party leader Obby Khan from thinking there is an election coming.

For the past couple of weeks, NDP Premier Wab Kinew has been talking like a man who could, if the mood strikes him, ask the lieutenant governor to call an election at almost any moment. Khan and his team have responded with a flurry of nominations and the release of a key campaign plank: a vague and as-yet-uncosted proposal to double the basic personal exemption on income tax.

But is an election really in the cards? On the one hand, the Kinew government has more than enough pressing demands on its plate right now to dispose of any notion of an early election. On the other hand, Kinew and his NDP government remain incredibly popular. The most-recent Free Press-Probe Research poll, released this week, shows the NDP with 55 per cent support province wide (20 points better than the Tories) and 60 per cent support in Winnipeg (31 points more than the Tories).

The question nagging Kinew is not so much whether now is the right time for an election, it’s will the NDP ever be in a better position than now.

The temptation is clearly tormenting Kinew, who for a few weeks now has been all hype and hope about the upcoming March 24 budget and the fiscal year beyond.

Without offering firm details, Kinew promised to help lower-income homeowners while suggesting high-wealth Manitobans might get less relief from the education property tax rebate. He is pledging more assistance for seniors, and marking every modest improvement in the health care system — and there have been some — as if it were a major medical breakthrough.

Kinew also said — without promising anything solid — that he and his government were watching gasoline prices carefully and that government was “always going to be there to help you.”

He even had a good go at U.S.President Donald Trump, calling him “public enemy No. 1 when it comes to our economy,” and demanding that the commander-in-chief “stop the war” in Iran.

However, his boldest campaign-style rhetoric was a claim that, despite the rising tide of red ink that is threatening to overwhelm the treasury, Manitoba would post “the best deficit number across the country on March 24.”

That is a remarkable claim. To escape the $1.6-billion deficit projected for this year, Kinew would need massive growth in the Manitoba economy to restore moribund revenues. A recovery like that seems highly unlikely with Trump’s relentless tariffs and the war-that-nobody-wanted in Iran destabilizing the global economy.

Which brings us back to two central questions: could Kinew actually call an election now, and if so, should he?

By law, Manitoba doesn’t need to hold a vote until the fall of 2027. But that same law does not preclude Kinew from walking across the Manitoba Legislature in kitty-corner fashion to the lieutenant governor’s office and asking for a writ of election to be dropped.

However, election laws are moot on the topic of whether he should call an election. Kinew is popular, the Tory opposition is still in disarray. Yet it would not be unfair to say that Kinew has not made as much progress as he promised to make in the last election.

The question of whether to call an election or not needs to be viewed through a mulitude of lenses.

Politically, it’s go time. However, when viewed through the lens of accomplishments to date, and work left undone, an early trip to the polls doesn’t seem like such a good idea.

Political opportunism doesn’t always sell well.