Keep an eye on the battleground seats

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/08/2023 (750 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In every election, people like me encourage voters to get out and exercise their democratic right to cast a ballot. Everyone should.

But that doesn’t mean everyone’s vote will be the decisive one determining the outcome of the local race. In fact, many constituency races take place in safe party seats where the likely winner is known far in advance.

In the last provincial election, the PCs’ Kelvin Goertzen scored no less than 82 per cent of the vote in Steinbach constituency. Many rural seats elected PC candidates with similar numbers of votes.

The pattern is reversed in some Winnipeg seats. In the Notre Dame constituency in the last election, for example, the NDP’s Malaya Marcelino, a first-time candidate, romped to victory with 65 per cent of the vote.

Not many MLAs can brag about their vote totals like Goertzen and Marcelino can. But many are elected in either safe or mostly safe seats, where the outcome is never really in doubt.

Indeed, in the last election, most seats in the province saw the victorious candidate win with a margin of 20 per cent or more, meaning the winner scored over 20 per cent of the vote more than their next nearest competitor. Those seats can be stolen under the right conditions, but it’s a tough row to hoe.

In many of these seats, the real election takes place in the local party nomination race beforehand.

If most seats are largely safe for the PCs and NDP, then that means elections, including the upcoming provincial election, will be fought and won in a relatively small number of constituencies where the distance between the candidates is narrow enough that a strong provincial campaign or a high-profile and effective local candidate can make all the difference.

In the last election, only nine seats saw margins of less than 10 per cent. This is a clue that these are seats to watch. Of those, all except for Dauphin are in Winnipeg. And most of them — seven out of nine — are held by the PCs.

If the NDP is going to win, then it has to grab those seats. But if the Tories have any hope of holding on, then they must figure out a way to fend off the NDP challenge in precisely these seats and a few extra. While it would be possible for the Tories to win seats from the NDP, especially if support for Premier Heather Stefanson and her party continues to trend in the current direction, the focus is likely to be on protecting seats the party already holds.

In most of these constituencies, the Tories have the advantage of incumbency. Incumbent MLAs start the race with name recognition and, often, goodwill. Even if a voter doesn’t approve of the PC record or particularly like Stefanson, they might still be able to point to a time when the local MLA helped them or a friend or family member.

Out of those seats, the Tories are running incumbent MLAs in Southdale, Rossmere, Assiniboia and Riel. They all hold an incumbency advantage. But with incumbent MLAs retiring in McPhillips and Dauphin, the party will have no such advantage in those seats.

Another advantage held by the PCs is cabinet ministers tend to have a higher status and profile than backbench MLAs. People tend to think their MLAs are better able to help them and their community when they are in the cabinet. In appointing backbenchers to the cabinet in her most recent shuffle, Stefanson gave several MLAs in vulnerable Tory seats a boost.

Not surprisingly, all of the previously mentioned Tory-held seats with incumbents running in the upcoming election are represented by cabinet ministers. Furthermore, several potentially vulnerable suburban Tory seats recently saw their longtime backbench MLAs elevated to the Stefanson cabinet. Radisson’s James Teitsma and Seine River’s Janice Morley-Lecomte are good examples.

Many of the most important and closely fought races in the upcoming election will be fought by incumbent Tory cabinet ministers against NDP newcomers. Even if the tide turns against the Tories, Stefanson has lined up her troops in the most advantageous way possible.

Despite all this, the NDP continues to enjoy a major advantage over the Tories. Despite the PCs tying the NDP and even coming out ahead in terms of provincewide support, the NDP still leads in Winnipeg. While the PCs may add to their vote shares in seats they were likely to win anyway, the NDP is maintaining its lead where it counts: in Winnipeg where the battleground seats are.

As the provincial campaign unfolds over the coming weeks, be sure to keep an eye on these seats which will make all the difference in the result.

Royce Koop is a professor of political studies at the University of Manitoba and academic director of the Centre for Social Science Research and Policy.