Manitoba's election is now the NDP's to lose

If the New Democrats manage to hold on to the lead polls suggest they have right now in Manitoba, there won't be much of a contest on election night.

Two things are going very well for the NDP: strong support for the party itself and a significant voter retreat from the Manitoba Liberals.

Polls released this week by the non-profit Angus Reid Institute and for-profit firm Probe Research suggested 47 to 49 per cent of Manitoba voters intend to cast ballots for the NDP.

Support at that level spells victory — over the past century, no Manitoba political party with 44 per cent of the popular vote or better has lost an election.

Even a smidge below 44 per cent doesn't get you there, at least if you're the Tories. Progressive Conservative parties led by Sterling Lyon in 1981 and Hugh McFadyen in 2011 came close to garnering 44 per cent and still managed to lose elections to the NDP.

In both of those races, support for the Manitoba Liberals collapsed into the single digits. That provided the NDP with an advantage in what essentially became head-to-head races with the PCs in northern Manitoba, Brandon and the northern half of Winnipeg. 

This is another year where the Liberal vote appears to be collapsing. Both the Angus Reid and Probe polls suggest only nine per cent of voters intend to cast a ballot for a Liberal.

That means the dynamic we see right now in Manitoba — strong support for the NDP coupled with a weak Liberal showing — may prove lethal for the Progressive Conservatives.

Even if both the PCs and Liberals claw back a few percentage points of support, recent electoral history suggests the path to victory for the PCs becomes narrow, hinging upon favourable splits in swing constituencies.

In 1999, both the NDP and Gary Filmon's Progressive Conservatives garnered more than 40 per cent of the popular vote, while the Liberals under Jon Gerrard captured 13 per cent.

Gary Doer's NDP still captured eight more seats than the PCs — 32 to 24 — and a majority government that year.

Liberal support sank in 1981, 2011

This year, the polls are looking a lot more like 1981 and 2011.

In 1981, Howard Pawley's NDP edged Lyon's PCs in popular support by 47 to 44 per cent. But the Liberals, led by the now-forgotten Doug Lauchlan, only cobbled together seven per cent support. The result was an 11-seat NDP majority.

In 2011, Greg Selinger's New Democrats edged past McFadyen's Tories by an even narrower range of popular support, 46 to 44 per cent. But Gerrard's Liberals only managed 7.5 per cent of voters.

This allowed Selinger to win 37 seats — the highest total ever won by an NDP premier in this province — as well as an 18-seat majority.

All of this discussion, however, is predicated on the idea nothing will change in Manitoba between now and the Oct. 3 vote. There is every reason to suggest a lot will.

For starters, the favourable polls for the NDP have the potential to mobilize diehard PC supporters who can't stand the idea of the NDP's Wab Kinew becoming premier in time to issue Thanksgiving greetings to Manitobans.

Similarly, there may be a temptation for NDP supporters and campaign workers to take their feet off the gas.

"There [are] hazards in those numbers because it can lead to complacency," said Probe Research president Scott MacKay.

Kinew clearly understood this risk when he made an appeal to voters on Friday.

"Polls don't change governments," he said in a carefully worded statement at a campaign appearance in Tuxedo. "Only voters can do that, and that's why we need everyone to get out and vote this year."

Appeal to Liberal voters

There is also the possibility Kinew has overplayed his hand when it comes to Liberal voters. Three times this week — at the Tuxedo event, during a televised leaders' debate and in front of the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce — Kinew appealed directly to Liberals for their votes this year.

There are voters who do not appreciate being told overtly what to do. If polls suggest many Liberal voters were already leaning NDP, why mess with success?

More importantly, 10 days is still a very long time in the context of a 28-day political campaign. The Progressive Conservatives are not finished rolling out their platform. The negative ads you expect to see from a party running from behind have yet to appear en masse.

The bottom line is that campaigns matter, even at the end, and provincewide popular opinion can change.

Last spring in Alberta, for example, the United Conservatives and NDP were running neck and neck in several polls two weeks before the election. The UCP ended up winning the popular vote by almost nine percentage points.

A provincewide NDP lead doesn't automatically mean the party will be able to flip every one of the seats on its target list. If Manitoba's race grows closer, the election-day machinery on the ground for both the NDP and PCs becomes more important.

The NDP must win 11 more seats than the party has right now to form a majority government. There are few easy outs among the potential targets occupied right now by Liberals and PCs.

In other words, this race is not over, even with polls painting a rosy picture this week for the NDP.

As advance polls open Saturday, this is now Wab Kinew's election to lose.

• Read full coverage of the 2023 Manitoba election here