REGINA – The horses are coming up to the starting gate, but how are things looking with respect to a provincial election?
Sask Today spoke to Tom McIntosh, Professor on Politics and International Studies at the University of Regina, about where things stand right now in provincial politics. It is a unique time in provincial politics — a period prior to the writ being dropped. As a result there is still uncertainty as to when the official campaign period will begin, and a number of restrictions the parties are currently under at this time as to what they can do.
Here is some of what McIntosh had to say in that interview.
About what to make of this pre-election period:
“It’s sort of interesting — you know, the whole idea of fixed election days was all about ‘well, then you can’t do… you can’t spend money before,” and it would get rid of all of these things. In fact if you have a fixed election date then as it rolls closer, even though the election hasn’t been called, people start electioneering. And we seen it — we’ve seen ads from the NDP, we’ve seen everybody’s out knocking doors, all of that sort of stuff. So yeah, we’re not officially in an election period, but we are more or less in an election period.”
About what the rules are supposed to be during this time:
“Before the writ is dropped there are limits on what can be spent, as there are sort of generally a limit on advertising, and the like. Once the writ is dropped, then your election expenses sort of come into effect, and you have far more freedom to to spend money and to go after money from donors and and the like. So that’s probably the biggest difference. So you see a lot of low-key, low cost sort of things going on in the pre-writ period. Not only are you selecting your candidates — there are still candidates to be selected for the election — but also candidates are out door-knocking with a couple of volunteers and getting a sense of what their riding is like and getting to know people in their riding, so there’s a lot of that going on.”
When to expect an election to be called:
“If it is October 28, which seems to be the date everybody has in mind, which is what would be specified by the legislation, then we’re looking at essentially six weeks before that. So the writ is going to come — if it’s going to drop for the 28th, it’s going to be soon to hit the minimum election period. And then, if it doesn’t, then the government will have to explain why it’s not meeting the requirement of the fixed election dates legislation.”
What are the issues the Sask Party and the NDP are likely to focus on in the campaign:
“I suspect that from the NDP it will be two of the traditional issues for the NDP, one of which is the state of the healthcare system which I think everybody agrees is in need of some attention. And probably also, then, to this end in terms of what the NDP has already said, they are talking about a major investment in K-12 education as well over the next number of years. So education and healthcare will be the NDP’s main issues.
“I think that the Sask Party is going to focus on their position that they’re the best to manage the economy, that they’ve done a good job managing the economy, and that they’re also the party that will defend Saskatchewan‘s interests against the big bad federal government, which has been a major theme of the Sask Party in the last few years —- has been that really contentious relationship that our province, our provincial government, has had with the federal Liberals.”
How things stand for the Saskatchewan Party:
“You know, if the polls are to be believed, the Sask Party going into this election is in a very strong position. Whatever decline in popularity the party has had over the last few years, so far it doesn’t seem to be enough for them to lose the election. They’re going to want to maintain the seats they have in rural Saskatchewan. The big challenge for them is how many seats they can maintain in urban Saskatchewan. That appears from all of the polling reports, and just sort of anecdotally on the street, there’s an increasingly clear rural-urban divide in the province with urban voters moving towards the NDP, and a feeling of a desire for change after four majority governments for the Sask Party. Whereas rural Saskatchewan seems pretty strongly still entrenched, in the rural parts of the province,
How things stand for the NDP:
“They’re looking, I think, at gaining seats in the two big cities. The big question for them will be gaining seats in the smaller urban areas in Moose Jaw, Prince Albert, Swift Current, Yorkton, those kind of places. And can they capture any of the rural seats. There’s probably a shot at the northern seat, but in the southern half of the province, they are still struggling, I think, to get a foothold back into rural Saskatchewan.”
How things look for the smaller parties — the Greens, Sask United, the PCs, the Buffalo Party, the Progress Party:
“For all of those parties, organization is an issue. They will all probably have trouble running full slates of candidates — I’m not even sure that all of them have even committed to running full slates of candidates. Organizationally, financially, those are all constraints that they are going to face. The question I guess for them is can they pull any votes, for most of them looking to pull votes, from the Sask Party…
“This raises the whole question that the Premier himself had spoken about the potential effects of vote splitting. If you split the right of centre vote, are you creating an opening for the NDP where they wouldn’t be competitive otherwise.”
What areas have the potential to be the biggest battlegrounds:
“I guess for me where I’m going to be watching is, as I said, can the NDP pry back some of those smaller urban centres from the Sask Party? Can they take one or both of the seats in PA? Can they take one or both of the seats in Moose Jaw? i think those are going to be the things that really will decide the complexion, how close it is in the legislature after election day.”