Jeremy Cockrill celebrates a win on Mon., Oct. 28. (Julia Lovett-Squires/battlefordsNOW Staff)

By Julia Lovett-Squires

The urban rural divide

Ball in Sask. Party’s court: political scientist reacts to election

Oct 29, 2024 | 12:04 PM

As Clayton Poole watched the returns come in with his friend and fellow NDP candidate from the comfort of Mark Thunderchild’s living room in the Rosthern-Shellbrook riding, the mood was subdued.

“We put in a good effort and increased the numbers a lot from the last election but hopefully we can make bigger strides in the future,” said the Cut Knife-Turtleford challenger.

Poole said given the record number of voters coming in during the first five days of Voting Week, they weren’t expecting a lower turnout on Election Day.

“It beats me, it’s just surprising to me,” he said.

According to Daniel Westlake, assistant professor with the University of Saskatchewan’s Faculty of Political Studies, he’s a bit nervous about drawing conclusions at this time because he isn’t sure how many mail in ballots are outstanding.

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“I’m wondering if that might affect turnout,” he said.

Fifth win

As the Sask. Party gets set to take over with their fifth majority win – a feat not seen since Tommy Douglas’s Saskatchewan’s CCF (precursor to the Saskatchewan NDP) served from 1944 to 1961. But this win isn’t a comfortable one for the incumbent government.

“I think both parties have things that they can be happy about and things that they can be disappointed about,” Westlake said.

“For the Sask. Party, I mean when you win an election, a win is a win and they get to govern and I think that that’s a positive for them and it’s a remarkable run,” Westlake added, though through in the caveat that’s assuming the mail in ballots don’t make much of a change.

The political scientist said while they indeed had a successful night, they got hit in urban areas and lost a number of seats. The results further cemented the urban rural divide amongst Saskatchewan voters.

“It looks like at most they’re (Sask. Party) going to come out with two seats in Saskatoon and Regina and even that depends on what we’ll see with the mail in ballots,” he said.

The NDP, meanwhile picked up a number of seats in those urban areas and at this point looks like a sweep in Regina and close in Saskatoon, though there are still seats up in the air he said.

“To compete for government, they needed to win outside of Saskatoon and Regina,” he added, noting it doesn’t look like they made much of a dent in Moose Jaw or Prince Albert.

In the Battlefords, Jeremy Cockrill will once again take up the mantel of MLA and speaking to the media Monday night, said he was looking forward to getting back to work.

“We’ve got some really exciting things I think close on the potential for our community and you know lots of issues to continue working on,” he said referring to healthcare and education.

Cockrill said the race – currently a 1,627-vote lead – was a reflection of hard work campaigning during the last several months and throughout voting week.

“We just had an army of volunteers on the ground and just a lot of people – a lot of local people stepping up and getting involved,” he said.

Interesting race

Looking at polls a week ago, the Sask. Party was showing a slight lead. Over the weekend, Westlake said polls suggested a stronger showing for the NDP than what the final results concluded.

“It kind of depended on the polls you looked at and I’m kind of curious as to what the pollsters were picking up at the very end of the campaign that didn’t seem to materialize in the election results,” he said.

Looking at PA, Westlake said it looks closer than in Moose Jaw and noted that Prince Albert Northcote might turn into an interesting riding in the coming days. Of the 300 mail-in ballots, there’s a difference of a little over 100 votes so while he isn’t sure it’ll change, he isn’t making a concrete assumption that won’t either.

“That one might depend on mail in ballots, but it might be pretty close to being called if not called already,” he said.

Moving forward, the political scientist said there are two ways the new term could play out for the Premier-Elect Scott Moe and the party. Comparing it to Alberta, the Sask. Party caucus comes back a “very rural” one.

Courting urban vote

“With little representation from the urban areas and less representation for the more moderate voters that kind of keep the more right-leaning edge of that party in check and that could be a Sask. Party that moves significantly to the right,” he said of the first scenario.

The second story could be the party looks at their losses in the urban areas and mounts a courting campaign to win them back by appeasing “heavily to the centre.”

“The ball is kind of in the Sask. Party’s court here and it can go in two different directions depending on whether they look at this and decide ‘OK, we’re going to lean into our base’ or whether they look at the results in Saskatoon and Regina and decide they have work to do.”

Issues such as food prices and housing affordability will be part of the challenges ahead to win back the urbanites. Meanwhile, the urban –rural divide looks to be long-term.

“The reason for that is that Saskatchewan is by no means unique,” said Westlake, adding that the phenomenon has been seen across the west in races in both Manitoba and Alberta. It’s also been happening across North America.

“You see this in the United States, you see this in federal politics and so I’m not surprised to see this is Saskatchewan. I don’t know that there’s any reason why we’d be different.”

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julia.lovettsquires@pattisonmedia.com

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