NDP fail to overcome Tory tide

I have worked on dozens of election campaigns over the past 50-plus years and have learned a number of lessons from those experiences.

Near the top of the list is the realization that the campaigns that hurt the most are the ones in which you thought you had no hope of winning when the campaign begun, but ended up losing by a very small margin.

Within that group, even more painful are the campaigns where you had led at various times while the votes were being counted, but ultimately came up short by a handful of votes.

Those ones really sting because you — both the candidate and members of the campaign team — fall into the trap of second-guessing every aspect of the campaign.

Could we have added votes if we had worked harder, had prepared for the campaign earlier, had more or better campaign staff, had done a better job of identifying supporters or making sure identified supporters actually voted, spent more time in a particular part of the riding, changed our messaging, raised and spent more money, taken a more or less confrontational tone, prepared better for debates …?

The list of “in-hindsight” questions are virtually limitless. They will cost you sleep for days or weeks, given the amount of hope, energy and optimism that you poured into a campaign that, despite being initially written off as a “sure loser,” was gradually perceived to be winnable.

Falling short under those circumstances is a gut punch that is hard to move on from because you felt you had a genuine shot at winning, only to have your hopes crushed at the finish line.

That brings us to Tuesday’s byelection in the Spruce Woods riding, in which Progressive Conservative candidate Colleen Robbins defeated New Democrat Ray Berthelette by just 70 votes. Robbins received 2,805 votes, while Berthelette received 2,735. Liberal Stephen Reid was well back at 444 votes.

Byelections often have unexpected results due to low voter turnout, but that wasn’t the case in Spruce Woods on Tuesday. Voter turnout was 40.71 per cent, which wasn’t far off the 56.64 per cent turnout in the 2023 provincial general election and the 56.75 per cent turnout in the 2019 election. In other words, Tuesday’s results should be regarded as a reasonably accurate snapshot of voter sentiment across the riding.

There are a number of conclusions that can be drawn from those results, beginning with the reality that the percentage of votes received by the Tory candidate, Robbins, shrunk from almost 62 per cent in 2023 (when Grant Jackson was the PC candidate) to slightly less than 47 per cent on Tuesday. Support for the NDP (Bethelette), on the other hand, increased from just 24 per cent in 2023 to almost 46 per cent.

That may signal a massive shift in voter support to the NDP, or it could simply reflect the fact that the NDP ran an invisible “place-holder” candidate in 2023. Given the nature of the riding, it was always likely that the real margin between the two parties was closer than the numbers indicated.

Even if that is the case, there are two reasons why it is far too soon to conclude that Spruce Woods has been transformed into a competitive swing riding for the next provincial election. First, the Tories ran an exceptionally weak candidate — Robbins — and that likely caused Tory support to fall. She may not be the PC candidate in 2027, however.

Second, Premier Wab Kinew spent a lot time in the riding during the byelection campaign, to the point where he was arguably perceived by many voters as the de facto NDP candidate. His personal popularity won many votes for Berthelette, but the premier won’t be able to spend so much time in the riding in 2027.

The next NDP candidate will have to win votes on his or her own merits, and that could make for a tougher challenge than Berthelette faced.

Having said all of that, Kinew, Berthelette and their NDP campaign team can spend the next several days reflecting on things they would have, should have and could have done in order to win in Spruce Woods, but they should remember that many of the most-loyal conservative voters in the nation live in the riding. Robbins was always the favourite to win the byelection and she managed to do that, though by a much smaller margin.

Kinew and Berthelette ran a strong campaign, but it still wasn’t enough to overcome the Tory tide. Whether the NDP can finish the job in 2027 remains to be seen, but the task won’t be easier.