Brandon, outlying areas fuel NDP’s close finish

The NDP’s close finish in Tuesday’s Spruce Woods byelection was fuelled by voters in Brandon and bedroom communities around the city, poll results released Friday showed.

Progressive Conservative candidate Colleen Robbins won the byelection with 2,805 votes, compared to 2,735 for the NDP’s Ray Berthelette. Liberal candidate Stephen Reid finished with 445 votes, according to the official results.

The NDP received the most votes in all five of Brandon’s North Hill polls, as well as polls in Rivers, Kemnay, Shilo, Glenboro and Wawanesa.

The PCs topped the polls in Alexander, Brandon Hills, Carroll, Cypress River, Douglas, Forrest, Holland, Roseland, Oak Lake and Souris.

Kemnay and Wawanesa had two polls each — one advance and one on election day — and both the NDP and PCs topped one in each community.

Of the 33 polls, the PCs won 19, while the NDP finished first in 13, with one mobile poll tied between the NDP and Liberals. Voters were allowed to cast their ballot at any polling station in the riding.

Brandon University political science Prof. Kelly Saunders said she expected Brandon electors to vote for the NDP, but that communities around the city voting that way as well was surprising.

“The fact that the NDP were able to win some individual (rural) polls shows that they’re making some inroads into areas that I thought would have 100 per cent gone Conservative,” Saunders said.

Votes cast in Brandon went 53 per cent for the NDP, compared to 40 per cent for the PCs.

“I would have thought that the NDP would have done better in Brandon,” Saunders said. “I mean, they won Brandon, but I thought that their numbers would have been higher. In the last election, you had Brandon East obviously go solidly NDP and came very, very close to winning Brandon West.”

In other polls the NDP won, the party received less than half the vote.

The PCs finished well ahead in some polls, receiving 76 per cent of the vote in Holland and 68 per cent in Oak Lake.

Saunders noted that though the Tories did well in those communities, the benefits were limited because of the small populations.

“To win by 70 per cent in a small community that maybe has 300 votes in total coming out of it, compared to a larger urban centre where they’re basically either shut out or really are winning over only a small percentage … it’s not going to lead you to power,” she said.

“That’s been the challenge facing the Conservatives. Where they win, they win big in rural towns. But it doesn’t matter, because those are wasted votes. They’re not winning where they need to win.”

Saunders said because Brandon is growing, the PCs will need to do better inside and directly around the city.

“It becomes a numbers game. That is where the PCs need to win if they want to grow their vote and they want to find that path to power, to victory, in terms of future elections,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if they’re winning in small, rural towns where the population is either stagnant or declining. They need to win in places where the population is growing.”

Elections data shows 6,009 votes were cast out of 14,920 eligible voters, for a 40.3 per cent turnout. Eight of those ballots were rejected and 16 declined.

» alambert@brandonsun.com