Provincial campaign promises to be nasty

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/03/2016 (3845 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Brace yourselves, Manitobans. You’re about to be electorally politicked.

For the next 34 days, you will be pushed, prodded, scolded, cajoled, intimidated and frightened into voting for the party of your choice, lest another candidate win and the sky fall down.

Heck, you may even be simply asked for your vote. But the way the 41st general election has been shaping up — even before Premier Greg Selinger dropped the writ yesterday — this election fight promises to be one of the nastiest we’ve had between political opponents.

We have an unpopular NDP government, led by an even more unpopular premier, according to a recent Forum Research poll, who will use every scare tactic they can to keep power. Of course, Selinger could well be the author of his own demise, considering the continued pounding he and his party have taken for breaking his promise not to raise the PST.

And in the other corner we’ve got the well-funded, vastly more popular Progressive Conservatives champing at the bit trying to convince vote-rich Winnipeg that they can be trusted with the reins of power.

Oddly enough, Tory Leader Brian Pallister, like his NDP counterpart, remains somewhat less popular than his party, according to the same poll. That’s likely thanks in part to his propensity for verbal gaffes — think “infidel atheists” and “I hate Halloween.” More to the point, however, the NDP has been somewhat successful in scaremongering the electorate into believing that Pallister is a Stephen Harper-in-waiting.

Keep in mind, of course, that polls can be wrong. And Forum Research has been very wrong before, as it was during the Brandon-Souris federal byelection in 2013.

Nevertheless, the NDP’s constant drumbeat against Pallister and the Tories has kept popular support for the PC party somewhat stagnant — generally between 43 and 47 per cent provincewide, and statistically similar to the 2011 election. Though, again, it depends what polling firm is considered.

If a poll by Mainstreet Research commissioned by Postmedia earlier this month is accurate, for example, the NDP and Tories are in a close fight in Winnipeg at 33 and 35 per cent support, respectively. With such a battleground in play, we can expect some bare-fisted antagonism over the next four weeks.

Then there’s Rana Bokhari, whose Liberal party’s election hopes seem to have run off the rails over the last few weeks. She is struggling to find credible candidates outside Winnipeg, including in Brandon West. Earlier this month, the Liberal chief of staff resigned and his girlfriend, who was running as a Liberal candidate for Fort Whyte, bowed out of the race.

Bokhari has been blasted by media as simply not ready to lead her party, let alone the province. And she, like Selinger and Pallister, has proven less popular than her own third-place party, according to that same Forum Poll.

Anecdotally at least, we’d say Forum has this part accurate — none of the political leaders have been particularly inspiring. As one Twitter commenter recently noted, this is not the golden age of political leadership in Manitoba.

That reality can play out a couple of ways at the polls on April 19. Either people will be voting for the party brand — not the leader — or voters will pay closer attention to the character of the men and women vying for a seat.

That could make local races like Brandon East all the more interesting, because it becomes a game of name recognition. Especially if current NDP Brandon East MLA Drew Caldwell decides to distance himself from his unpopular party, much like Conservative MP Larry Maguire did in Brandon-Souris in the 2015 federal election. And always remember, campaigns really do matter.

But in an election where a party’s leadership is not the driving force behind a voter’s decision — or even worse for the NDP, Selinger’s unpopularity drives away his own followers — there is a very real danger that many decide not to show up at the polls.