Can the NDP win Spruce Woods?

Opinion

On the face of it, it seems preposterous.

Wab Kinew and Manitoba’s New Democrats are making a serious effort to win Spruce Woods, a longtime Progressive Conservative (PC) seat in true-blue southwestern Manitoba.

Prior to calling the byelection — which will take place on Aug. 26 — Kinew and members of the NDP cabinet spent several weeks showering this area with money and attention.

Normally, these efforts would seem guaranteed to be in vain. Rural Manitoba is supposed to be the land where it’s said a yellow dog can get elected as a provincial Tory. No matter how poorly the PCs perform, they should be able to count on their floor of 15-20 rural seats. Right?

Maybe not. After winning the supposedly safe seat of Tuxedo last year, Kinew and the NDP are focused on broadening their reach outside the Perimeter and into rural Manitoba, going after these supposedly safe PC seats as Kinew basks in a sustained high level of popularity.

And while not every seat in rural Manitoba will be at risk, there are some unique things about this Spruce Woods seat that potentially make it a real contest.

What to know about Spruce Woods

Compared to most rural PC-held seats, Spruce Woods is unique because it is a mix of both urban and rural. To better understand the area, it helps to think about it as four similar-sized pieces:

• About 20 per cent of the constituency’s population lives within Brandon’s city limits, on the North Hill. This area includes a mix of relatively new and affluent homes and developments on the west side of the North Hill, a slightly older, middle class neighbourhood at the foot of the North Hill near First Street and some co-op and lower-income housing further up the hill.

• About a quarter of its residents live in Brandon’s exurban fringe, in the RMs of Cornwallis, Elton and Whitehead. These are the smaller Westman versions of St. Andrews, Birds Hill or Headingley. These folks live on acreages or developments within a 20-minute drive of Brandon, which many of them commute to and from daily. It’s technically, but not truly rural. This area also includes Canadian Forces Base (CFB) Shilo.

• East of Highway 10 and south of Brandon, the constituency stretches along Highway 2 along the south bank of the Assiniboine River. Much of this area is a sandy stretch of farmland and small towns — Wawanesa, Glenboro, Cypress River and Holland — that are flanked by the Assiniboine River to the north and the Tiger Hills to the south. There are also several Hutterite colonies dotting this part of the constituency, which is important to know, especially after Kinew visited one of these unique communities recently.

• West of Highway 10, Souris is the largest rural town in the constituency with Oak Lake and Rivers also being among the major population centres. This area accounts for about a third of the constituency’s population — and is the key to the PCs keeping this seat in their column.

The topline reading of this seat suggests there is no way the NDP should even come close to winning this seat. Since it took on its current boundaries, the incumbent PC MLA — first Cliff Cullen, then Grant Jackson — has won at least 60 per cent of the vote. In most elections, the NDP candidate has just been a name on a ballot.

In 2023, the party’s best result in more than a decade, NDP candidate Melissa Ghidoni collected 23.8 per cent of the vote — more than 3,000 votes behind Jackson (who earned 61.3 per cent of the vote). Ghidoni’s campaign, such as it was, also only reported $168 in campaign expenses, which shows how little effort the NDP put into competing.

So against that backdrop, how could the NDP at least come close — or even win? The big overarching factor, of course, is the current weakness of the PC party.

In Probe Research’s last quarterly poll, conducted in June, PC support slipped down to 41 per cent among decided and leaning voters outside Winnipeg — 15 points lower than what the party achieved in the 2023 election — while the NDP now sit at an astonishing 50 per cent (up from 36 per cent on election night).

A 14- to 15-point swing won’t erase a 30-point PC win in Spruce Woods in the last election, but it’s enough movement to make the stakes interesting in this byelection.

How Kinew and the NDP can actually win

For this to happen, everything would have to break perfectly for Kinew and his party. With an actual local candidate in Ray Berthelette, a strong campaign and — for perhaps the first time ever — a true effort to win, this is what it would take to turn Spruce Woods orange.

1. First and foremost, the party needs to win decisively in the portion of the riding within Brandon’s city limits. These were the NDP’s strongest polls in the last general election — it cracked 30 per cent in voter support within the city (compared to 51 per cent for the PCs). Back in the Gary Doer NDP era, this area was part of Brandon East, so some longtime voters will have some muscle memory when it comes to voting for a New Democrat. Turnout also tends to be slightly lower within Brandon than in rural parts of the riding, so if the NDP can identify and turn out urban voters in this byelection, it will do the most to put them in a competitive position.

2. Next, the NDP needs to win — or at least be neck-and-neck — with the PCs in the exurban fringe around Brandon. Those who live in this area will be more conservative than the typical NDP voter — and likely more focused on pocketbook issues, like energy costs or gas prices — but many could be open to voting for Kinew and his party if they believe the candidate and the party gets their concerns.

3. The NDP needs to consolidate the non-PC vote throughout the constituency, especially in Brandon and the eastern portions. In 2023, the NDP performed especially poorly in Wawanesa, Glenboro, Cypress River and Holland — and the Manitoba Liberals, despite also having little in the way of a campaign — came close to winning more votes than the NDP in this area. The NDP campaign needs to convince past Liberal voters not to bother with this third party (which currently does not have a permanent leader and is polling at a measly three per cent outside the Perimeter) and pick the orange team instead.

4. Finally — and almost as importantly — the NDP need a lot of regular PC voters to stay home, especially in places like Souris (which is where the PC candidate, Colleen Robbins, hails from, as did Grant Jackson before her). Souris and the smaller towns and villages in the western portion of the riding are true yellow-dog territory, as voters there not only tilt strongly to the Tories, but also tend to turn out in higher numbers than in other communities.

Whether the NDP can pick up support among those living in Hutterite colonies is also a key question. Just before the byelection was called, Kinew visited Green Acres Colony near Wawanesa — the first time a sitting premier has apparently visited that community — and posted extensively about it on social media.

Hutterite colonies have often played a key role in Tory nomination and leadership races as candidates have signed up community members en masse, and the assumption has been that those Hutterites who do vote in provincial elections gravitate to the PCs. (Elections Manitoba typically doesn’t report results from colonies separately). If Kinew’s efforts at outreach either swing former PC voters to the NDP camp — or attract new Hutterite voters to the ballot box — it could help the NDP make gains.

The most likely outcome on Aug. 26 is that the NDP will narrow the gap considerably, but fall short of flipping Spruce Woods. But while the odds are long, turning a part of yellow-dog country orange is certainly a possibility.

And if that happens, expect a whole lot of soul-searching and concern among Manitoba Tories.

» Curtis Brown is a former editorial page editor with The Brandon Sun who grew up in Glenboro. He is currently a partner at Probe Research Inc. in Winnipeg.