So NDP leader Carla Beck came close, but it doesn't look like she will be Saskatchewan's new premier:
There are some very close seats, and the mail-in ballots still remain to be counted:Latest update from Saskatchewan election website
— 🇨🇦🩸Jennifer vaxxed, masking (opt luvhkng cal) (@Iluvhikingjen) October 29, 2024
44.53% so far
270,000 advance
100,000 election day ? pic.twitter.com/a6mqROe2i7
Some additional comments:Elections SK issued 32K mail ballots. Returned ballots will be counted in the final count on November 9th. pic.twitter.com/O3GGTYmwqA
— Wilbur Turner 🇨🇦🌈 (@queergranddad) October 29, 2024
Also fascinating to think that there is a real possibility of the two largest cities in the province representing the majority of the population in the province will have no voice in cabinet. Wild.
— Charles Smith @profsmithsask.bsky.social (@ProfSmithSask) October 29, 2024
Political scientist Ken Coates was doing commentary on, I think, Global. And he mentioned the significant fact that the NDP seats are mostly all in the cities (Regina, Saskatoon, the north), noting also that this split is happening in many provinces now.The fact that the Sask Party lost Athabasca is 100% the cost of passing the Saskatchewan First Act, which ignored 40 years of SCC rulings on Indigenous land rights and said land use is only up to the province. It went down very badly with FN/Metis.
— Janice Braden 🇺🇦 (@JL_Braden) October 29, 2024
I think this urban-rural divide may create even more of a "two solitudes" division in Canada than did its original 20th Century meaning of a French-English split.
It was in the prairie towns and farms where the Freedum Convoy was born, where the so-called "pronoun policy" was supported, where resentment against government is at its most intense, yet also where health care and education and policing and transportation are precarious, where young people must leave to make a living, where utilities and social services are spread too thin.
The question for the NDP will be, how can they show Saskatchewan voters in those rural areas and towns, and small cities that the NDP can also speak for them.
Close? The CBC's calling it another Moe majority. What was with that Mainstreet poll predicting the NDP would win the popular vote?
ReplyDeletePrairie towns are where publicly funded healthcare, grain co-ops and the CCF, the NDP's forerunner, were born. Farmers aren't against working for the collective good. But they know that bulls don't ever become cows, stallions mares, or roosters chickens. They also know there were no "trans kids" when they went to school. Maybe we progressives need to get out to the country and touch grass now and again.
In New Brunswick, anti trans kids as a political platform didn't fly. It lost a lot of seat for Moe too.
ReplyDeletePeople end up giving a damn about anti-Trans nonsense because nobody is giving them serious policy red meat that will make a difference to their actual lives. Tommy Douglas gave rural Saskatchewan healthcare, electricity, plumbing . . . real stuff that really mattered to how well people live their lives.
ReplyDeleteIf the NDP wants rural votes it's going to have to look seriously about just what the problems are in rural life and solve them. Guaranteed grain prices, rural internet, family doctors in every town, I dunno . . . go find out where the pain points are and then make policies to fix them with direct government action, which is what the Conservatives ideologically can never do. And then sell those policies relentlessly.
If the NDP were in a position to say "I'm going to keep you out of debt, while my opponent is running on stopping a few kids from playing sports--which one makes a damn bit of difference to you?" they might take some votes, and deserve to.