Guest Blog: Ridings to watch

Patrick Webber, a self-described political junkie, managing director of the Green Party of Nova Scotia, and friend of mine, has written a guest blog for Tangents.  Enjoy his tour through some of the ridings he thinks will be worth paying attention to tonight as the polls close and the results get tallied.

Let me begin by saying that I am a confessed election junkie, and I seek a fix almost wherever I can. The Nova Scotia election on June 9, 2009 will feed my habit quite nicely, and the night promises to offer many macro and micro surprises. When the campaign began, it looked likely that only a handful of seats would switch, and that an NDP minority government would be elected by a slim margin. In the last five weeks, however, the dynamics of this campaign have shifted immensely. The trajectory of conventional wisdom about what the election result will be has been as such:

· A PC-NDP battle for a minority government.

· A likely NDP minority government with an outside chance of a Liberal minority government (at least according to Ralph Surette’s column in the May 23, 2009 issue of The Chronicle Herald).

· An almost certain NDP minority government with an outside chance of a slim majority.

· An almost certain NDP slim majority.

· The NDP will win a majority government and the only question is by how much and how much carnage will be wrought by the orange tidal wave.

Obviously there is always the potential that the polls are wrong, that some Nova Scotian answer to Truman VS. Dewey is in the waiting, but it seems increasingly unlikely. I think it is safe to say that Nova Scotians will wake up on the morning of June 10 (some with colossal hangovers) to an NDP government. Apart from the historic quality of this likely election outcome, there will be many ridings worth watching that will determine some fundamental questions. How big will an NDP win be, and where will it be won? How much damage will the Tories suffer? Can the Liberals pull out of third place and expand beyond their Annapolis Valley redoubt? Who will win the epic battle for Official Opposition? Here are a few ridings that I’ll be watching with particular interest on election night.

• Cumberland North: This riding will be decided by two features, one purely local and the other pan-Nova Scotian. The local feature is the Fage Factor, the degree to which former PC MLA and current Independent Ernie Fage can hold on to support. The pan-Nova Scotian feature will be the degree to which the NDP has made inroads into otherwise solid Tory blue areas. A drive through Amherst, the primary town in the riding, just over three weeks ago revealed an almost equal sign presence between PC candidate Keith Hunter, the NDP’s Brian Skabar and Fage. Cumberland North offers a perfect example to gauge how voters in a riding cast their ballots: do they stick with the name they know, regardless of party label (or even having a party label), do they stick with their PC habits, regardless of the name on the ballot, or will they join in a larger provincial trend? The other big point of interest here, if the NDP win, will be whether the NDP run up the middle between a combined PC and Fage vote that is larger but split, or whether the Tory collapse is sufficient enough to allow the NDP to win more votes than the PCs and Fage united.
• Halifax Clayton Park: My home riding should offer one of the great nail-biters of the evening. The riding features a rematch of the 2006 contest between Liberal incumbent Diana Whalen, who has held the riding since 2003, and Linda Power of the NDP. Whalen, regarded as one of the bright lights of the Liberal caucus, held a steady share of the vote in 2006 despite the notable province-wide Liberal decline in vote share (37.2 % in 2006 vs. 38.4 % in 2003). Linda Power, meanwhile, took the NDP from third place and 26.7 % in 2003 to 33.5 % in 2006, knocking the Tories down to third place. Therefore, Whalen has demonstrated that she has local support that resists declining Liberal fortunes while Power has demonstrated the ability to significantly increase the NDP vote. Thus, the battle for Halifax Clayton Park will determine if Whalen’s stable local popularity will win or lose in the face of Power’s growth potential. With the NDP supposedly polling in the 50%-plus range in metro, the result should be very, very close. It is interesting to note the campaign messages of each too. Whalen’s leaflets, of which I’ve received two, emphasize her accomplishments as a local MLA, with very little mention of the Liberal brand. They actually look more likely quarterly MLA updates rather than election material. By contrast Power’s leaflets, of which I received two as well, are hyper-party partisan, with little reference to Power herself but instead a promotion of the NDP’s platform points and an attack on the Liberal record of the 1990s. The NDP obviously know who the real enemy is in the riding, as no mention of the Tories is made in the second leaflet. June 9^th will prove to be a classic battle between the individual merits of an incumbent and the promise of a political brand name.

On a side note, it is interesting to note that for a third election in a row, the three main party candidates in Halifax Clayton Park are all female. Moreover, for a second time in a row, the Green candidate is also female. The sole male candidate in the race will also be an interesting addition to watch in Halifax Clayton Park. He is Jonathan Dean, who is running officially as an Independent but is in reality running for the unregistered Atlantica Party as its leader and only candidate. I was surprised to see a few lawn signs for Dean at some strategic intersections in the riding in the last couple of days, as it would indicate that Dean is making a modest yet determined attempt to raise his profile. It will be interesting to see what degree of support he gets, and possibly indicate what result the Atlantica Party may post in the next election if it were to become registered and run numerous candidates.

• Kings South: This is probably the hardest riding to call in the province. It promises to be a tight-three way race with a relatively strong performance by the Greens. A quick glance at the results here in 2006 may suggest an easy NDP pick-up, as PC incumbent David Morse won by about 700 votes over the NDP. The simultaneous Tory collapse and NDP surge would put the current New Democrat candidate, Ramona Jennex, easily over the top. However, the riding also features two relatively strong anti-Tory contenders in addition to Jennex. Liberal candidate Paula Howatt is, according to my sources in the riding, a highly respected local and a known-name in the riding. The Green Party’s Brendan MacNeill, meanwhile, is running a relatively strong campaign (by Green Party standards) and is also a known entity in the riding, as he was the Green Party candidate in Kings-Hants (of which Kings South is a part) in the 2008 federal election. These two candidates make an easy NDP pickup much harder to guarantee. It is also clear that the NDP and Liberals both smell blood here, as both Darrell Dexter and Stephen McNeil have made repeated stops in the area. Kings South will be the ultimate example of a riding where vote shifts moving all over the place should produce an almost unpredictable race. A PC, NDP or Liberal victory are all valid, and the margin between the victor and third place will probably be among the closest in the province.

At a macro level, Kings South is just the sort of riding that the Liberals must win if they are to secure Official Opposition status. As it is unlikely that the Liberals will topple any NDP incumbents, Liberal gains must come at the expense of the Tories. Ridings that the Liberals must snatch from the Tories to become Official Opposition include Victoria-The Lakes, Hants West and Bedford-Birch Cove. Moreover, Liberal hopes of moving out of third place in Province House depend to a degree upon the success of the NDP outside of Metro. Simply out, the Liberals should pray for a NDP tidal wave, as such a wave will wipe out many Tories in the rural mainland but leave well-entrenched Liberals in the Annapolis Valley secure. Now, why does it matter so much that the Liberals emerge as the Official Opposition on June 10? It matters because this election, I believe, is the last chance for the Liberals to break out of the third party status they’ve held since 1999. In each subsequent election since then the NDP has widened the seat gap between themselves and the Liberals, making the Liberals appear less and less like the government in waiting. If the NDP complete the long march to government on Tuesday and secure the mantle of Tory-slayers, and the Liberals still emerge in third place, a defined PC-NDP dichotomy will be hard to resist as the new political paradigm in Nova Scotia. The Liberals, written off as realistic competitors for government, could soon find themselves in the same state as the Liberals in Manitoba or Saskatchewan, a permanent third-party rump winning 10 to 15 percent of the vote and winning a seat or two. Once the NDP in those two provinces secured the middle ground and established itself as the primary anti-Tory vehicle, the Liberals decline was assured, a decline only slightly mitigated in both provinces by temporary upswings in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Nova Scotia could be on the same path.