Byelection result shows Tories there’s still a chance By: Editorial Posted: 7:00 PM CST Thursday, Dec. 15, 2022

Opinion

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This article was published 14/12/2022 (741 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For better or worse, following a nail-biting, 160-vote win in the Kirkfield Park byelection, Premier Heather Stefanson and her Progressive Conservative government now have a path forward to the October 2023 general election, and a strategy they could exploit to help them stay in power.

Having new Tory MLA-elect Kevin Klein capture Kirkfield Park, by any margin, is a noteworthy success for the Tories. Losing it would have undoubtedly kicked off a range of negative scenarios, including a possible leadership review, instigated either internally among party opinion leaders or externally through a campaign to unseat the current premier.

But even if the victory was less than emphatic, the Tories still won the byelection despite huge challenges from both the NDP and Liberals. It’s a win that allows Ms. Stefanson to start focusing on the main issue at hand: pulling her government back from the brink of what appears to be almost certain disaster next fall.

To that end, this week’s byelection shows the Tories how they might pull off that trick.

Despite holding Kirkfield Park, and Fort Whyte earlier this year, PC support in supposedly safe ridings has declined. In fact, the only reason the Tories prevailed in both byelections is the splitting of votes between the NDP and Liberals. That’s what should give the Tories some hope going forward.

Opinion polls have shown the NDP is, in this non-election period, the most popular party, with the Tories in second place and the Liberals languishing well behind in third. If the election were held today — words that are used to qualify poll numbers but which don’t really mean anything — it is expected the NDP would win a majority, particularly given its dominance among Winnipeg voters.

Having come a very close second in Kirkfield Park — Mr. Klein won by only 120 votes — what might be the NDP’s glass-half-full interpretation of the results?

New Democrats are fully aware they can win the next election without Fort Whyte and Kirkfield Park. There are many seats up for grabs in the north and south regions of the city, where the NDP has deeper roots and a more recent history of success.

The path to victory for the NDP will have to go through such Tory-held ridings as McPhillips, Radisson, Fort Richmond, Riel, Seine River, Southdale, Rossmere and Kildonan-River East. Outside Winnipeg, there’s also Dauphin, Swan River, Interlake-Gimli and possibly one of the two seats in Brandon.

However, what recent byelections have shown is that the Liberals, even as they seem unable to break free of their third-place status, are in a position to absorb the support of anti-PC voters who have lingering concerns about the NDP.

PC candidates will no doubt be hammering away at the record of the former NDP government. New Democrats have only been out of power for six years, and many voters will still remember the messy, directionless government provided by former premier Greg Selinger. Notwithstanding current positive poll numbers, it is unclear whether enough Manitoba voters will be willing to let the NDP and its current leader, Wab Kinew, out of political purgatory.

If the Liberals become a default parking lot for voters who cannot support either the Tories or the NDP, the current poll results will be rendered meaningless.

Ms. Stefanson and her government have one more budget, and one more summer of constituency work, left in which to pull victory from the jaws of defeat. The PCs’ remaining hope lies in the knowledge Manitobans are still a long way away from deciding who should form the next government.