Political reality driving agenda of Stefanson PCs

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/12/2021 (1098 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

This is not what I expected. A few weeks ago, I anticipated we would be hearing loud, angry calls for the Stefanson government to resign by Christmas.

I thought we would be seeing billboards and lawn signs, hearing radio ads and seeing television and social media ads, all telling Premier Heather Stefanson to stop pretending to listen to Manitobans, start actually listening, and call an election.

After the government’s fumbling of the pandemic response, bumbling of education reform and stumbling out of the gate after a flawed leadership contest, I thought there would be plenty of rumbling and grumbling for change.

I thought the campaign message would be something like “Together with Heather — Out the Door,” “Times Up, Tories,” or maybe “Hey Heather! Can you hear us now?!”

I was wrong, and I think I know why: there are apparently a lot of Manitobans who are content with the performance of our government, and would vote for them again if an election were held today.

That’s the surprising takeaway from the latest Probe Research poll into Manitobans’ voting preferences, released a few days ago.

The poll found that support for the Progressive Conservatives has remained at basically the same level throughout the pandemic and, if anything, is actually hardening in its level of commitment. According to the poll’s data, a growing number of Tory supporters are even more determined to vote to re-elect the current government.

If you spend your day scrolling through Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and Instagram, like I do, or reading the pages of newspapers across the province, like I also do, that’s probably a shocker. But those are the numbers from four of the past five quarterly Probe polls, going back to September of last year.

Over the past 15 months, support for the Tories has remained locked at roughly 28 per cent inside Winnipeg, and at more than 50 per cent in the rest of Manitoba outside the Perimeter.

If you subtract the NDP’s huge support in the northern half of the province, it means the Stefanson government continues to hold on to — has a death grip on — massive levels of support in the rural south, where its base is located.

It means that thousands upon thousands of our fellow Manitobans would vote for PC candidates no matter what — no matter how many people have died in personal care homes, no matter how many are suffering while stuck on wait lists for surgery, diagnostics and therapies, no matter how tolerant the government is of people who refuse to obey public health orders.

Let’s pause for some perspective. The NDP continues to hold a commanding lead in the metro Winnipeg area. If an election were held today, they would likely win as many as 28 of the 32 seats available.

Add the four seats in the north and Team Kinew would form a majority government with 32 of 57 seats in the Manitoba Legislative Assembly. They might even reach 35 MLAs if they steal three seats from the Tories in the south.

That’s impressive, but it’s a much smaller NDP majority than most Manitobans are likely expecting. It could still leave Team Stefanson (assuming she doesn’t resign as leader) with more than 20 MLAs with which to rebuild.

That’s far from the obliteration many Winnipeggers think the Tories deserve, and the government has almost two years to improve its numbers before the next election.

Viewed from that perspective, the decisions (and non-decisions) the government is making these days make sense.

The rural Manitobans who consistently elect a large portion of the Tory caucus — the same people who donate the bulk of the money to fund the party’s election campaigns — are clearly happy with the way the government is responding to the pandemic.

The government is not going to risk alienating those supporters right now by changing its policies to pander to Winnipeggers who have no intention of voting for Tory candidates anyway. Doing so would only result in fewer donations and put more PC seats at risk.

That may be bad public policy, but it’s the political reality for a government fighting for its political life. We shouldn’t expect it to change.

Deveryn Ross is a political commentator living in Brandon

Twitter: @deverynross

deverynrossletters@gmail.com

Twitter: @deverynross