Daniel Westlake, an assistant professor in the Faculty of Political Studies at the University of Saskatchewan, says he’s a little nervous about drawing conclusions right now because he doesn’t know exactly how many ballots were cast. Postal items are pending.

“I wonder if that might affect turnout,” he said.

Fifth victory

Like Sask. The party is poised to take power with its fifth majority victory – a feat not seen since Tommy Douglas’s Saskatchewan CCF (precursor to the Saskatchewan NDP) served from 1944 to 1961. But this victory is not comfortable for the government in place.

“I think both sides have things they can be happy about and things they can be disappointed about,” Westlake said.

“For Saskatchewan. Party, I mean, when you win an election, a victory is a victory and they can govern and I think it’s positive for them and it’s a remarkable journey,” Westlake added, although in the setting custody which involves sending the ballot papers. doesn’t change much.

The political scientist said that although the evening was successful, they were hit in urban areas and lost a number of seats. The results further cemented the urban-rural divide among Saskatchewan voters.

“It looks like at most (the Saskatchewan Party) will get two seats in Saskatoon and Regina and even that depends on what we see with the mail-in ballots,” he said.

The NDP, meanwhile, picked up a number of seats in these urban areas, and at this point it looks like a sweep in Regina and a close in Saskatoon, although there are still some seats up in the air , he declared.

“To compete for government, they had to win outside of Saskatoon and Regina,” he added, noting they don’t appear to have made a big dent in Moose Jaw or Prince Albert.

At the Battlefords, Jeremy Cockrill will take up the mantle of MP and, speaking to the media on Monday evening, he said he was looking forward to getting back to work.

“We have some really exciting things that I think are close to the potential of our community and you know a lot of issues to continue to work on,” he said, referring to health care and education .

Cockrill said the race – currently 1,627 votes ahead – was a reflection of the hard work put into campaigning over the past few months and throughout the week of voting.

“We just had an army of volunteers on the ground and a lot of people – a lot of local people who stepped up and got involved,” he said.

Interesting race

Looking at the polls a week ago, Sask. Party showed a slight lead. Over the weekend, Westlake said polls suggested a better performance for the NDP than the final results concluded.

“It kind of depends on which polls you looked at and I’m kind of curious what the pollsters picked up at the very end of the campaign that didn’t seem to materialize in the election results,” he said. he declared.

As for PA, Westlake said it seemed closer than Moose Jaw and noted that Prince Albert Northcote could become an interesting riding in the coming days. Of the 300 absentee ballots, there is a difference of just over 100 votes. While he’s not sure this will change, he’s not making a concrete assumption that it won’t either.

“This one could depend on mailed ballots, but it could be about to be called if it’s not already called,” he said.

Looking ahead, the political scientist said the new term could go one of two ways for Premier-elect Scott Moe and the party. Compared to Alberta, Saskatchewan. The party caucus comes back as “very rural.”

Courting the urban vote

“With little representation from urban areas and less representation for more moderate voters, it kind of keeps the more right-wing part of this party in check and that could be a Saskatchewan. Party which is clearly moving towards the right,” he said of the first scenario.

The second story could be that the party examines its losses in urban areas and mounts a court campaign to win them back by appeasing “strongly the center.”

“The ball is kind of in Saskatchewan. The party court here and it can go in two different directions depending on whether they look at the situation and decide “OK, we’re going to build on our base” or whether they look at the results in Saskatoon and Regina and decide that they have work to do. TO DO.”

Issues such as food prices and housing affordability will be among the challenges in winning back city dwellers. At the same time, the divide between urban and rural areas seems to persist.

“The reason is Saskatchewan is not unique by any means,” Westlake said, adding the phenomenon has been seen across the West in races in Manitoba and Alberta. This is also happening across North America.

“You see this in the United States, you see this in federal politics and so I’m not surprised to see it’s Saskatchewan. I don’t know if there’s any reason we would be different.

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