It’s still unclear whether PC Leader Blaine Higgs will win a third term as Premier on Oct. 21 or be ousted by Liberal Leader Susan Holt.Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press
Victory in next week’s New Brunswick election will likely hinge on a handful of city ridings, according to political observers – especially in Saint John, where the Progressive Conservative Leader lost several prominent caucus members after his polarizing changes to rules around gender identity in the classroom.
More than halfway through what is shaping up to be a tight race, with voters focused on cost of living and health care issues, it’s still unclear whether PC Leader Blaine Higgs will win a third term as Premier on Oct. 21 or be ousted by Liberal Leader Susan Holt.
It will depend on how turned off voters are by Mr. Higgs’s “un-Maritimey” foray into a more divisive style of politics, said St. Thomas University political scientist Jamie Gillies, referring to his revision last year of policy 713, which prevents youth under 16 from choosing their own pronouns without parental consent. The PC Leader has doubled down on the change, insisting that it is an issue of parental rights – even while the Canadian Civil Liberties Association launched a lawsuit calling it unconstitutional and harmful to children.
Mr. Higgs’s persistence has led to a deep split within his own party, as demonstrated by an exodus of 12 members of caucus; an unsuccessful coup for a change in leadership; several former PCs endorsing or running as Liberal candidates; and the repositioning of the party on the far right. In doing so, the PC campaign underestimated what Dr. Gillies calls “the politics of ick,” as “it feels a little American, Alberta phoned-in style of politics and it doesn’t ring true.”
The political scientist described in an interview how Mr. Higgs’s populist approach may be growing in other parts of the country, but isn’t as palatable in Atlantic Canada, where all four provinces are dependent on transfer payments from Ottawa and many people work for the provincial and federal governments.
“It’s sort of an outrage style that doesn’t fit with where the median voter in New Brunswick is, and that stuff may cost him in places like Moncton and Saint John and Fredericton, especially because I think this election comes down to whether the Tories can hold those ridings in those three cities.”
Also at play is New Brunswick’s language divide, reflected by an invisible line that runs through the province from Edmundston at the northwest tip all the way diagonally to Sackville in the northeast, says Mario Levesque, a political science professor at Mount Allison University. Below the line skews PC, in mostly anglophone ridings; above the line is typically Liberal, in French-speaking communities where there is deep resentment for Mr. Higgs, who is seen as anti-francophone and anti-bilingual – so much so that PCs were unable at the start of the election to find candidates in five of 17 francophone ridings.
The cities, however, are deviations, with Moncton usually split between the Liberals and PCs, and Fredericton parcelled between green, blue and red. In and around Saint John, five of Mr. Higgs’s most progressive former cabinet ministers – four of whom quit their posts earlier this year – are not running again, leaving a wide open field with all of those seats up for grabs. In recent history, two of those ridings have been close, flipping between red and blue.
“The people of Saint John don’t know how much power they have in them right now. They’re the ones that will likely hold the balance of whether it will be a red or blue government,” Dr. Levesque said in an interview.
There are, however, a few wild cards hanging in the balance that could lead to surprises. Affordability and health care are the defining issues, with the PCs pledging to cut taxes, and the Liberals committing to hire more doctors. But local concerns, such as in the town of Sussex, where people are most concerned about whether their emergency room stays open, will likely factor into the outcome in a number of ridings, Dr. Gillies said.
The newcomer vote is another unpredictable factor: More than 11,000 immigrants have moved to New Brunswick since Mr. Higgs was last elected in 2020. And they are people who mostly live in the three main cities and have no ties to old allegiances or the francophone or English communities, Dr. Levesque said.
“They’re brand new here. So what will appeal to them? What’s their party of choice in this process?,” he said. “A few hundreds thrown one way versus another can really swing one riding.”
Yet another wild card that could influence the outcome is just how much the country’s growing ennui of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will negatively impact Ms. Holt, his Liberal provincial counterpart. For Dr. Levesque, the contest between Mr. Higgs and Ms. Holt is reminiscent of the 2015 federal campaign when Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper, in power for roughly nine years, was running against Mr. Trudeau.
“He was kind of like doom and gloom and a dark cloud over him, and along comes Justin Trudeau, doot-da-doo and his sunny ways,” he said, adding that, “right now, we’re seeing that same thing playing out provincially here.”
But as much as Ms. Holt is leaning into a message of hope, like Mr. Trudeau did nine years ago, the one challenge for the New Brunswick Liberals is that the PCs are trying to tie her to the 2024 image of the Prime Minister, Dr. Levesque said.
“How much traction that gets with the people will matter a lot. Because if Higgs is successful in that, they’ll likely form the next government.”