Re-elected Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, right, with is wife Krista Moe enter before speaking to media, following his party winning a majority government in the provincial election, in Shellbrook, Sask. on October 29, 2024.Liam Richards/The Canadian Press
Saskatchewan residents have given Scott Moe’s party a fifth-consecutive mandate, but it will enter the provincial legislature with a much slimmer majority than in their previous victories.
While results continued to be tallied until the early morning hours of Tuesday, the gap between Mr. Moe’s Saskatchewan Party and Carla Beck’s New Democrats narrowed significantly over the course of the night. As of 1:30 a.m., the Sask Party had won or was leading 35 seats – a far cry from the 48 it won in the 2020 election, though enough to cross the 31-seat threshold for a majority.
However, the NDP made significant inroads this election and now has a sizeable minority with 26 seats, compared to the 13 it won in the previous election. In Regina, the opposition party held onto all 12 seats in the capital city, while leading or winning 12 out of 14 constituencies in Saskatoon.
That makes this the tightest race for the conservative-leaning Sask Party since 2007, when it was first elected.
In his nearly 12-minute victory speech from his home riding of Shellbrook, Sask., a town of around 1,500 people where he was raised on a farm, Mr. Moe said repeatedly – at least five times – that the message from voters was clear: His party will need to work toward earning their trust.
Saskatchewan NDP Leader Carla Beck told supporters in Regina she’s disappointed after losing to Scott Moe’s Saskatchewan Party, but she’s proud of the gains her party has made and will continue to hold Moe accountable. Premier-designate Scott Moe, speaking in Shellbrook, Sask., says he has heard the message sent by voters that people are unhappy in how the province is delivering health care, education and making life more affordable. He says he will do better.
The Canadian Press
“This was a much closer election than what we have seen in quite some time in this province,” Mr. Moe said, just after two dozen Sask Party supporters, donning its signature green colours, were finally able to breathe a sigh of relief. The premier-designate had spent the evening at a private party held at a Shellbrook ice rink, though members of the media were not allowed to speak with attendees.
“Our team has heard your message,” Mr. Moe said, addressing people in the province who did not vote for him as well as those whose support he lost from the previous election. “We must do better, and we most certainly will.”
“Saskatchewan’s best days are still ahead of us,” he said.
In Regina, Ms. Beck took the stage at her NDP headquarters just after midnight. She said she was disappointed with the overall result but was proud of how far her team had come.
She said many people didn’t believe the NDP had much of a fighting chance at the start of the 27-day campaign. “We have changed the landscape,” she told a roomful of cheering supporters.
“We have awakened hope in this province, and we’re only going to grow it from here.”
With 61 seats available at the provincial legislature, almost half represent voters living outside the bigger city centres. It was this strength in the rural areas that Mr. Moe relied upon to eke out his party’s win.
But just days ahead of election night, numbers from several independent polling agencies showed the NDP had gained enough momentum to possibly hand the Sask Party a surprising upset.
Over the weekend, two different datasets from Mainstreet Research and Liaison Strategies demonstrated a lead for Ms. Beck’s party. Mainstreet found that the NDP had the support of 49 per cent of voters against the Sask Party’s 45 per cent, while Liaison indicated a similar 49 per cent for NDP and 46 per cent for the Sask Party, with the rest of the surveyed residents undecided.
Those polls had added to another set of numbers commissioned by CTV News earlier last week, with the Insightrix Research survey showing the Sask Party at 45 per cent and the NDP ahead with 50 per cent of voters.
(Mainstreet surveyed 820 people from Oct. 22 to 24 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. Liaison surveyed 729 people from Oct. 24 to 25 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.46 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. Insightrix surveyed 802 people from Oct. 18 to 20 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.)
By the end of the night, the NDP had won only 39.5 per cent of the counted 439,771 votes, while the Sask Party held onto 53 per cent.
The province’s electoral office said early voting last week amounted to 273,010, meaning about one-third of Saskatchewan’s 810,816 registered voters had already cast their ballots – much larger than previous years.
Based on Election Saskatchewan’s preliminary vote count, turnout was about 53 per cent of eligible voters.
Both leading parties had largely focused on health care, education, affordability and levels of crime during the campaign, though Mr. Moe also said his first order of business would be to ban what he described as “biological boys” from using school changing rooms with “biological girls.” It was a pledge that added to his many policies about sexual health and gender expression.
The terms “biological boys” and “biological girls” reflect assigned sex at birth and do not account for the non-physical attributes that determine gender.
First introduced last year, Mr. Moe created policies that require students under 16 to receive parental consent to have their gender-affirming names and pronouns used in schools. After a court challenge, he invoked the notwithstanding clause of the Charter to institute that legislation. He characterized the laws as a way to ensure parents are included in their children’s lives, while also placing restrictions on sexual health and gender education.
Human-rights organizations, such as Amnesty International Canada, have condemned the legislation and, under Mr. Moe’s watch, the provincial human-rights commissioner vocally resigned because of it.
Ms. Beck said the NDP believes in repealing those laws. She said Mr. Moe’s bans put vulnerable kids at further risk, and that her party wants the government to deal with more urgent concerns, including the issue of classroom sizes and being able to afford gas and groceries.
Mr. Moe, on the other hand, had said Ms. Beck did not have a plan to grow Saskatchewan’s economy and that the province would find itself entrenched in hospital closings if the NDP were to be elected. A frequent phrase in his campaign harked back to the NDP governments from 1991 to 2007: “Let’s never go back to those days.”
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated, due to an editing error, that Scott Moe has won his fifth-consecutive mandate as Premier. This is the party's fifth-consecutive mandate. This version of the article has been updated.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to include additional detail around Scott Moe’s policies about sexual health and gender expression.