Re-elected Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe speaks to media, following his party winning a majority government in the provincial election, at the hockey rink in Shellbrook, Sask., on Oct. 29.Liam Richards/The Canadian Press
Saskatchewan’s election this week, where Premier Scott Moe returned to power with a diminished majority government, has revealed a province starkly divided between his base in rural communities and urban centres that voted overwhelmingly in favour of the Opposition New Democrats.
By Tuesday’s tally of the vote, Mr. Moe’s Saskatchewan Party was leading or had won 35 of the 61 seats in the legislature – down by at least 13 from the 2020 election – compared with NDP Leader Carla Beck’s party, with 26 seats. Several ridings were too close to call, and mail-in ballots were not scheduled to be counted until Wednesday.
Mr. Moe, speaking in the early morning hours of Tuesday from his hometown of Shellbrook, Sask., directly addressed residents who voted for his opponents, apparently doubling the NDP’s 2020 seat count.
“Recent history has not been kind to incumbent governments,” he told the crowd gathered at a local ice rink, his wife, Krista Moe, nodding next to him. Describing Monday’s election as much closer than previous years, he added: “We will strive to earn back your support.”
Meanwhile, in Regina, the capital, Ms. Beck exalted her party’s surge in seats: “Friends, we came so close,” she said in her concession speech. “We gave people reason to hope again. And that’s not nothing.”
In urban boroughs, voters favoured the newly strengthened NDP, which won all of Regina and almost all of Saskatoon, the province’s largest city, with 12 out of 14 seats. By contrast, the bulk of the victories for Mr. Moe’s conservative-learning Sask Party relied on its stronghold in rural areas.
In power since 2007, the governing party is receiving its fifth mandate at a “big cost,” said Tom McIntosh, a political scientist at the University of Regina.
In an interview Tuesday, he explained that the Sask Party’s shift further toward right-wing politics – with its focus on issues such as banning what Mr. Moe described as “biological boys” from using school changing rooms with “biological girls” – allowed the NDP to gain ground in urban areas.
The terms “biological boys” and “biological girls” reflect assigned sex at birth and do not account for the non-physical attributes that determine gender.
Prof. McIntosh believes the choice now belongs to Mr. Moe on whether to double down on his rural strengths or bridge the divide as was done by his predecessor Brad Wall, who was premier with the Sask Party for a whopping four terms before his retirement in 2018. It’s too soon to know which tack the twice-elected Premier will take, the professor said, suggesting it could depend on how angry his party is about the losses it suffered this week.
Still, with nearly half of the seats at the legislature belonging to communities outside of urban centres, Mr. Moe could govern the province strictly through its rural base for years to come.
Over the next four years, the NDP’s challenge will be to raise its profile in those rural areas, Prof. McIntosh said: “That’s going to take time.”
But in Mr. Moe’s home riding of Shellbrook, residents say the NDP had already begun to hoist its orange flag for the next election.
After years of teetering on the edge of oblivion in the Rosthern-Shellbrook riding, which has voted for the Sask Party since its inception in 2002, Jordan Twiss, co-publisher of the community’s weekly newspaper, said the NDP has now been gaining momentum in the area. (The Sask Party led the seat with 5,083 reported votes, but the NDP garnered at least 1,741 constituents – much higher than the last two elections.)
“We haven’t seen a stronger push from them in at least the last decade or so. You can really tell that rural areas like ours are becoming a priority for the NDP,” Mr. Twiss of the Shellbrook Chronicle said.
“Previously, we were hard pressed to even get an interview for the paper. This time, they were coming right on our doorsteps, wanting to get out their message.”
Linda Tait, 62, and her friend Frieda Tatler, 65, said they were both undecided Shellbrook voters until election night.
“And we’re not the only ones,” Ms. Tatler added, just after their haircuts at a local salon. “There’s many others in our girls’ group of seniors.”
In the end, Ms. Tait felt compelled to vote for Mr. Moe, “the hometown hero,” she said.
“But do I know how how I’ll go next time? I’m not really sure. The NDP folks seem like a real alternative these days.”