Federal election signs in the Winnipeg riding of Elmwood-Transcona on Sept. 10, 2024.Shannon VanRaes/The Globe and Mail
The federal New Democrats are facing a tougher-than-expected race to win back one of their long-held seats in Winnipeg next week as the Conservative Party is rolling out new tactics to tie NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Elmwood-Transcona has stayed orange all but once since its inception in the 1980s. But three-time NDP MP Daniel Blaikie forced a by-election in the riding when he resigned earlier this year to work for Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew. His exit at a time when the Conservatives are riding high in the polls is raising hopes among some Tories that they can again take the seat, as they did in 2011 when Stephen Harper won his majority government.
The race has turned into what two senior provincial NDP sources characterized as a dogfight. Federally, a senior NDP official acknowledged that Mr. Singh’s party is in a tough race, but the official said it’s also a must-win seat and they believe they got their vote out in the advance polls and have a strong ground game for Monday.
The Globe and Mail is not identifying the individuals, who were not permitted to publicly discuss the campaign.
While a vote in Elmwood-Transcona would have no impact on the governing Liberals, who are not in contention in the race, Conservative campaign tactics are trying to blur any distinction between the Liberals and New Democrats.
Included in the rotation of campaign lawn signs this year is one that features Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Singh shaking hands in a black-and-white picture against an orange backdrop.
“Vote against sellout Singh NDP-Trudeau carbon tax,” reads the sign, which appears on many lawns in the riding.
Over the summer, the Conservatives had increased their attacks on the NDP for their deal to give automatic support to the minority Liberals on confidence matters in the House of Commons, in exchange for policy concessions. With just two days before advance voting started last week in both the Winnipeg by-election, and another in Montreal’s LaSalle-Émard-Verdun riding, the NDP announced they were ending the deal.
The Manitoba seat is important to the New Democrats, in part because it has similar blue-collar demographics as other ridings that the party represents in B.C.’s Lower Mainland and around Hamilton, said Andrew Enns, an executive vice-president with the Leger polling company, based in Winnipeg.
He said that while Mr. Trudeau’s political fortunes are dominating the national discussion, the same trends hurting the Liberals are hurting the NDP. With the Conservatives at 45 per cent nationally in the Leger poll released this week, many of the New Democrats’ 24 seats are at risk across the country.
“A close race now in Elmwood-Transcona will put a bit of an exclamation point on that,” Mr. Enns said.
The riding in the city’s northeastern corner is, in many ways, a microcosm of Winnipeg’s electorate. A short drive from the downtown core, it covers mostly residential communities with a range of income brackets.
Some recently developed areas are filled with large single-family homes, with the latest census data suggesting household incomes hover around $81,000. But on an individual basis, nearly a third of the riding’s population are residents who hold trades and manufacturing jobs, making around $41,000.
On the ground, voters are so split that signs for the NDP and Conservative candidates and those attacking Mr. Singh alternate between lawns and front stoops on a single street.
Maddie Gauthier, 32, is one of the residents sporting a “Sellout Singh” sign. Upset by the high cost of living that she blames on Mr. Trudeau, Ms. Gauthier and her husband, Chris, said their votes are more for Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre than the local candidate.
“I know how much I really don’t like Trudeau. My vote is my way to get Trudeau out and Poilievre in,” she said.
A sizable number of her neighbours agree, including Joshua Friesen, who said he didn’t believe Mr. Singh would be “any better” than Mr. Trudeau.
But Simone-Anne Toews, 37, who is rooting for the NDP, said the signs on her street make her angry. “I genuinely don’t know how to reconcile with the fact that some of my neighbours don’t believe climate change is real and think carbon pricing is a bad thing. I mean, just look at the weather today,” she said, referring to the haze of wildfire smoke filling the city.
Conservative candidate Colin Reynolds didn’t agree to an interview but NDP candidate Leila Dance, a former executive director of the local Transcona Business Improvement Zone, said she is disappointed by the personal attacks on Mr. Singh.
Ms. Dance said she wasn’t at the table when the NDP struck the deal with the Liberals and can’t shed any light on it, but pledged to “keep voting the way I feel.”
Ian MacIntyre, the Liberal standard-bearer in the race, defended Mr. Trudeau and said he was “tired of people blaming everything on him.”
“It’s so easy to say it’s all his fault,” he said, but noted that the government is rolling out policies to respond. “Affordability doesn’t happen overnight,” he said in an interview.
Boosting the NDP’s federal hopes for the riding is the popularity of the NDP Premier, Mr. Kinew. While he was on the ground for Ms. Dance’s Labour Day march, he hasn’t campaigned with her otherwise. Still, his picture and endorsement are on her campaign literature and the federal NDP official said Mr. Kinew has signed off on a voicemail that will be sent out to the riding ahead of Monday’s vote, urging residents to support Ms. Dance.
The federal parties are each allocated a maximum budget for the two by-elections, but while the NDP must divide that budget between the races in Winnipeg and Montreal, the Conservatives are only in contention in the Manitoba race, meaning that they can spend their entire budget on the one campaign.
In a sign of how seriously the party is taking the race, Mr. Poilievre’s long-time aide, and one of his most trusted, Jeremy Liedtke, has been on the ground in Winnipeg helping the local campaign, two federal Conservative sources said.
The Globe is not identifying the individuals because they were not permitted to disclose the internal staffing decisions.