Election Eve in Nova Scotia

Where does change happen?

Here’s a snapshot of the Nova Scotia districts after the last election. 55 seats were divided up after the departure of Stephen McNeil, whom I’ve argued here is among Nova Scotia’s most conservative Premiers in modern history, even though he ran as a Liberal.

A couple of things to note.

The extreme rural-urban divide. The counties voted PC, the urban centres voted NDP and the Liberals took the buffers in between.

Since this election two of the Liberal seats flipped to PC as the sitting MLA ‘crossed the floor’ to become a PC.

Going to The Polls

There’s been a lot of poll based talk in the media about tomorrow’s election. It’s important to note that Nova Scotia, like most small provincial polling is done province wide, not by district. Then the number of seats is just apportioned based on the proportions from the last election.

The numbers based on these polls show increases for the PC and NDP. The PC are moving to a historic over-two-third majority win say the polls and the NDP will become the official opposition based on the polling of the popular vote. But in Nova Scotia, the seats aren’t allocated by popular vote. They are won or lost by district.

Win Harder

It’s worth looking at the heat map of past elections to see where there can be very high concentrations of votes in a district but that doesn’t win any more seats… they just win harder in those districts.

In the 2006 election, Darrell Dexter narrowly lost to Rodney MacDonald to become the opposition leader in a province with little interest in the Liberal Party of the day.

And in 2013 the situation was reversed with Stephen McNeil’s Liberals dominating the house but looking at a real patchwork provincial map.

The NDP, still with Darrell Dexter held on to a couple rural seats with the lightest of hands.

What does it mean for tomorrow?

The stakes are low tomorrow. Neither the provincial result or many of the districts are in doubt.

The complexity is understanding how the poll projections of seat shifts can actually play out in the districts.

Could the NDP pick up a seat outside their urban core?

Could any district be so unsatisfied with the PC’s that they could lose a seat?

I don’t see it.

So it all comes down to Liberals losing seats that go either PC or NDP.

That means the four Bay of Fundy shore seats and the suburban seats.

It will be interesting to see what happens.

Whatever the result it will be the beginning of a new start and a time of rebuilding for the provincial Liberals and a time of new hope for the NDP. In each case over the last few elections, they have been reduced to the number of voters who ARE NDP or ARE LIBERAL, meaning they’re people who identify with the party and are going to vote for them regardless of personality or policy. OR will vote AGAINST the PC’s regardless of platform, plans, or progress.

Different Parties - different kinds of voters

I’ve met many of these people on the doorstep and they are very interesting. When asked directly if there are any conditions under which they would change their minds and vote the NDP and Liberal voter just says NO. There is no possible condition they'd change their mind.

Even if Billy Bragg moved to Halifax and ran for the PC’s on a platform of Socialist Workers Unite, they would still not vote PC. The Liberals are slightly more flexible but it often comes down more to their social circle, the people they know, where they went to university, and the groups to which they belong. In both cases though their personal identity is sort of tied up in their political affiliation.

The only thing the hard-core NDP and Liberal voters really have in common is they both think that ANYONE who would EVER vote conservative under any condition is THE WORST AND DUMBEST PERSON IN THE WORLD. Needless to say, this limits thinking, possibilities, and opportunity in a pretty big way.

Maybe it should be obvious because of the paradoxical party name, PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE. It’s really only the current PC voters who are pragmatic or open to vote for any party. They’re the ones who you’ll hear say they “vote for the person not the party.” and they are the ones most often moved by an evolving issue or new idea… rather than the traditional ideological notions of the Liberals and NDP.

Again the math should be obvious… The current PC voters are the very same people who gave Nova Scotia its first NDP government and who supported Stephen McNeil in the early years and through COVID. But they are also the same voters who said no, this is not the government we want, this is not the deal we had, and sent both Dexter and McNeil off to retirement. And eventually, they’ll do the same with this government. PC voters, like the party itself, are the least ideological you are going to meet. They are interested in progress, purpose, and prosperity, more than politics.

We may see some small changes tomorrow but it's all part of a long process that moves Nova Scotia toward a better future for all.

In the last election, the PC’s kind of came out of nowhere with the “Healthcare is the most important issue” idea. They owned that space and won a broad swath of available, “open”, voters.

In this election, all the parties have now jumped on the Health care, Housing, Economy bandwagon. It’s been noted that all the parties could swap platform documents tomorrow and only a very few voters would be able to tell the difference. So this election is not going to be about platforms. It will be about which leader and party, and person running in the district seems best equipped to do the difficult job of continuing to move our massive provincial government in the direction we want to go.