Wednesday, October 20, 2010

NDP By-Election Spin

By the Leader Post's own Murray Mandryk

"A week away from Saskatchewan's final pre-election throne speech, and a year away from a general election, politics in this province is now all about momentum.

That said, one should refrain from assuming too much after Monday night.

Notwithstanding that newly elected Saskatchewan Party MLA and Saskatoon city councillor Gordon Wyant increased his party's popular vote in the Saskatoon Northwest byelection (to 59 per cent from the 54 per cent former Sask. Party MLA Serge LeClerc garnered in this riding in 2007), some perspective is required.

Wyant was a "name" candidate, while NDP hopeful Jan Dyky (who also increased her party's popular vote to 33 per cent from 30 per cent) was not. Added to this equation is the fact that Saskatoon Northwest is a seat the NDP hasn't won in 15 years. There should be better barometers of the electoral mood in the coming year."

We were wondering how Dwain was going to spin Dyky's loss. Looks as though Mandryk was more than happy to help out.

2 comments:

oxygentax said...

So basically what Murray is saying is that the NDP should have recruited a "name" candidate in this riding too?

Does that mean that Dwain is a bad manager for letting this no-name candidate run against a "star"? Does this mean that Dwain can't attract star candidates to run? Maybe it means that Dwain is lazy for not doing enough to help his candidate when it was the only campaign being run.

Long story short is that the NDP lost a by-election they weren't supposed to win. It being a by-election, percentage of votes really means nothing given that normal GOTV functions for all parties aren't operating. All this result can really mean is that in this riding, the SK party is still as popular as they were 3 years ago.

Trent said...

What stuck me about the percentages in the by-election is how similar they are to the poll taken back in April. (The poll is on Nodice.ca, I'm on my Blackberry, otherwise I'd post a link)

Oxygentax, email me: catahoula@telus.blackberry.net