Not a lot to write here as pretty uneventful. PCs started with a decent but somewhat smaller lead than in 2016 and have more or less maintained that. Its basically been stay the course and it looks like unless polls are massively wrong, Brian Pallister will be re-elected with another PC majority albeit probably slightly smaller.
If I lived in Manitoba I would vote for the Manitoba PCs. Brian Pallister has been a steady hand and hasn’t done anything great or grandiose, but has shown competent administration for the most part. Unlike Kenney or Ford who get a lot of attention on big changes, his government has been a steady hand and that is the type of politics we need more of. Liberals have no chance at winning and the NDP’s plans involve too much big spending as well as Wab Kinew has somewhat of checkered past, although I believe he has changed and this shouldn’t be held too harshly against them. The NDP still needs time to rebuild from their defeat in 2016 so while I would never support the NDP, they may very well be ready to form government next time around, but they aren’t there yet. Hopefully a re-elected PC government will balance the budget this term, reduce taxes, and be able to use the small surplus to spend on important priorities.
Once the writ drops, I will try to blog every few days on the federal election and the issues of the day. I am out of the country for much of the final ten days, but will be back before e-day so will give an update in the final few days. I leave again to go overseas right after so will post the next day on the results but if a nail biter like BC or New Brunswick, might have to wait until it get back in November before giving a full run down, but if one side clearly wins then will be able to post on it then.
UPDATE: PCs win another majority. They lose a few marginal seats as expected but still win by a sizeable margin and hold most key swing seats. Also looks like they will get almost half the popular vote; so from an all time high of 53%, it would be expected they would lose some votes, but losses pretty minor. In many ways, the PC majority in 2016 was a lot like the BC Liberal majority in 2001, but unlike BC Liberals’ re-election in 2005, they only suffered minor losses while BC Liberals suffered major. NDP clearly established themselves as the left wing alternative, but still have a lot of work to do.
As for what this means federally, good news for Conservatives, but still I think the federal Tories will have a challenge topping the PC vote, but will probably get within 5%. Says little about Liberal prospects, but if the Liberals wish to hold their 7 seats, uniting progressives won’t be sufficient; they will need to either get some PC voters to crossover or have a much higher turnout and get many who didn’t show up to show up and vote Liberal. It looks like the pollsters underestimated PC vote so if this happens federally good news for Scheer, although still waiting for final tallies to comment on this.
afiscalconservativepointofview 