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Voters support the parties leading the way

Weyburn Review editorial

The 2020 general election for Saskatchewan began with the question, from Premier Scott Moe, “Who do you trust?”

There was more to that question, of course, namely who voters trust to lead the province through this worldwide crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The impact of the pandemic hits every aspect of life for every man, woman and child, and it’s worldwide in scope — a singular reality that has hit every part of the economy and of every service provided by municipal, provincial and federal levels of government.

Likely the premier would have wanted an election on the issues, but with every issue tainted by the coronavirus, this became the central issue that needed dealing with by the various political parties.

In the end, the Saskatchewan Party was handed a very strong majority win with 50 seats in the Legislature, and the NDP won 11, with some races somewhat in question with mail-in ballots yet to be counted.

If the results are viewed through the lens of the ballot question, clearly the issue of trust was put to rest with a rather large majority of votes cast, about 63 per cent of the popular vote, making the unequivocal statement of support.

Whatever the NDP put forward in their platform, not to mention that of the fledgling Buffalo Party, the Greens and the PCs, were not enough to catch the attention of a population whose sole attention is living their lives in a time of pandemic, working (or finding work) and going to school. Anything else just wasn’t that important.

Another factor in regard to the NDP’s campaign is that they focussed much of their provincial campaign on the urban areas, particularly the seat-rich centres of Regina and Saskatoon. The lack of any presence in rural ridings by the leader, Ryan Meili, could be seen by the voters outside of those cities as meaning they don’t care very much about rural residents.

The rural areas are a stronghold for the ruling Saskatchewan Party, and the rural voters showed their response at the ballot box with an overwhelming majority.

The basic lesson would seem to be, do not ignore rural residents. They don’t have the numbers of a city, obviously, but taken altogether they showed they can flex their muscles collectively and return the government to another term.

The results were repeated in the two other provincial elections held before Saskatchewan’s, where the incumbent parties were returned by their electorate.

One message that could be garnered out of these votes is that people are more worried about the pandemic that never seems to end, more so than the usual political issues that come up, and voters are more likely to trust the ones who have already been putting forth their best efforts to guide us through uncertain times.