As polling stations opened Monday morning, the eventual result of the Saskatchewan election was never really in doubt. All indications were the Saskatchewan Party would form a majority government; the only question was how big the win would be.
The answer ended up being about as big as it gets. With 61 seats up for grab, three more than in 2011, the Saskatchewan Party gained two for a total of 51 and the NDP grabbed one more to finish with 10.
The biggest news of the night, perhaps, was Cam Broten, leader of the NDP, losing his own seat in Saskatoon Westview. That race was a nail-biter all night long, but in the end the Sask Party’s David Buckingham edged Broten out by just 232 votes.
Unlike Broten, Brad Wall, whose personal popularity may be greater even than that of his party, had a cakewalk in his riding of Swift Current where he crushed the NDP Green and Liberal challengers with 82 per cent of the vote.
None of the other four leaders of the six total registered parties were ever even in contention in their local races. Darrin Lamoureux (Liberal), Richard Swenson (Progressive Conservative) and Victor Lau (Green) were all distant thirds with only 958, 686 and 387 votes respectively. Western Independence Party leader David Sawkiw was last in Canora-Pelly, one of the only constituencies with a full slate of six candidates. He picked up just 51 votes.
In Yorkton, Sask Party incumbent Greg Ottenbreit was never in doubt as poll after poll reported with big margins on the way to a 4,707 to 1,454 win over the NDP’s Greg Olson.
With polls going into voting showing the Sask Party with an insurmountable lead, the media was left searching for compelling narratives, but the electorate did not oblige.
Finance Minister Bill Boyd, for example, was supposed to be in tough against former Sask Party MLA Jason Dearborn in the Kindersley riding based the minister’s involvement in scandals surrounding the Global Transportation Hub (GTH) land deal, huge travel expense claims and exploding Smart Meters. A popular uprising for Dearborn, who ran as an independent, never materialized, however. He came in a distant second with 18 per cent of the vote to Boyd’s 68 per cent.
Locally, all of the surrounding ridings went Sask Party green in a big way. Terry Dennis won Canora-Pelly with 68 per cent of the vote. Kevin Phillips took Kelvington-Wadena with 70 per cent. It was 62 per cent for Glen Hart in Last Mountain-Touchwood. Warren Kaeding rounded out the sweep with 72 per cent in Melville-Saltcoats.
All three of the newly-created constituencies went to the Sask Party. In Regina-Pasqua it was a close race between Muhammad Fiaz and Heather McIntyre with Fiaz prevailing by 275 votes.
Neither of the Saskatoon ridings was close. Paul Merriman, who represented the former riding of Saskatoon-Sutherland in the legislature won in Saskatoon Silverspring-Sutherland while Bronwyn Eyre, a public school trustee, took Saskatoon Stonebridge-Dakota.
Across the province voter turnout was an abysmal 57 per cent, eight per cent less than the previous record of 65 per cent set in 1995.
Meanwhile, results of the Student Vote—a parallel mock election in which elementary and high school kids cast ballots last week—were also reported Monday. They mimicked fairly closely the actual results with the Sask Party winning 48 seats to the NDP’s 13.
In Yorkton, Ottenbreit took 77 per cent of the student vote, but provincially the Sask Party only got 53 per cent compared to 62.5 from the actual electorate.
Students were much kinder to the Liberals and Greens giving those parties each 11 per cent compared to 3.6 and 1.8 per cent respectively from actual voters. Those gains did not just come from the Sask Party, but also from the NDP, who only garnered 23 per cent of the student vote compared to 30 per cent in the real election.
