Saskatchewan Party leads by 40, possible Ottawa reverberations

Saskatchewan will be voting on Monday and the polls indicate Brad Wall's Saskatchewan Party will be re-elected. But will the results in the Prairie province have any reverberations in Ottawa?

Though Saskatchewan has only 14 seats in the House of Commons, it could be an important battleground in 2015.

If the next federal election becomes a showdown between the Conservatives and the New Democrats, Saskatchewan will be one of the provinces the NDP will be targeting for gains.

You can read the rest of the article on The Huffington Post website here.

Also out today is a new poll by Praxis Analytics for the Saskatoon StarPhoenix and the Regina Leader-Post.

I won't be doing an update for the Saskatchewan projection today. It will go up on Sunday, and I'll do a final projection on Monday, the day of the vote. But we can look at the poll in the meantime.

Praxis was last in the field between August 23 and September 5. They use both online and telephone methods to compile their data.

Since that poll, the Saskatchewan Party has picked up 3.3 points and now leads with an amazing 66.7% of the vote. The New Democrats are up 0.3 points to only 26.4%, while the Greens are up 2.2 points to 5.2%.

The Liberals, who are only running nine candidates in this election, have accordingly dropped about five points. It appears that their support has split pretty evenly between the Saskatchewan Party and the Greens. I would have expected the NDP to pick up some of that support, but according to the poll the New Democrats are a party more people would specifically not vote for than the Saskatchewan Party.

These are, undoubtedly, dispiriting numbers for the New Democrats. With the other polls that have come out in this campaign, the NDP has been at or over 30%, and you have to think that is a psychological barrier they'd like to be over on election night.

I imagine turnout will be an important factor. It was pretty good in 2007 at about 76%, but that was an election in which the NDP government was defeated. Now, with the Sask. Party holding an insurmountable lead, people might not be very motivated to go out and vote. Will voters take the Sask. Party win for granted and stay home? And if so, will that benefit the obvious winner or the underdog?

Using the results from the Praxis Analytics poll only, ThreeHundredEight projects the Saskatchewan Party will win 51 seats on Monday night, with the New Democrats only winning seven.

But this is not the "official" projection. As mentioned, check back for that on Monday.

If this ends up being the result, this will be the NDP's worst performance in its history since its first election in 1934 under the CCF banner. For the Saskatchewan Party, it would be double what they won in their first election in 1999 and the highest proportion of seats that the conservative option has ever taken in Saskatchewan. The Progressive Conservatives won 55 seats in a 64-seat legislature in 1982, the equivalent of 50 seats in a 58-seat legislature.

That the Saskatchewan Party will win a crushing majority victory on Monday night is obvious, but the fate of the NDP is still up in the air. The potential for a catastrophe exists, but there is also a good chance that the NDP will hold firm in their strongholds and manage to elect over 10 MLAs. This will be the big question on election night.

Saskatchewan Party gains in projection, even greater landslide possible

A new poll was reported today by the Regina Leader-Post and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix, showing that Brad Wall's Saskatchewan Party has the support of almost two-thirds of voters in the province. Accordingly, Wall's fortunes have improved in the Saskatchewan projection.

Unfortunately, the poll by Praxis Analytics is vaguely described on at least two points and I'm looking into finding out more. Firstly, the dates of this poll are unknown. The report in the Leader-Post says that it was conducted during the last week of August and the beginning of September. I'm assuming that means to August 28th to September 3rd.

UPDATE: The poll was conducted between August 23 and September 5, with more of the interviews being taken after August 29.

Secondly, while support for the SP and the NDP is reported to the first decimal point, that of the Liberals is reported as being at "almost" 6%, while the Greens are at 3%. It isn't a big problem, but it would be better to have the exact levels of support for all parties.

UPDATE: I've been informed by the good people both at the Regina Leader-Post and Praxis Analytics that Liberal support stands at 5.9%. This will be reflected in the poll chart at the bottom of this page with the next update. Reducing Liberal support in the projection model from 6% to 5.9% for this poll does not change the seat or vote projection.

The Saskatchewan Party stands at 63.4%, almost 40 points ahead of the New Democrats. They are at 26.1%. Most damaging for the NDP is that Brad Wall beats out Dwain Lingenfelter as the best man to be premier with "nearly" 79% to 13%. That is a huge spread.

I do not know anything about this polling firm, however, and from their website it seems to be based in Illinois. Perhaps there is another Praxis Analytics in Saskatchewan that doesn't have a website. But, one assumes that the two major newspapers in Saskatchewan are familiar with the firm.

UPDATE: Praxis Analytics is a Regina-based firm, unaffiliated with the one in Illinois that came up in an internet search. Their principals are formerly from Sigma Analytics, a Saskatchewan polling firm.

With this poll now in the projection, the Saskatchewan Party has gained 2.8 points and is now projected to win 61.7% of the vote. The New Democrats have slipped 2.5 points to 28.5%, while the Liberals are up 0.7 points to 5.4%. The Greens are down one point to 4%.

This has results in the SP picking up one seat from the NDP. Wall's party is now projected to win 44 seats to the NDP's 14.

The pick-up for the SP is in southern Saskatchewan, and the party is now projected to win all 20 seats in the region. Only in Regina does the NDP beat out the Saskatchewan Party in total number of seats.

With a widening gap between the two main parties, a good deal of seats are now considered to be close races.

The Saskatchewan Party is leading in one of the close races and trailing in seven others, meaning the NDP is holding on in seven close races and trailing in one more.

This puts the Saskatchewan Party range at between 43 and 51 seats, compared to a range of between seven to 15 for the NDP. In other words, Brad Wall could win 51 seats in the 58-seat legislature.

Where are these close ridings? Only two are outside Regina and Saskatoon, two are in Regina, and three are in Saskatoon. So, the election will have its share of heated contests in almost every part of the province.

The vote in Saskatchewan is a little less than two months away, so things could still change if the campaign takes an odd turn or two. But when the leadership numbers have gap of about 66 points between the incumbent and the challenger, it seems extraordinarily unlikely that the NDP has a chance to turn things around.