Candidates gear up for election day in hard-fought Regina ridings
The time for persuasion is at an end, as Regina candidates shift gears to drive out supporters and win battleground races on election day.
Ralph Goodale’s Victoria Avenue campaign office was a scene of organized chaos on Sunday as volunteers streamed in for pit stops during a final rush of pamphleteering. The campaign plans to dispatch about 40-60 volunteers across Goodale’s Regina—wascana riding for Monday’s get-out-thevote effort.
“We can’t afford to get complacent,” said Carlene Variyan, a spokeswoman for Goodale who’s now working on the campaign. “It all comes down to ground game tomorrow, everywhere.”
Several volunteers are first-time campaigners, and Goodale’s staff sat them down for crash courses on their tasks for the day ahead. Variyan said the message is simple:
“The more doors you can knock on, the more votes we’re going to get.”
Angela Scott has volunteered from Goodale’s office since September. She feels a close tie to Goodale because he once helped her navigate the system and get a proper diagnosis for a chronic health condition.
She said volunteering makes her feel “invigorated.” Scott has volunteered most weeknights, working the phones, punching in data and preparing packages for volunteers.
With election day hours away, she feels a renewed sense of urgency.
“I want to help in any way I can,” she said.
On the other side of town, NDP candidate Jigar Patel was laying his own election-day plans to win Regina—lewvan. His campaign manager, Barb Dedi, spent part of Sunday morning cooking up homemade borscht and chili for volunteers who’ll be invading her home on Monday.
Her place will become one of five “zone houses” the NDP campaign has set up to reach as many voters as possible.
Patel expects to see about 300 NDP volunteers spread out across the riding on election day. About 100 of them are able to give rides to voters who can’t easily get to the polls, according to Dedi. Other volunteers can provide daycare services to help supporters leave the house and case a ballot.
The party is pouring its local resources into the fight to hang onto Regina—lewvan, which Erin Weir won by 132 votes in 2015. Dedi said election day efforts for the other NDP campaigns, in Regina—wascana and Regina— Qu’appelle, will be small scale in comparison.
While early signals suggested the party was dispirited over Weir’s ouster from the party by party leader Jagmeet Singh, Patel and Dedi say they’ve noticed a steady upward trend in their numbers.
“Our support has progressively went up and up every day on the campaign and the last week and a half it has really increased,” Dedi said.
Patel said he’s feeling buoyed by the “good positive energy” coming from the national campaign. Singh is widely viewed to have shattered expectations, especially in the debates. And many votes are already locked in. About 14,394 voters cast their ballots at advance polls in Regina—lewvan over the Thanksgiving weekend.
The number was 13,572 in Regina—wascana. Variyan said lists of identified supporters who voted early suggest the Liberal campaign got a sizable chunk.
“We are feeling really, really good about where our advanced poll results were … We know that a lot of our identified supporters already voted,” she said.
“It just means that there’s less ground to cover tomorrow, which is also good news.”
She added that the party’s own voter contact efforts have flushed out more identified supporters than in 2015, when Goodale defeated Conservative rival Michael Kram by 10,000 votes.
Kram is running again and has door knocked assiduously ever since. But campaign organizer Colleen Mason was unable to set up an interview to provide updates on his progress over the weekend or his plans for election day.
She said party officials had “shut us down for media” for election day.
“We’re so close (in) this riding right now and they just want to keep the focus on,” she explained.
The campaign office for Regina— Lewvan Conservative candidate Warren Steinley did not respond to inquiries from the Leader-post in the lead-up to election day.
But Green party candidate Naomi Hunter was eager to share what her campaign has in store for the riding on Monday. Her plans match those of Patel’s and Goodale’s campaigns.
“We are giving people rides to the polls,” she said in a text message on Sunday. “We are out today and tomorrow phoning and knocking on doors of those who said they would vote for us.”