Saskatchewan Party support is still strong, poll suggests

REGINA — The governing Saskatchewan Party has backing from about the same percentage of voters as it had in the last election, but support for the opposing NDP is down since that 2011 vote, a new poll says.

Insightrix polled 800 of its SaskWatch Research panel members last week about who they would vote for if a provincial election was held today. The Sask. Party was supported by 61 per cent of decided respondents, compared to 26 per cent for the NDP. Six per cent indicated supporting each of the Greens and Liberals, while one per cent said other parties.

About 87 per cent of respondents were in the decided voter category.

“Things are really holding steady for the Sask. Party. If anything, the NDP are seeing a little bit of a decline — it’s a very slight, steady decline,” Lang McGilp of Insightrix said, noting the NDP received 32 per cent of the votes in the November 2011 election, consistent with the polls in advance of that vote. Since then, the numbers have been slipping steadily, with 26 per cent the lowest in Insightrix polls since.

By comparison, the Sask. Party’s 61 per cent support is also down from the 64 per cent of the popular vote it received in 2011. However, the party was polling at 60 per cent before the election, and got a bump at the ballot boxes, likely due to the Liberals running only a handful of candidates, McGilp said. The Liberals polled at about five per cent before the election, but most constituencies didn’t even have a Liberal candidate.

“Anyone who said they were going to vote NDP pretty much stayed the same between our poll and what happened on the election day, but most people who said they were going to vote Liberal ended up going for the Sask. Party,” McGilp said, noting Liberals only got a fraction of one per cent of votes.

“Who knows what the Liberals will do coming up? If they run a full slate, maybe those votes will stay Liberal,” he added.

Insightrix’s previous voter intentions poll was in April; at that time, the Sask. Party was at 63 per cent and the NDP was at 27 per cent. Not much can be read into comparing those numbers to June’s, given the small size of the changes, except that the picture has remained much the same, McGilp said.

Sask. Party Highways Minister Nancy Heppner said her party is pleased, but doesn’t take the support for granted. She also observed the NDP is slipping.

“I think they thought their only problem in the last election was (previous leader) Dwain Lingenfelter. Obviously that’s not their biggest problem, because their numbers aren’t going up,” Heppner said.

NDP Deputy Leader Trent Wotherspoon said his party has work to do and is doing it under its leader, Cam Broten.

“We know that we need to earn that trust back by hard work and by listening to Saskatchewan people and we’re committed to that,” Wotherspoon said.

Quotas for the poll were set by age, gender and region to match the general population of the province. Because the research is conducted online, it is considered to be a non-probability proportion sample and margins of error are not applicable, Insightrix noted.