Ready or not
Here comes an election
Summer is cranking up the heat and COVID restrictions have eased, so it's time for Nova Scotians to turn their attention to a summer election.
Nova Scotia does not have a fixed election date, leaving the call of the election up to the premier. Most believe that call is imminent and that Premier Iain Rankin could make it as early as Saturday, setting the table for an Aug. 17 election day.
“He's (Premier Rankin) going to call an election because he has to,” said Lori Turnbull, director of the school of public administration and an associate professor of political science at Dalhousie University in Halifax.
“It's not like there is a big, burning (issue) that people are dying to weigh in on. He's past the four-year mark and he's got to go and he's looking through the rest of the calendar and thinking, this is my best time.”
For Rankin and the Liberals, this is no doubt the best time to call an election as a Narrative Research poll released June 3 found Nova Scotians' satisfaction with the overall performance of the provincial government at an unprecedented high of 75 per cent for the first quarter of 2021, well above pre-pandemic levels.
“The biggest predictor we've seen over time whether a government gets re-elected is the level of satisfaction with the government,” said Margaret Chapman, owner and partner of Narrative Research since 2019 and a polling consultant for 20 years previous to that.
“When 75 per cent of the population is satisfied with the provincial government, it is such a different time,” Chapman said. “Normally we would say that the threshold is around 50 per cent, for a government to get re-elected, half the population has to be satisfied. We're up so high now, it's such an unusual time.”
Turnbull suggests “it would take some kind of total left field, ‘oh my God what the hell is that' type of thing to change things from the way they are now and to unseat the Liberals in a summer election.
“That's largely because people aren't going to be totally switched on,” she said. “Even to get people's attention is going to be really, really tough, even tougher than usual and we've seen our voter turnout come down over the past couple of elections, so now it's all too possible that it will be less than 50 per cent this time.”
Only 53.3 per cent of eligible voters cast a ballot in the 2017 provincial election,
down from 58.2 per cent in 2013 and part of an almost continual decline in turnout among voters since the 1980s.
For those who will vote, Chapman said the quarterly poll showed that the most important issue for respondents is the pandemic, with 51 per cent identifying it as the most pressing issue. Health care came in at 13 per cent, unemployment at six per cent and the environment at five.
“The interesting thing about the most important issue is that the pandemic is actually rising as an issue, up 11 points from the previous quarter,” Chapman said. “It's really the dominant issue and most people are supportive of the actions that took place during the pandemic and what the province decided to do and they support the province's restrictions. Almost everyone agreed that the restrictions that were put in place were necessary, 90 per cent told us that.”
Add that to a personal preference for Rankin as premier among 41 per cent of poll respondents, up from 34 per cent in February, and almost a 20 percentage point lead over both Tim Houston of the Progressive Conservatives and Gary Burrill of the New Democrats and it appears the opposition parties have a high mountain to climb.
“They (opposition) have to show what exactly they stand for and try to build trust with voters that they are the ones to deliver it,” Turnbull said. “There is not a ton of difference between the parties in terms of what they are prioritizing. There are some differences but the parties know that the main issues are what they are and so it is going to be a lot about trying to convince the voter that you are the right person, you are the right party to do it. I can see why they'd want to go after Rankin's leadership because his numbers are really high. If he stays where he is … he'll win.”
Turnbull said the opposition will try to paint a narrative around ‘the premier doesn't answer questions fully, he doesn't tell the truth.'"
“That's going to get nasty though if they push that too hard and it could backfire on them,” she said.
The way politics plays out in provincial elections is that the sitting government has the advantage of making pre-election spending announcements that grab voters' attention while, “over the last year and a half, we didn't hear a lot from the opposition and that's not totally their fault,” Turnbull said.
“We haven't seen the legislature meet as much and the types of things that kind of put them (opposition) on an equal procedural footing with the government or a more equitable one, we haven't seen that. It will be harder for the opposition parties to gain a lot of traction. I think that's why they jumped in on the DUI, they finally had something."
Turnbull said elections are often referendums on the government's performance.
“Rankin's not a returning premier but he is part of the government that has been in for the last eight years,” she said of Rankin's election as an MLA during the Liberal sweep of 2013 and his ascension to the party leadership in February.
“He definitely represents that record. At the same time he is able to distance himself a little bit from Stephen McNeil's personal legacy.