Liberals deem summer election safe enough
It’s not a safe election. But it’s a safe enough election.
That could describe either how Nova Scotia’s Liberals see their chances, or the province’s place in the pandemic as the month-long campaign begins.
Taking the latter first, we’re safer than we were, but not as safe as we’ll be. That’s selfevident.
Nova Scotia remains in a state of emergency and in Phase 4 of a five-phase reopening plan. We climb the rungs only when it’s safe to do so.
Consequently, to claim it’s safe — without qualification — is wrong, so we’ll have to settle on safe enough. The Liberals did just that when they set Nova Scotia on this high-summer election odyssey, rather than wait for Phase 5, which we’re told is near.
The climax of the election, the actual voting, will be done safely thanks entirely to the efforts of Elections Nova Scotia, and in spite of the governing Liberals, who denied and delayed funding for the agency even after it was approved by the legislature.
For fairly obvious reasons, the Liberal government – by definition a partisan outfit – had no business messing with the legislature-approved budget of the independent agency responsible for delivering fair elections. But they did it anyway.
While the Liberal brain trust sees this summer as their best chance to win a third straight majority government, they know it’s no sure thing.
But sitting high atop the polls, the Liberals deemed it safe enough. It’s unlikely to get any better for them and could get worse, as we saw a week ago when Premier Iain Rankin struggled to answer questions about past drunk driving charges.
In all but name, the campaign’s been on for more than a month as Rankin and his ministers scattered loot – notional and actual – around the place with reckless abandon.
That was an effort to A) buy your vote, or, B) establish the priorities of, and thereby define, the new premier and his newish government. But the announcements came so fast and furiously it was impossible to discern a common thread or theme, beyond spending public money.
The Liberals hope Nova Scotians will find something other than profligate pandering in the spending spree and, I suppose, time will tell if they do.
With the spending frenzy out of the way, Rankin, it seems, wants to fight the election on what former U.S. President George Bush – the first — famously called “the vision thing.”
Rankin has said he looks forward to placing his party’s vision before Nova Scotians so they can judge it against the vision of the opposing Progressive Conservatives and New Democrats.
Setting aside the fact that most Nova Scotians associate vision with their optometrist, the three major parties are not all that different on the vision thing. How to get there is another matter, and that’s the turf where provincial elections generally are waged.
But Rankin was right about one thing. Elections are about comparisons, and some folks may well compare and contrast the vision each party has for the province, if indeed the differences are discernable.
Others will compare the platforms the parties erect, and even more will measure the three major party leaders — Rankin, Tim Houston (PC) and Gary Burrill (NDP) — against one another.
And through all that, Nova Scotians will be trying to discern which leader and which party is best equipped to lead Nova Scotia’s recovery.
Tories and New Democrats hope – even expect – that when Nova Scotians make those comparisons, the Liberals’ seemingly insurmountable lead in public opinion polls will shrink to insignificance.
The most recent Narrative Research poll found that about half of decided voters favour the Liberals. The PCS were the choice of half that number, and the NDP trailed with the support of just under 20 per cent of decided voters. About 33 per cent of the electorate was undecided when that research was done in May.
In normal times, those kinds of polling numbers would make the outcome a foregone conclusion but, as you’ve heard too often for too long, these are not normal times.
Opposition politicians believe the Liberals’ support is a mile wide and an inch deep. That means at least some of the Liberal vote is soft and those voters are persuadable, as they say, to change their allegiance.
The idea that the Liberals’ support is soft isn’t baseless. Their numbers shot up when Nova Scotians “rallied round the flag” to flatten the curve and stayed high in support of the government’s efforts to keep the virus at bay.
The COVID bounce — enjoyed by most governments nation-wide — seems to have found its apex, and can come down as fast, or faster, than it went up, particularly when governments cede their nearexclusive control over the public square, as they do with an election call.
So, it’s not a safe election for the Liberals because there’s no such thing, at least not where people get to vote and their votes count. The opposition parties are locked, loaded and ready for political war. Buckle up. This just might get interesting.
Journalist and writer Jim Vibert has worked as a communications advisor to five Nova Scotia governments.