Here's What I Think Will Happen On Provincial Election Day, 2024

Because like Reg Downs, I'm ok with making a fool of myself.

It’s been a few years since Saskatchewan voters faced a provincial election outcome as unknown as this one.

Twenty-one, to be exact.

During the campaign of October of 2003, Lorne Calvert’s NDP and the Sask Party, led by Elwin Hermanson, had been battered by wave after wave of external poll results suggesting it was going to be a close one. However, in the final week a poll emerged showing Lorne Calvert and his NDP with a healthy six point lead.

The Sask Party took it about as well as you might expect.

Saskatchewan voters were in fact not becoming “quite comfortable with the idea of Elwin Hermanson as premier”. The more people saw Hermanson during the campaign, the more they realized they’d rather stay with Calvert.

That was the right decision, by the way. Handing Elwin Hermanson, who is not ok, power over Saskatchewan would have been utterly disastrous.

Today Reg Downs, who has lurked in the Legislature’s shadows since the days of Grant Devine, remains in Scott Moe’s office as a highly-paid senior advisor.

You want to talk Devine and Sask Party scandals? Downs is your man. He was behind the scenes for every one of them. He is also the guy who charged at Speaker Randy Weekes in a Legislature hallway during the “emergency” debate over the Sask Party’s human rights-stripping Bill 137, because things weren’t going his way.

In 2003 Downs embarrassed himself with those comments in the paper on polling and Hermanson’s likeability. The internal Sask Party poll he was referencing likely didn’t exist. The Sigma poll he frantically tried to discredit turned out to be virtually bang-on a few days later, when Saskatchewan voters handed Lorne Calvert a reprieve from his eventual dismissal.

The reality is, when taken into consideration in hindsight and in aggregate, Saskatchewan polling is generally pretty accurate.

As you saw above, in 2003 there were so many that polling itself became an election issue, but 2007 saw far less, a trend that has only continued to decline alongside newsroom budgets.

Angus Reid has been the exception. His “Premiers’ Popularity” polls have conveniently (and totally coincidentally I’m sure) always named one of Angus’s best customers - Scott Moe - as the most popular in Canada.

Until Wab Kinew’s support in Manitoba skyrocketed him into first place, in the 14 years Angus Reid has been running and publishing his national, quarterly poll, the Saskatchewan premier was the most popular in Canada, every time. That’s at least 48 consecutive polls for which the Saskatchewan premier, out of nine other contenders, was handed first place.

I’m no statistician, but that seems just a tad off.

I’m thinking we should probably discuss the ramifications of over ten years of quarterly proclamations, via Saskatchewan newsrooms, that an important but shadowy man named Angus says the Sask Party government is the most beloved in Canada… yet the fact the Sask Party also pays Angus huge money, every year, was not once included in those news stories.

Given his recent meltdown (which wasn’t touched by any of the Canadian media outlets who have quoted him as an influencer for decades), I tiptoed down the Angus Reid-Sask Party rabbit hole. I didn’t make it very far before realizing it was going to be pretty deep, so shelved it for another day, hopefully soon.

What I have for you today is my (sorta) prediction on what Saskatchewan’s MLA seat chart could look like on October 29th, because like Reg Downs, I too am willing to make a fool of myself.