What to Watch for in Monday’s Saskatchewan Election

As the campaign enters the final weekend, the back-and-forth between the governing Saskatchewan Party and the opposition New Democrats has reached a fever pitch as both parties make a final push before Monday’s election.  

Beginning the morning after the leader’s debate, the gloves came off.  

New Democratic Party leader Carla Beck stood on the steps of the provincial legislature flanked by two former Saskatchewan Party MLAs and a former senior advisor to former Premier Brad Wall. Their message of support for Beck was clear: Scott Moe’s Saskatchewan Party has drifted too far right.   

Almost at the same time, Scott Moe announced at a nearby campaign rally that if re-elected as premier, his first order of business would be to issue a directive to ban “biological males” from using school change rooms with “biological females.”   

This news generated some very heated debate, particularly as it was learned that the genesis of the story may have involved the school-age children of a NDP candidate.  Beck called Moe’s comments “the most ugly kind of politics.” Regina Leader Post political columnist Murray Mandryk said, “I think there is a deliberateness to this. I think there is nastiness to this. I’ve been around here for a little while. I don’t think I’ve seen anything worse in 40 years of doing this.”   

While perhaps not unusual in other provinces, the bitter, often personal tone that has now eclipsed the 2024 Saskatchewan campaign is unprecedented in recent memory.   

Now, both parties are engaged in a riding-by-riding battle to turn out their voters. Much of this effort will be focused on the battleground seats in Regina and Saskatoon, along with a handful of seats in the province’s smaller cities like Prince Albert, Moose Jaw and The Battlefords or Yorkton.  

A Viewer’s Guide  

This is without a doubt the most competitive Saskatchewan election since 2003. The NDP appear to be gaining some significant momentum. However, for them to win a majority (31 of 61 seats), most believe they would likely need to sweep all 26 “urban” seats in Saskatoon and Regina, plus 5 rural and suburban seats across the rest of the province (for simplicity, labelled “rural”).  

Listed below are a dozen seats to watch on Monday night. But let’s be clear: these aren’t the likeliest seats to switch hands. This list includes arguably the safest urban seats for the Saskatchewan Party, along with their weakest rural ridings. If these Saskatchewan Party seats begin to fall, at least as some expect, it may be an early sign that the government is at risk of defeat.  

One seat projection by a major Canadian pollster now suggests the NDP is ahead in five rural seats and has them doing very well in Regina and Saskatoon. But at Counsel, we always take these seat projections with a large tablespoon of salt, particularly given the presence of smaller splinter parties that could prove to be outcome determinative in a few places.  

Obviously, for every urban seat they lose, the NDP will need to find another to win in rural Saskatchewan. This seems like a tall order, but as we have seen in last week’s BC election, “change elections” can produce dramatic results.  

All the seats in Regina and Saskatoon begin with the name of either city, making the urban/rural divide easier to follow. And please note, the NDP currently hold one rural seat, Cumberland, listed here to make your election math easier! 

Election night watchers outside Saskatchewan may find coverage on all three provincial television networks or CPAC. Polls close at 8:00 pm CST, 10:00 pm EST. Grab your popcorn! And be prepared for a long night as all ballots will be counted by hand.   

And as usual, Counsel’s Saskatchewan team will be following the final sprint to the finish line closely and will help make sense of it all for clients in Saskatchewan and across Canada after all the votes are counted. Stay tuned.