Canada’s first pandemic general election at either the federal or provincial level is unlikely to precipitate a run to the polls with other governments in a minority government situation, at last count a total of 4 provincial and 1 national. For the most part incumbents in Canada have received strong reviews for the handling the pandemic, the situation essentially being no different in New Brunswick. However this will not translate to a landslide at the polls, with voting patterns in New Brunswick expected to show only very modest, as opposed to significant changes.
On the other hand, however, New Brunswick has had no less than several successive streaks of one term majority governments, going back to 2006. The 2018 election was slightly different in that vote distribution gave the PCs a slight edge in seats, although they had a 7 point deficit in the popular vote. Aided by the People’s Alliance Party, they were able to form a government which, with a few rough spots, was largely received well enough by the electorate such that recent polling has shown no significant desire to change helmsmen.
The polling also shows, though, that Liberal support, while down from 2018, has remained stable at around 30% and very concentrated in the northern and eastern, more francophone parts of the province where they retained support in 2018. The noted collapse in People’s Alliance support to roughly one half of where it was in 2018 will likely by itself aid the PCs in getting a small majority overall. The Greens might have benefited from the decrease in Liberal support elsewhere, although it remains to be seen if they are able to make additional breakthroughs, especially around the Fredericton area where they are represented federally by a Green Member of Parliament. The NDP have largely polled at the same level as 2018, which is likely to result in no seats and little impact on the overall result.
The Liberals were able to hold the PCs to a minority in part by retaining one seat a piece in Fredericton and St. John and holding their own in Moncton. The model is showing that those seats will now likely turn PC blue, in addition to another possible PC pickup in Moncton, The one riding won by a PC in 2018 which will likely flip back to the Liberals is Shippigan-Lameque-Miscou at the top right corner of the map, this was held by former Deputy Premier Robert Gauvin, who in protest of the Higgs government’s nighttime closure of 6 ERs, crossed the floor to the Liberals and is now running in Shediac Bay-Dieppe.
The People’s Alliance is expected to lose two out of three ridings. The Miramichi riding will likely see Liberal Leader Kevin Vickers elected over PA incumbent Michelle Conroy (it is worth noting that the Liberal Leader is the same Kevin Vickers who as House of Commons Sergeant at Arms in 2014 helped end a shooting episode at Parliament Hill, receiving a Star of Courage medal as a result.) The other expected loss is that of Fredericton York to the PCs.
The main thing to note though is that after numerous provincial elections where voting patterns have not always followed a tight English-PC-South-Southwest and French-Liberal-North-East narrative (think of election victories by PC Premiers Hatfield and Lord where frequently did well in the northern part of the province, and even in drought elections like 1995 half the PC caucus was from northern New Brunswick), those voting patterns appear to be falling back to where federal lines have remained largely consistent (outside of clean sweep elections) with respect to blue and red on the map. And going forward, if this pattern holds, it may very well be that not only does New Brunswick politics continue to remain interesting with no long term governments, but also that final election results will likely turn on only a handful of ridings and relatively small margins therein, and in most other ridings winning the nomination end up being effectively more consequential to winning the general election.
