Realigning Elections in Manitoba
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Realigning Elections in Manitoba A conference paper prepared for the Manitoba Politics & Government into the 21st Century Conference, St. John’s College, University of Manitoba November 20-22, 2008 Christopher Adams, Ph.D. Updated October 21, 2008 [Christopher Adams is a Senior Research Director at Probe Research and an Adjunct Professor in Political Studies at the University of Winnipeg and at the I.H. Asper School of Business (University of Manitoba). He welcomes comments: [email protected] or [email protected]] Realigning Elections in Manitoba Introduction In his 1955 Journal of Politics article regarding the study of American presidential elections, V.O. Key described a specific type of electoral event which he titled a “critical election”.1 A critical election marks the fact that a “realignment, both sharp and durable” is occurring within the electorate.2 While such elections are located at a specific point in time, these events are also part of “a stream of connected antecedent and subsequent behavior.” To demonstrate this, Key revealed how shifts to the Democrats could already be discerned in 1928, four years prior to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1932 presidential victory and the beginning of a new political era which lasted until Eisenhower’s Republican Party victory in 1952. As such, identifying electoral realignments and critical elections is essentially an historical enterprise. It is only after watching a series of electoral outcomes that one is able to label with confidence the triggering event as a “critical” realigning election, and not simply a temporary shift in partisan support. Of course, there are many types of elections and, building on the work of V.O. Key, three main categories of elections can be used to generally classify voter behaviour within the context of party support: • A “Maintaining Election” is one in which partisan support remains generally stable. Changes in government can occur with these types of elections, yet these would be due to relatively minor shifts in partisanship, or changes occurring in “swing” regions. • A “Deviating Election” is one in which partisan loyalties are disrupted by such factors as an economic downturn or a leader’s charisma. As a factor’s importance recedes, voters in subsequent elections revert back to their original partisan positions. Deviating elections can precipitate a change in government, or even an electoral landslide, and are sometimes confused with realigning elections. • A “Realigning Election” is a critical election that signals a significant and long- lasting shift within the electorate. Such elections often reflect major social changes or upheavals. For example, a long-term economic depression, post-war prosperity, or shifting class divisions.3 Following in the steps of Key, Walter Dean Burnham outlined four major characteristics of critical elections and electoral realignment in his work Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics. The first is that a critical realignment is marked by “short-lived but very intense disruptions of traditional patterns of voting behavior.” Secondly, this intensity “typically spills over” into other parts of the political system and manifests itself in intra-party power struggles and increases in voter 1 V.O. Key, “A Theory of Critical Elections,” The Journal of Politics, February, 1955. 2 Ibid., p. 11. 3 Numerous political science works deal with this typology. A succinct description is provided in Angus Campbell, Philip Converse, Warren Miller, and Donald Stokes, The American Voter: An Abridgement, NY John Wiley, 1964, pp. 274-276. 2 turnout. Thirdly, critical elections tend to occur periodically and at regular intervals. Fourthly, and perhaps more significantly, critical elections and electoral realignment reflect a disconnection between existing party arrangements and major changes occurring in society. Therefore, a critical election will result in “significant transformations in the general shape of policy.”4 Examined in this conference paper are four significant electoral periods which triggered long-term changes in government over the past half century, and the extent to which these periods were produced by realigning elections. The four periods studied are as follows: 1. Duff Roblin’s Progressive Conservatives (PC) won a minority victory in 1958 which was followed with a majority breakthrough in 1959. The PCs remained in power until 1969. 2. Under Edward Schreyer, the New Democratic Party (NDP) won a minority victory in 1969 which led to a new political era for the province. With the exception of four years in which Sterling Lyon and the PCs held power (1977-1981), the NDP formed the government from 1969 to 1988. 3. Gary Filmon and his PCs won a minority victory in 1988. The election also produced twenty seats for the Liberals and forced the NDP into third party status. This victory was followed by a majority PC victory in 1990 and, again, in 1995. The PCs held power until 1999. 4. In 1999, Gary Doer and the NDP won a majority victory which was followed by majority government victories in 2003 and 2007. It was the first time since Duff Roblin that a Manitoba provincial party has won three successive majority victories. The Duff Roblin Breakthrough of 1958 / 1959 The PCs’ minority government breakthrough in 1958 closely fits the realigning election category. This election was followed by a 1959 majority victory for the party, and signaled the passing of the more rurally-oriented Liberal-Progressive era. The 1958 victory was produced by a rejuvenated PC party organization under a more urban- oriented leader who was willing to expand the Province’s role in the economy, healthcare, education, and social welfare programs. Duff Roblin, the grandson of former Premier Rodmond Roblin, was first elected in 1949 as one of four MLAs in the multimember riding of South Winnipeg. In contrast to other Conservatives who, under Errick Willis, had supported the Liberal-Progressive coalition, Roblin was elected as an “Independent PC” and only one of four elected Conservatives who served in opposition. The 1953 provincial election produced for Willis and the PCs only twelve out of 57 seats, while thirteen seats went uncontested by the party. Of the twelve who were elected, only three PC seats were in Winnipeg ridings,5 with the other nine spread out across southern Manitoba. The stage was set for electoral realignment in Manitoba when, in 1954, Duff Roblin became the leader of the 4 Walter Dean Burnham, Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics, New York: W.W. Norton, 1970, pp. 6-10. 5 At the time, Winnipeg consisted of three multi-member ridings, of which four MLAs were elected from each. 3 PCs. Roblin appealed to party delegates as both an urban candidate and someone who could win over rural voters. He defeated Willis on the second ballot in a hard fought leadership race, with 137 out of his 160 votes coming from rural delegates.6 With the exception of a brief period in the 1930s, when the party was led by Sanford Evans, Roblin was the first Winnipeg-based MLA to lead the party since Hugh John Macdonald’s brief tenure from 1899 to 1900. After winning the leadership and in preparation for his first provincial election, the new leader’s strategy contained three straight-forward elements: 1) attract new and qualified candidates, 2) reach beyond the party’s WASPish upper-income and rural base of support (based chiefly in South Winnipeg and southern Manitoba), and 3) rejuvenate local constituency associations with new funds. This was implemented by recruiting candidates who were well regarded in their local communities, as demonstrated by his ability to recruit Dr. George Johnson who was elected in Gimli and later became Roblin’s Minister of Health, and by obtaining funds from the Ontario PCs in order to help build an effective war-chest.7 Roblin’s efforts dovetailed with John Diefenbaker’s PCs who won a minority victory in the 1957 federal election, and then a landslide the following year. Of the 208 of 245 seats won by the PCs across the country, all 14 of Manitoba’s federal ridings went to PC candidates. It was only three months after this event that, in the June 1958 provincial election with a slight increase in voter turnout (at 61.0%, up from 60.4% in 19538), Roblin’s PCs won their minority government victory with 40% of the vote and 26 seats out of 57. The Liberal-Progressives, which had held power under a number of party labels since 1922,9 took 19 seats while the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) took 11 seats. The realignment in Manitoba was completed with the 1959 provincial election. Voter turnout was at 65.6%, the highest level since 1936, which produced a majority victory for the PCs with 36 out of 57 seats going to the party based on 46% of the vote. The shift occurred across the province with the PCs winning four of the five northern ridings (Rupertsland, Churchill, Swan River, and The Pas, but not Flin Flon), southern ridings outside Winnipeg (which were divided between the Liberal-Progressives and the PCs), and in Winnipeg where support came from across all parts of the city, including Winnipeg Centre and even parts of the working class North End (St. Matthews and Wellington). Fitting Burnham’s assertion that a realigning election often triggers a new era in policy making, the 1958/1959 realignment brought to Manitoba a governing party that contrasted strongly with the tight-spending Liberal-Progressives. The new PC government tripled public spending, with much of the funding going to healthcare, social 6 This is chiefly based on coverage in Winnipeg Free Press, June 16, 1954 and Duff Roblin’s autobiography, Speaking for Myself, Winnipeg: Great Plains, 1999, p. 62. 7 Roblin, pp.