Northern Sask. riding could be island of Liberal red in sea of Tory blue, poll suggests

Saskatchewan's northern riding of Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill River could flip to Liberal red from its current Conservative blue in the next federal election, polling suggests.

The riding comprises nearly the entire northern half of the province, but with a fraction of the population (about 37,845 people, according to Elections Canada).

When the federal government began the process to redefine electoral boundaries in 2022 — a non-partisan review required every 10 years — some communities that voted heavily Conservative in the previous election were moved to other federal ridings.

The 338Canada project, an election projection model based on opinion polls, electoral history and demographic data, suggests the Liberals could win 56 per cent of the vote, plus/-minus 14 per cent, in Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill River, with the Conservatives garnering 26 per cent of the vote, plus/minus 12 per cent.

In the 2021 election, the Meadow Lake region had the most valid votes at the polls (about 2,450) and the vast majority were garnered by now-former MP Gary Vidal (about 65.8 per cent), the Conservative incumbent at the time.

According to Elections Canada, if the new boundaries had been in place during the 2021 election, the Liberals would have won the seat.

Éric Grenier, a polls analyst and the creator of thewrit.ca, says Conservatives won the seat comfortably in 2021 with support from Meadow Lake. He says the Conservatives would have finished third behind the Liberals if the redrawn boundaries had been in place.

"If the Liberals form the government and they have a seat from Saskatchewan, that means at least they'll have one voice from Saskatchewan in the caucus," Grenier said.

"One of the issues that the Liberals have had over the last few elections is they've had very few MPs from Western Canada outside of British Columbia and Winnipeg," he said.

The other top voting areas in the riding — including La Ronge, Spiritwood, Christopher Lake, Creighton and Debden — also voted Conservative. In fact, the top eight regions that put forward the most valid votes (not including mail-in ballots) opted for the Tories.

The issue for the Conservatives is that all of those communities, with the exception of La Ronge and Creighton, are no longer within the northern electoral boundary.

"You have basically taken a bunch of conservative voters and moved them into ridings that kind of border Prince Albert or that are further south of that riding," said Daniel Westlake, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Saskatchewan.

He says Saskatchewan's rural population is strongly conservative — until you get farther north: "I would suggest this is a northern Prairie riding that just is more open to progressives than most other rural Prairie ridings and probably will continue to be like that."

Over the past nearly three decades, the region has ping-ponged among the three major parties: the Conservative Party of Canada, the Liberal Party of Canada and the New Democratic Party.