While it may have come as a shock to some, it is clear Nova Scotians wanted a new party at the helm of their next provincial government.
After the votes were counted on Aug. 17 by Elections Nova Scotia (ENS), Premier Tim Houston’s Progressive Conservatives took 31 seats, with Iain Rankin’s Liberals winning 17 seats, and the NDP holding six seats.
And the strength of the PC party on election night was not relegated to just one region of the province, but was evident from Cape Breton, to Southwest Nova, and all parts in between.
With most public opinion polls and pundits predicting a Liberal government, this resounding win by the PCs will go down as one of the more unexpected election victories in Nova Scotia’s colourful political history.
But upon closer analysis of the numbers from ENS, it is not all doom and gloom for the Liberals. Although they took 56 per cent of the seats, the PCs received 38.43 per cent of the vote share, to 36.67 per cent for the Liberals, a difference of a mere 1.76 per cent. As for the total number of votes across Nova Scotia, the PCs came away with 162,478, compared to the Liberal’s 155,027, a difference of only 7,451 votes.
Even in many of the ridings lost by the Liberals, they performed solidly, and in some of the ridings they won, there was a healthy margin of victory. Unfortunately for Rankin, it translated into a major seat disadvantage.
The former premier should also take no solace from the fact that only 55.67 per cent of eligible voters even bothered to exercise their franchise. Whether an expression of a genuine lack of interest, dissatisfaction with the choices before them, or the result of the many distractions presented during the summer, these numbers indicate that the Liberals were unable to get out their vote, or inspire enough voters.
In the Strait area, the numbers were equally surprising as two cabinet ministers were taken down and one long-time Liberal riding went PC.
In Antigonish, Liberal incumbent and former cabinet minister Randy Delorey was easily defeated by PC Michelle Thompson who recorded 4,187 votes, to 2,579 for Delorey, NDP candidate Moraig Macgillivray came away with 1,401 votes, Green Party candidate Will Fraser had votes, and for the Atlantica Party, Ryan Smyth had 29 votes.
Thompson took 50.34 per cent of the vote share in Antigonish, while the riding had a voter turnout of 57.19 per cent, according to ENS.
In Guysborough-Tracadie, Liberal incumbent and another former cabinet minister, Lloyd Hines, was soundly beaten by PC candidate Greg Morrow who took 63.39 per cent of the vote with 3,281 total votes. Hines came away with 1,571 votes, NDP candidate Matt Stickland recorded 247 votes, and for the Green Party, Gabriel Bruce had 77 votes.
There was a voter turnout of 66.81 per cent in Guysborough-Tracadie, according ENS.
In both ridings, the incumbents seemed to gain no advantage from being long-serving MLAs and cabinet ministers, nor from the misperception that the Liberals were going to form the next government.
In the case of Richmond, a riding that has been Liberal since the late 1980s went blue last week.
With all polls reporting, ENS had PC candidate Trevor Boudreau winning comfortably with 2,773 votes, while Liberal candidate Matt Haley has 2,009 votes, independent candidate Alana Paon came away with 394 votes, and first-time NDP candidate Bryson Syliboy received 266 votes.
According to ENS, the voter turn-out in Richmond was an impressive 71.43 per cent, and Boudreau received 50.96 per cent of the total vote.
The last time Richmond voted PC was for Greg MacIsaac in the 1984 provincial election. After that, former MLA and cabinet minister Richie Mann took the riding in 1988, and again in 1993.
Former MLA and cabinet minister Michel Samson kept the Liberal momentum going, winning in 1998, until Richmond County was unconstitutionally lumped into the former riding of Cape Breton-Richmond back in 2012 with the Town of Port Hawkesbury and parts of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality. Even in the last election, when Samson was unseated by Paon, he managed to win the Richmond County portion of Cape Breton-Richmond by 81 votes, according to ENS.
Given the scope of the PC win, it was not surprising that long-time PC incumbent Allan MacMaster easily won re-election in Inverness.
After the votes were counted on Aug. 17, ENS reported that MacMaster took the riding with 4,833 votes, while Liberal candidate Damian MacInnis finished in second place with 3,112 votes, and NDP candidate Joanna Clark had 698 votes.
According to ENS, MacMaster had a vote percentage of 55.92 per cent, and voter turnout was 61.49 per cent in Inverness.
With the cabinet about to be named, then sworn-in, the work of this new provincial government officially gets underway, with his party’s commitment to spend heavily in health care and deal with increasing new COVID-19 numbers at the top of the agenda. Then there are other important other issues, like the provincial back-to-school plan, improving roads and restarting the economy, which are also near the top of the priority list.
As Richmond’s new MLA told The Reporter on election night, it will require a lot of hard work and time for this new government to fulfill the promises it made during and before the campaign.
Nova Scotians will have some patience, but judging by last week’s election results for the outgoing Liberals, that patience is limited.