Election 2011: rabble.ca has chosen 10 key ridings across Canada for progressives to watch in the run-up to the May 2 vote, and asked local writers to assess them. The profiles highlight why the riding profiled is important and issues local campaigns are focused upon.
Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar is the riding to watch on May 2nd. It’s a two-party race, Conservatives vs. NDP, and every political pundit in the country is saying it’s “too close to call.”

Kelly Block was relatively unknown when she ran and won for the Conservatives in 2008, having previously served as mayor of the town of Waldheim, outside of the riding. Like many of the Cons candidates in 2008, she kept a low profile and stayed out of the community debates.

Though she won, the Cons margin of victory dropped from 1,919 votes in 2006 to 262 in 2008. Without a cabinet spot or any other major role in the government, has Block built enough of a profile in three years to win back that lost support?

And 2011 marks Nettie Wiebe’s third run for the NDP in S-R-B. The voters know her and she has public profile as former president of the National Farmers’ Union.

Running an organic family farm near Laura gives her a strong personal connection to the rural part of the riding. But she is no stranger to urban issues — she works in Saskatoon as a professor at St. Andrew’s College.

Wiebe came very close in 2008 — will the third time be the charm in 2011?

Here’s what is adding to the drama:

The urban-rural divide 

S-R-B is 60 per cent urban and 40 per cent rural. The urban portion takes in some of Saskatoon’s lowest-income neighbourhoods as well as large swath of middle-class, two-income families.

From 1997-2008, the urban 60 per cent has been characterized by a high degree of NDP support but low voter turnout while the rural 40 per cent has had a high turnout and high level of Cons support.

But do the rural Cons votes have more to do with voicing frustration than ideology?

Historically, the towns of Biggar, Harris, and Delisle and their surroundings were CCF-NDP strongholds. More recently, these areas are struggling to cope with rural depopulation that has led to fewer services and less government investment in community infrastructure.

With the Liberals in power federally until 2006 and the NDP in power provincially until 2007, voting Cons meant voting against the status quo.

After five years of Cons government in Ottawa and four years of the Sask Party in Regina, will this still be the case? Will rural voters stick by their government MP or vote for the local who’s dealing with the same issues they are?

The Grassroots Cons campaign 

Nope, this isn’t an oxymoron. A number of influential religious authorities are preaching politics to their congregations and street missions and instructing them to vote Cons. And that ain’t a coincidence either.

The two main issues for this campaign are an opposition to same-sex marriage rights and a desire to outlaw access to abortion.

After five years in power the Cons have not addressed either issue, and Stephen Harper has stated publicly that they will not raise them in the courts or the legislature.

So who will social conservatives vote for in 2011? Will the Cons “we-share-your-beliefs-but-won’t-act on-them” stance be enough to keep them on-side?

The Green Party foil 

While their percentage of the vote may seem negligible, the votes the Greens attract seem to be coming exclusively from the NDP support base in S-R-B.

In 2008, where the margin of victory for the Cons was 262 votes over the NDP, the Greens got 1,232 votes, almost exclusively from urban polls with high levels of NDP support.

So what are Green voters going to do in 2011? Will they stick with the Greens or vote NDP to defeat the CONS?

I can hardly wait until May 2nd to see how it all shakes down.