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 is important and issues local campaigns are focused on.

Winnipeg North is one of the hottest seats in Canada right now, with the NDP gunning hard to win back a traditionally NDP seat.

When Judy Wasylycia-Leis stepped down as an MP to take on Winnipeg’s pro-business mayor, Sam Katz, the NDP dropped the ball with rookie Kevin Chief — widely expected to win in the byelection of March 2009. The seat went instead to seasoned Liberal candidate Kevin Lamoureux, by a 900-vote margin, dropping the federal NDP from 37 to 36 seats.

This time around, Lamoureux faces Rebecca Blaikie — daughter of Bill Blaikie, one of Manitoba’s favourite and longstanding NPD MPs (now provincial MLA for Elmwood). In a riding born out of European immigrant working-class history, the Blaikie brand has instant labour-left cred. However, Rebecca Blaikie is clearly not being handed anything on a platter.

The April 25 ERKOS poll shows Lamoureux leading, with 8,089 to Blaikie’s 6,551 projected votes — a wider margin than for Chief in 2009. Winnipeggers, practising the “Friendly Manitoba” creed, tend to not discard incumbents who have done no clear wrong.

Winnipeg North has also become one of Canada’s most culturally and economically mixed ridings over recent decades. The numbers from the 2006 Census show a population that is 20.18 per cent Filipino, 19.26 per cent Aboriginal, and 7.68 per cent South Asian, Southeast Asian, or Chinese — a rising demographic that showed up to put Rey Pagtakhan (Liberal) in the seat from 1988 to 1997.

The middle- and working-classes which were so strong here have been feeling the harsher economic times, with stagnant purchasing power and limited job growth. A number of neighbourhoods have severely declined, and Winnipeg North suffers the complications of low-income housing shortages, gang violence, and substantial food insecurity.

The question for progressives is whether recent low voter turnouts — in the “bottom 10” in Canada, with some polling stations garnering below 20 per cent — can be turned around. The efforts of North End Votes, an informal non-partisan effort to engage non-voters, might prove to be instrumental.

Blaikie may have instant name recognition in Winnipeg, but is personally less well-known than Lamoureux. She may have political acumen — evidenced by her directorship of the Quebec NDP during MP Thomas Mulcair’s 2007 win in Outremont — but is a rookie candidate while Lamoureux, a Manitoba MLA from 1988 to 1999 and from 2003 to 2010, has been knocking on doors for some time and by all accounts runs a crisp operation.

In her favour, Blaikie’s experience working in poor communities with agencies such as the Community Education Development Association (CEDA) — which she co-directs — and active membership in the North End Community Helpers Network (NECHN), the North End Community Coalition (NECC) and the Inner City Social Justice Coalition, suggests an ability to attract new votes.

The recent rise in Canada-wide popularity of the Layton-led NDP and stumbling numbers for the Liberals also create the real possibility of soft Liberal support shifting to Blaikie. The army of volunteers working out of Blaikie’s campaign office, determined and enthusiastic, were showing increased excitement thanks to the ERKOS April 24 and 25 numbers.

In an update of polling numbers as this story is filed, the Blaikie campaign has closed the gap to 7,222 Liberal vs. 7,166 NDP. The fight is not over, but it is certainly on.

With Conservative Ann Matejicka well out of the race, strategic voting websites like ProjectDemocracy.ca are staying hands off — not calling for support to any one party. No other parties are expected to garner significantly more votes than the number of signatures on their nomination forms — total other votes are projected to be just over 200.

This is a classic head-to-head contest from start to finish, and the next few days will be very telling. Winnipeg North is destined to be one heckuva nail-biter. 

It may also prove revealing that Ignatieff’s last Winnipeg stop of this campaign was in Winnipeg South, shoring up Terry Duguid’s chances. Layton, on the other hand, showed up for the full day of Blaikie’s campaign launch — with three NDP events concentrated in Winnipeg North, starting at the North End YMCA-YWCA and ending with a 5:30 p.m. rally at the historic Ukrainian Labour Temple. Layton put his last stop in Winnipeg squarely between Blaikie and Pat Martin’s (Winnipeg Centre) ridings, at the Indian-Métis Friendship Centre.

See polling updates by clicking here.