The lawn signs in Saskatoon and Regina aren’t going away just yet.
On Monday, voters in the province handed Scott Moe’s Saskatchewan Party another majority government.
In less than two weeks, voters in municipalities across the province will head to the polls again to elect local councils.
A public policy professor at the University of Saskatchewan says the biggest effect the provincial contest could have on city elections stems not from policy, but from timing.
“I don’t think one can draw any strong conclusions that last night’s vote, which was by all accounts relatively low on historical terms, will lead to a higher turnout in the fall election,” Peter Phillips said.
“In fact, it may (be) the opposite.”
Phillips said having the provincial election so close to many municipal elections, coupled with worsening weather and the ever-present health risk from COVID-19, may be asking too much of eligible voters.
A lack of enthusiasm or interest would result in low voter turnout, which is already a well-developed pattern in Canada and many democracies.
Only 54 per cent of eligible voters cast a ballot in the last provincial election in Saskatchewan, and only 51 per cent did so in 2011.
Election officials are still tallying the votes cast on Monday. They won’t start counting the record number of mail-in ballots until Wednesday, which will increase the figure, but as of Tuesday evening officials had recorded ballots from only only 47 per cent of eligible voters.
The numbers are even worse in the province’s two biggest cities.
Forty per cent of Saskatoon voters exercised their democratic rights in the 2016 municipal election and a paltry 20 per cent of Regina voters did so.
Phillips said fewer people vote in municipal elections because the issues aren’t as unifying.
Candidates at every level of government have proposed their vision of how the coronavirus pandemic should be managed, but Phillips says only authorities at the provincial and federal have the power to affect any meaningful policy on that front.
Usually, municipal politics centre more around things like sidewalks and property taxes.
“You can have a completely different conversation in different words because there’s different issues. People fixate on that particular traffic light, that particular public service, that particular school,” he said.
“That’s different in many ways than what you see at the provincial level, where you have a common set of messages from the three or four main parties,” he said, adding he was expecting different levels of turnout in each ward.
Phillips said incumbents typically benefit when turnout is low.
“People with high name recognition, whether they’re incumbents or not, tend to do better when there’s a low turnout because the motivated voters turn out.”
Besides dominating the conversation, the pandemic has changed modern elections in another way.
More people are voting at advance polls and via mail-in ballots.
Phillips says there’s no evidence that how someone votes affects their choice of candidate or party.
So, as things get colder and as the pandemic continues, the key to success in future elections may depend on whether politicians can convince voters to cast a ballot at all.