On turnout

LRT has already nicely covered the Regina Douglas Park nomination meeting last night where Dwain Lingenfelter was formally nominated for the upcoming by-election. But I'll take a moment to expand on one of the points reported in LRT's post.

Included in the crowd of 200 was a who's who within the NDP across the province: a strong majority of the current caucus was in attendance, along with a lengthy list of former MPs and MLAs and a strong contingent from Saskatoon featuring Saskatoon Riversdale candidate Danielle Chartier. Which means that the good news is that there's no concern at all about unity among the party's stalwarts - a fact which was reinforced by the presence of Brendan Pyle (one of Ryan Meili's Regina co-chairs) as one of Lingenfelter's nominators, as well as a reference in Lingenfelter's speech to the party's priority of achieving gender balance in the NDP's candidates and MLAs as championed by Deb Higgins in the leadership race. (And yes, Higgins was one of the MLAs in attendance.)

But there's somewhat of a flip side to that distribution of audience members. While it was undoubtedly a plus to see plenty of bigger names and out-of-riding members in attendance, it was noteworthy that the actual Douglas Park numbers seemed relatively low: only a handful of riding members moved or seconded motions (often after some prodding), and a minority of attendees raised their hands to vote when that was required.

That distribution within the crowd may be understandable given that there wasn't too much concern about a challenge to Lingenfelter, and the slightly larger numbers at the Saskatoon Riversdale meeting might reflect the fact that more members will be inclined to turn out in a riding which is seen as more likely to face a contested nomination. But I'd still think the high proportion of household names and imports to riding-level members signals that there's plenty of work to be done in developing a broader base of support to go with the top-level turnout - and that seems just as true in longtime strongholds like Regina Douglas Park as in the rural areas which Lingenfelter is rightly concerned with rebuilding.

(Edit: Revised wording of second paragraph - see comments.)