Closing the gap

I'm not sure I'd go so far as to call the latest Saskatchewan poll results "devastating" for anybody - as on a lot of fronts it mostly reflects some seemingly unsurprising developments as Saskatchewan approaches its next provincial election. But perhaps the most interesting is what hasn't changed since Insightrix' previous polling.

Let's start with what has changed since the previous poll, as the Sask Party's numbers are down, the NDP's are up, and a number of issue polls see plenty of public disagreement with the Wall government's direction. It's easy enough to look at those as signs of major progress for the NDP, but I'd argue that they reflect more the expected trajectory of public opinion rather than a lot of new development:

The Insightrix poll reports little change in the support for Brad Wall at 68.5%. But support for the Saskatchewan Party has dropped to 58.4% down from 66.6% in a poll with News Talk Radio in November 2009.
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(W)hat may be ring alarm bells for government is that while Dwain Lingenfelter's approval has dropped just slightly to 28.3%, more people would vote for the NDP now than a few months ago, 23.0% in the fall, now 28.7%.

Keeping in mind that the NDP's share of the vote in 2007 was already at a historically low level at 37%, there was no reason to think that polling numbers in the low to mid 20s were going to become the new normal. And indeed I'd think that given the back-and-forth nature of any political scene as well as the NDP's greater ability to get organized since last year's leadership race, it's probably to be expected that the party numbers will further tighten to a mirror image of the 2007 election results (or closer) by the time the writ is dropped.

As for the issue polling, it's certainly on the negative side for the Sask Party on some important points. But it was never a secret that this year's budget was going to involve some difficult choices - and it shouldn't come as much surprise that at least a few of the Wall government's choices for cuts are rightfully coming back to haunt it.

So much for what's changed as expected. But what about the areas that have suprisingly stayed the same? There, the key numbers are the leadership approval ratings for both Brad Wall and Dwain Lingenfelter.

It certainly has to be a disappointment from an NDP standpoint that the growing public unrest with the Sask Party generally hasn't yet changed how respondents see Wall personally. And the potential for Wall to personally paper over his party's weaknesses is obviously a problem the NDP will need to deal with in its planning going into the 2011 campaign.

At the same time, though, the fact that Dwain Lingenfelter's approval rating has largely stayed constant looks to reflect a complete failure of the Sask Party's biggest strategic move of the past few months.

There doesn't seem to be much room for doubt that the Sask Party's move to mirror the Harper Cons' reliance on attack ads was intended to have a similar impact in public opinion about the leader of the Official Opposition. But while the Cons have now succeeded in driving down two consecutive Lib leaders' approval ratings into the teens, the Sask Party's saturation of provincial airwaves with negative ads has apparently had no substantial effect on public perceptions of Dwain Lingenfelter.

Now, that has to be qualified with a reminder that the NDP and Lingenfelter have a long way to go in closing the current gaps. But if the public wasn't influenced by the anti-Lingenfelter message while the Wall government was at its peak level of popularity, it surely doesn't figure to become more receptive now that more and more people have been given reason to group together to oppose the Sask Party. And with lots of positive moments on the NDP's agenda for the next year and a half in the form of new candidates and a policy renewal process while the Sask Party has been forced on the defensive, there wouldn't figure to be much reason to expect Lingenfelter's approval rating or the NDP's fortunes to do anything but improve from here on in.