The Island Has Voted
A staggering Progressive Conservative victory, opposition parties diminished, and the state of PEI polling.
Election Outcome
The Prince Edward Island election came and went Monday evening, with it a new government for the island’s people.
Dennis King’s Progressive Conservatives were re-elected with an overwhelming majority government last night, winning 22 out of a possible 27 seats in the legislature.
The battle for Official Opposition was a close fight between the Liberals and the Greens. The Liberals took the mantle of Official Opposition away from the Greens after they won 3 seats and the Greens won 2.
The results of the election were:
Progressive Conservatives: 22 seats / 55.9% of the vote
Liberals: 3 seats / 17.2% of the vote
Greens: 2 seats / 21.6% of the vote
NDP: 0 seats / 4.5% of the vote
Island Party: 0 seats / 0.5% of the vote
Opposition Parties Diminished
It was, to put it frankly, a bad night for the Liberals and the Greens.
The Liberals managed to hold onto three of their seats, that of O’Leary-Inverness, Tignish-Palmer Road, and Charlottetown-West Royalty, with Tignish-Palmer Road being the party’s best showing. Compared to the results of the 2019 election, the Liberals saw their party cut in half, as well as their leader, Sharon Cameron, losing against Green leader Peter Bevan-Baker.
Speaking of the Greens, they fared much worse last night. Not only did they lose Official Opposition to the Liberals, but they also saw a larger share of their seats cut down. Initially, they had eight seats going into this election and came out of last night with only Charlottetown-Victoria Park and New Haven-Rocky Point. Both seats saw the Greens skim by against their PC competitors with Karla Bernard in Charlottetown-Victoria Park holding the seat by a 3% margin and Bevan-Baker holding New Haven-Rocky Point by 3.2%.
Then there’s the New Democrats who came up short in their attempts to gain a seat in the legislature. Their best chance at a seat, O’Leary-Inverness, saw Herb Dickieson come third. Their leader, Michelle Neill, finished last in Charlottetown-Brighton, a seat the PC’s would pick up from the Greens.
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With the opposition parties whittled down to a collective of five seats, this is a far cry from the opposition that was in place at the end of the 2019 election when they had a collective of fourteen seats between them.
This election saw the Liberal’s share of the vote fall 12% from their 2019 result, compounded by the 11% drop in support they saw from 2015 to 2019. Suffice it to say, seeing the Liberals pull 17% of the vote when they used to draw more than 50% in the 2000s has been a stunning show of their diminishing support on the island.
For the Greens, even though they saw their share of the vote drop 9% from the previous election, they still had their second-strongest showing ever as a party in their 18 years of existence.
I think the Greens will have an easier time rebounding from this election than the Liberals will. Despite losing Official Opposition, they still beat out the Liberals in 20 of the 27 seats and have their leader in the legislature, unlike the Liberals.
The Future of the Opposition Leaders
With Sharon Cameron failing to win her seat and the aforementioned results of this election, there’s a big question mark over her head as leader of the Liberal party in PEI. A unanimous agreement on her poor debate performance and a further drop in the Liberal vote share makes her an easy scapegoat for party members to point a finger to. I think Cameron will likely step down as leader in the coming months, if not sooner.
Peter Bevan-Baker isn’t in the clear either. The Greens lost three-quarters of their seats and dipped in the vote share as well. I think it’s somewhat likely that Bevan-Baker will vacate his position as leader and, if he does, would probably stay on as interim until a new leader is found for the party. Remember, he’s been leader of the PEI Greens since 2012!
How Did The Polls Fare?
All in all, the polls did their job well as they predicted a Progressive Conservative win on the island.
Mainstreet Research walked away from last night the most accurate of the three pollsters who bothered to poll the island during the election. A little ways behind them was Narrative’s pre-writ poll and further behind them, doing the worst of the trio, was Forum Research.
Mainstreet gauged Green support the closest, only off by 0.3% from the results. They were also the closest in measuring the PC vote share in the province.
Forum came closest to determining the NDP vote share, only missing the mark by 0.5%. Meanwhile, Narrative’s pre-writ poll was closest in predicting Liberal support, being off from the result by 1.8%.
Related Atlantic Canada News
While the PEI election is over, another round of elections is still coming up later this month!
New Brunswick has three byelections taking place on April 24 in the ridings of Dieppe, Restigouche-Chaleur, and Bathurst East-Nepisiguit-Saint-Isidore. All three ridings are currently held by the New Brunswick Liberals, and with a diminishment of PC support in the province since the previous election, they should make for easy Liberal holds.
But byelections are fickle things, as we’ve come to experience.