Newfoundland and Labrador election, 2019

[mileslunn]

I think it is a foregone conclusion Liberals will lose seats and PCs will gain, its more a question is the shift big enough to put the PCs in power or does it just result in a reduced Liberal majority.  Usually most landslide elections tend to result in some regression to the mean so Liberals losing seats even if they win handidly again is no surprise as 2015 was in many ways a highwater mark.  NDP seems to be quite weak, but I still think there is a good chance they win a few seats as they will probably put all their efforts into the winneable ridings rather than campaign province wide, but if things get polarized enough much like they did in Alberta, could face a shutout.  Since it looks like PEI will result in a Liberal loss, if Liberals lose here, that means Trudeau going into the fall election will only have two Liberal premiers, Nova Scotia and Yukon.  If PCs win here, that means 7 small c conservative governments (this assumes Greens win in PEI, if PCs pull off an upset than and 6 governments opposed to the carbon tax.  I believe Ches Crosbie is opposed to it but not sure if he will join the other five in fighting it in court or not.

[mileslunn]

True Newfoundland bucked the blue wave and also unlike previous five elections, this is the first in a few years, but not first ever where Conservatives underperformed polls.  Mind you I think big reason for miss was NDP ran in only 14 ridings so probably in the 26 with no NDP candidate, that probably helped the Liberals.  Had NDP ran a full slate its quite possible it would have been enough to tip things in PCs favour although still close.  Nevertheless I think expectations were a bit high for Tories.  Still saw greater than 10 point swing and Newfoundland has never had a one term government so the PC showing if you ignore hyped up expectations wasn't actually that bad.  NDP did quite well for the situation they were placed in. 

Will be interesting if this is a minority or majority as that will depend on who puts up speaker.  Doubt PCs will and NDP probably wants to hold balance of power so won't either so if Liberals can convince one of the two Independents (both former Liberals) to run as speaker or cross the floor they have a majority, otherwise they have a minority.

[mileslunn]

The Liberals aren't that much better in Newfoundland; they've been running the province in austerity mode the last four years. The province hasn't had a decent Premier since Danny Williams, who led a PC government - but was very anti-Conservative.

Really? I've heard in passing that it was Williams & his PC's who were responsible for NL's debt crisis. Is this a massive oversimplification, or just plain wrong?

Plunge in oil price more the reason.  True he offered pretty big tax cuts as while more a Red Tory, his tax cuts were comparable to the likes of Gordon Campbell, Ralph Klein and Mike Harris.  When he came to power, Newfoundland had the second highest top marginal rate after Quebec while when he left second lowest after Alberta.  Today now middle of the pack.  Ever since collapse of the cod fishery, Newfoundland has struggled economically, but when oil was at $100/barrel saw a strong jump in government revenues due to offshore oil.  In many ways much like Alberta if oil prices are high fiscal situation good, but when oil prices fall they end up in big trouble so need to find a way to either raise revenue from other sources or like Norway, save during high oil prices so they can use the fund to cover during downturns instead of spending it all.  Alberta at least with its larger population can use the argument low taxes will encourage more companies to relocate to Alberta thus diversifying whereas Newfoundland is too small for this to realistically happen.