Incumbent NDP candidate pushes strategic voting in Elmwood-Transcona

Appealing to strategy is the name of the game in Elmwood-Transcona, a riding made unique in Manitoba by its front-runners, historically, being NDP and Conservative, with nary a Liberal in sight.

Depending on the candidate, conversations with constituents in the city’s easternmost riding appear to be focused on who leads the country after the April 28 vote — Liberal Leader Mark Carney, the current occupant of the Prime Minister’s Office, or Conservative Pierre Poilievre.

In her first full-scale federal election, NDP candidate Leila Dance is asking constituents to see the NDP as the key to ensuring the Conservatives, who came in a close second in the byelection triggered by the resignation of Daniel Blaikie that she won in September, are kept at bay.

“I do explain this is inherently an orange-blue riding, we need to be really aware of that,” Dance, 47, told the Free Press.

“If we’re looking at strategically voting to making sure that the Conservatives are kept out of this riding, then that’s what we need to do.”

When the former executive director of Transcona BIZ bested Conservative challenger Colin Reynolds in September, it was by 1,182 votes — keeping the NDP stronghold, but a far cry from just three years earlier, when Blaikie received nearly 9,000 more votes than the second-place candidate.

She said she’s found herself speaking with previous Tory voters who are now hesitant to cast ballots for the party.

“Local Conservatives here sometimes don’t always agree or line up their views with what is happening with the federal Conservatives,” she said.

Conservative candidate Colin Reynolds, who is described on the party’s website as a construction electrician and union member, did not respond to requests for comment. Reynolds did not speak to media prior to last year’s byelection.

But his supporters are planning strategic votes of their own.

Resident Val Palombi said while he has voted Liberal in the past, he wants to do what he can to get Poilievre into the PMO.

“I’m tired of the Liberal party, and I’m tired of the NDP selling their souls to the Liberal party, and going through the last decade of Liberal domination, I guess you could call it,” said Palombi from his home.

“It’s time for a change.”

Palombi has yet to meet Reynolds, but said his dissatisfaction with the other two federal parties was enough to secure his vote and get a Reynolds sign on his lawn.

“If Carney gets elected, honestly, all of the same people who were with the Liberals for the prior eight years, it’s all going to be all of the same people,” he said.

Meanwhile, Liberal candidate Ian MacIntyre, coming off of a disastrous 4.8 per cent vote in the 2024 byelection, sees polls suggesting an upswing for the party nationwide as a chance to get his foot in the door.

The 66-year-old retired teacher, who worked in the riding for years, and formerly led the Manitoba Teachers’ Society, said he’s familiar with the area and its hesitation to vote Liberal.

Regardless, he describes himself as “not just a paper candidate” — tension south of the border and unfavourable comparisons between U.S. President Donald Trump and Poilievre stand to be his gain.

“The more I’m talking to people, I am having Conservatives tell me they’re not voting Conservative this time; they voted (Conservative) in the fall… but they’re not going to be voting for Mr. Poilievre.”

West of Manitoba on the Prairies, there is less NDP representation, in part, because there are more “internal pockets” in urban Winnipeg protected from the suburban sprawl usually accompanied by more Conservative voters, said Chris Adams, an adjunct political studies professor at the University of Manitoba.

Adams has lived in Elmwood-Transcona for more than two decades.

“The Transcona part is very much affected as urban sprawl occurs,” he said.

“If you come out to Transcona, you’ll see this urban sprawl of huge condos behind the casino, behind the Costco — large houses, large developments…. These are not the working-class neighbourhood houses of the old Transcona.”

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The riding hasn’t always been a two-horse race; in the Liberal wave of 2015 that swept Justin Trudeau and the Liberals to power, the vote in Elmwood-Transcona was divided fairly closely among the three leading parties.

Conservative Lawrence Toet lost to New Democrat Daniel Blaikie by less than 100 votes that year — but Adams noted that Blaikie — whose late father Bill Blaikie was the area MP for 29 years — is a “very big name in Transcona.”

Dance’s political career, in comparison, has been brief.

“We can’t see it as a safe riding for the NDP anymore,” Adams said.

Adams suggested what he called a “national propensity” by federal Conservative candidates in recent years to avoid town halls and media interviews could be an influential factor in the riding, where people pride themselves on their working-class roots and close ties to their community.

“People (in Elmwood-Transcona) know each other, and they know each other in their schools and PTA meetings and things like that,” he said.

“I think people in (the riding) were quite offended by that behaviour in the last election, but that’s a national strategy, it’s not a local strategy.”

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca

Malak Abas
Reporter

Malak Abas is a city reporter at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg’s North End, she led the campus paper at the University of Manitoba before joining the Free Press in 2020. Read more about Malak.

Every piece of reporting Malak produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.