How familiar are Sask. residents with the party leaders?

As Saskatchewan awaits the election call, how are voters feeling about the leaders of Saskatchewan’s two major parties? CTV News sought to find out, in partnership with Insightrix Research.

As Saskatchewan awaits the election call, how are voters feeling about the leaders of Saskatchewan’s two major parties? CTV News sought to find out, in partnership with Insightrix Research.

Most residents polled said they were familiar with Premier Scott Moe, the leader of the Saskatchewan Party at 80 per cent. For NDP Leader Carla Beck, 61 per cent of those surveyed said they were familiar.

According to Insightrix Research Director Lang McGilp, that’s a gap the NDP will need to work to close over the course of the campaign.

“Certainly people are more familiar with the premier of Saskatchewan than they are with the leader of the NDP. We might expect that given that she's more new to the [leadership] space,” McGilp said. “But I think it's important context as we approach this election, because certainly the leader of the NDP will want to try to raise her familiarity with the electorate as much as possible.”

When asked for their impressions of the two major party leaders, 31 per cent said they had a positive opinion of Scott Moe, with Carla Beck drawing a similar number of positive impressions at 30 per cent.

As for negative opinions, 54 per cent of those polled said they had an overall negative opinion of Moe and the Saskatchewan Party, compared to 31 per cent for Beck, who saw a drop from 37 per cent negative in July.

“People gave a free text response. We reviewed those and coded those into groups or categories. Then we further lumped those into comments that are positive, negative or neutral,” McGilp said.