Manitoba's election is now the NDP's to lose

If the New Democrats manage to hold on to the lead polls suggest they have right now in Manitoba, there won't be much of a contest on election night.

Two things are going very well for the NDP: strong support for the party itself and a significant voter retreat from the Manitoba Liberals.

Polls released this week by the non-profit Angus Reid Institute and for-profit firm Probe Research suggested 47 to 49 per cent of Manitoba voters intend to cast ballots for the NDP.

Support at that level spells victory — over the past century, no Manitoba political party with 44 per cent of the popular vote or better has lost an election.

Even a smidge below 44 per cent doesn't get you there, at least if you're the Tories. Progressive Conservative parties led by Sterling Lyon in 1981 and Hugh McFadyen in 2011 came close to garnering 44 per cent and still managed to lose elections to the NDP.

In both of those races, support for the Manitoba Liberals collapsed into the single digits. That provided the NDP with an advantage in what essentially became head-to-head races with the PCs in northern Manitoba, Brandon and the northern half of Winnipeg. 

This is another year where the Liberal vote appears to be collapsing. Both the Angus Reid and Probe polls suggest only nine per cent of voters intend to cast a ballot for a Liberal.

That means the dynamic we see right now in Manitoba — strong support for the NDP coupled with a weak Liberal showing — may prove lethal for the Progressive Conservatives.

Even if both the PCs and Liberals claw back a few percentage points of support, recent electoral history suggests the path to victory for the PCs becomes narrow, hinging upon favourable splits in swing constituencies.

In 1999,