Western NDP candidates focus on their ground game — and keeping their seats

When Premier Wab Kinew met federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh at the legislature in Winnipeg on Tuesday night, the cameras captured a Manitoba-friendly greeting, but not a public endorsement for Singh's national campaign.

That doesn't mean, however, that Kinew's party doesn't support Singh's team. When CBC News asked Elmwood–Transcona candidate Leila Dance at Singh's event the next morning whether she's supported by her provincial counterparts, she said Manitoba New Democrats have turned up and helped out.

Kinew endorsed Dance when she first ran in a byelection last September. Not a shock perhaps: the previous MP for the riding, Daniel Blaikie, left his seat to work as an adviser to the premier. So: would Kinew endorse her again?

"It's still early days. You never know what's going to come up!" Dance said, not literally winking and nudging, but seeming confident nevertheless.

"I'm just focused in on specifically my riding. What worked for me was door-knocking and door-knocking and door-knocking," she said. Forty thousand homes later, she said she's already on her second pair of campaign shoes in her rematch with the same Conservative she beat last fall.

National polls haven't been kind to Singh's party. Current seat projections suggest his 24-member caucus in the last Parliament could be cut in half, or worse, in this election.

New Democrats, however, sometimes put out a ground game capable of beating those expectations. In February's Ontario election, for example, the NDP vote was efficient enough to return New Democrats as the province's Opposition, despite trailing in not only polling but also the popular vote.

In Western Canada, the NDP governs in two provinces (British Columbia, Manitoba) and competes strongly as the Opposition party in the other two (Alberta, Saskatchewan). Singh may need some of that political muscle.

Phrases like "save the furniture" aren't typically used until later in a campaign tour, but it was notable in Edmonton on Tuesday, for example, that even though Singh's announcement was positioned in a riding where New Democrats hope to play offence (with candidate Trisha Estabrooks in the previously Liberal-held Edmonton Centre), the leader door-knocked to support incumbent Heather McPherson's defence in Edmonton Strathcona.

"Liberals cannot beat Conservatives in Alberta. Right now New Democrats are the only party that can beat Conservatives — we have seen that at the provincial level, we have seen that at the federal level," McPherson told CBC News.

She said the campaign so far in Edmonton "looks great" from her perspective, and she's fortunate to share her part of the city with some fantastic provincial MLAs: Janis Irwin, and soon (whenever a byelection is called) — she hopes — the NDP's new provincial leader, Naheed Nenshi.

"It's the same volunteers that are working on the campaigns. We're New Democrats because we have the same values, right?" McPherson said.

Nenshi, however, was not around when Singh and McPherson hit the doors in his part of town. He was in Calgary, where he used to be the mayor. He spoke to Singh on Tuesday over a Zoom call, tour staff said.

Half of Singh's caucus in the previous Parliament represented B.C. ridings, and that's where his tour started the week. At the leader's announcement in Victoria on Monday, candidate Laurel Collins said she was feeling good.