Houston Makes it Happen - PCs Re-Elected in Nova Scotia

The gamble has paid off as Tim Houston and the Nova Scotia Progressive Conservatives were rewarded last night with an even larger majority than they started the campaign with, despite calling an election a year earlier than scheduled. Houston’s PCs may have ignored their very own Bill 1 on fixed election dates which they brought in after their 2021 victory, but his party is teetering on also breaking the records for electoral success unheard of in the province since Premier Robert Stanfield in the 60’s. Polls had barely even closed before most major news networks in the country declared the PCs having won a second consecutive majority government.

Houston, who took over the Leadership of the Nova Scotia PCs in 2018, won 31 seats in the 2021 General Election. While it may still be a few days before the official count is declared, the PCs currently are leading or elected in 43 ridings across the province. At dissolution of the Legislature prior to the election, the PCs held 34 seats.

The Liberals, led by Leader Zach Churchill, have imploded, going from a majority government just three years ago to almost losing official party status, leading and elected in just two ridings. Churchill, running in the riding of Yarmouth, has lost his re-election bid by a thin margin that will necessitate an automatic recount. This is the worst result for the Nova Scotia Liberal Party in their 157 year history. The Liberals were not just harmed by a popular incumbent government, but also their ties to the federal Trudeau Liberal Party, who have become increasingly unpopular in the province because of both the carbon tax and fishery issues. One of the two Liberals to be re-elected was former Premier Iain Rankin who lost in the general election to Houston in 2021.

As votes continue to be counted, the NDP have leaped above the Liberals to form the Official Opposition, leading and elected in nine districts, with all but one of the seats in the Halifax Regional Municipality. NDP Leader Claudia Chender has been declared re-elected for her third straight election and will be the first NDP Opposition Leader since 2006.  This was the best result for the Nova Scotia NDP since former Premier Darrell Dexter was defeated for re-election in 2013.

The PCs are projected to gain at least 10 seats, with the Liberals losing 14 seats and the NDP picking up four. Interestingly, the change between the NDP and the Liberals in seat totals comes despite almost a tie between the two parties in the popular vote, where the inefficient Liberal vote was actually slightly ahead of the NDP’s province wide vote share at 24% and 22.2% respectively. This is not dissimilar to the dynamic in the last provincial election in Ontario, where the Liberals had a broader base of support province wide but the NDP outperformed them in more efficient Urban electoral districts. While Houston and the PCs will have several new members of their caucus to choose from to form his next cabinet, every member of the previous cabinet who sought re-election was re-elected for the government.

In the riding of Cumberland North, incumbent MLA Elizabeth Smith-McCrossin was once again re-elected. Smith-McCrossin was first elected as a PC in 2017 but was removed from the party's caucus in 2021, however was successfully re-elected in the general election that year as an independent as well.

The 2021 Nova Scotia General Election was very much a referendum on health care, not typically a recipe for electoral success for a conservative party. In his quest for re-election, Tim Houston focused on affordability issues, his opposition to the federal carbon tax, as well as the accomplishments of his first term, running on a slogan of making it happen. Some of the re-elected government's major election promises were to cut the provincial portion of the harmonized sales tax by 1%, a $3,000 increase to the basic personal exemption, addressing health care human resource shortfalls in rural areas, and keeping energy costs low with an increased cap on rates.

Houston and the PCs will now form a supermajority in the Legislature, which means they won’t need the co-operation of opposition parties to change the procedural rules of the House. The PCs will now have four more years to keep making it happen after receiving 52.8% of the province wide popular vote, the best result for a winner in the province since Robert Stanfield’s 1963 re-election.