Nova Scotia Election

Well, as always, Nova Scotia offered up some very interesting election night results last night.

The PCs pulled off another minority government. It's the third minority government in four elections.

Overall, I would say that the NDP had the best overall campaign. It was tightly run with a clear, concise and focused message. The PC campaign was also strong, although the result was not as positive as they probably had hoped.

The big failure was the Liberals. Clearly, Francis Mackenzie has to go. He couldn't even win his own seat and the party dropped in popular support.

It had been mentioned earlier that there may be a polarization occuring in NS politics between the NDP and PC party - a clear urban-rural divide. I would tend to agree with that accessment. Although, an exception exists.

Look at the riding of Queens near the South Shore. A fairly rural riding. Here, the Liberals did not field a candidate and the NDP took the seat by less than 100 votes. In this case, the lack of a Liberal candidate clearly helped the NDP since Queens has been a Tory riding for many many years.

Therefore, left-of-centre parties can win in rural NS if there is only one option available. In the future, there may be an argument for a joining of the NDP and Liberals in strategy in some parts of NS - similar to what the Liberals and National Party do in Australia.

Either way - the NDP has proven it can win a large number of votes in the province and its hold on Metro seems unbreakable at this point.