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Manitoba NDP wins fourth-straight majority

WINNIPEG — Manitoba’s New Democrats won a fourth-straight majority government Tuesday, even though the Progressive Conservatives took a big bite out of their popular vote.
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NDP leader Greg Selinger gives his victory speech at party headquarters in Winnipeg after he was declared the winner of the Manitoba election Tuesday.

WINNIPEG — Manitoba’s New Democrats won a fourth-straight majority government Tuesday, even though the Progressive Conservatives took a big bite out of their popular vote.

It wasn’t enough for Tory Leader Hugh McFadyen, who told supporters he takes personal responsibility for failing to win and will step down once his replacement is chosen.

Premier Greg Selinger’s party was on track to take at least 35 of the legislature’s 57 seats compared with 21 for the Conservatives and one for the Liberals.

The NDP won 36 seats in the 2007 election.

The popular vote was almost a dead heat. The NDP was running at 45 per cent, just one percentage point ahead of the Tories.

“Today Manitobans went to the ballot box and they voted for optimism!” Selinger told a crowd of cheering supporters after the results came in.

“Tonight we have made history in Manitoba. Life is never better than when we work together for a purpose greater than ourselves, and that’s what we’ve done tonight.”

The difference was Winnipeg, which has 31 seats and holds the balance of power. The NDP was elected in all but a handful of those seats, which allowed the party to hold off a strong rural showing by the Tories.

The PCs had targeted a number of seats in the capital city with little success. Star candidates such as Olympic speedskater Susan Auch and former city councillor Gord Steeves went down to defeat by healthy margins.

McFadyen said he didn’t get the job done. “You have to deliver bottom-line results if you want to carry on as leader of the party,” he said.

“We didn’t get the result we wanted so I am announcing tonight that I will be stepping down as our party leader.”

McFadyen added that his party was the victim of a cruel numbers game under the first-past-the post election system.

“Under any other circumstance we would be happy with 45 per cent of the popular vote,” he said. “Obviously we didn’t get those votes in the right places.

“It’s a very disappointing night for all of us.”

Liberal Leader Jon Gerrard retained his Winnipeg riding of River Heights, but his party fell to just 7.5 per cent voter support.

Gerrard wouldn’t discuss his future but did say he would represent his constituents for the next four years. He told his supporters not to lose faith.

“There is a very strong future for Liberals in Manitoba,” he said.

“We have a dream someday we will have a Liberal government in this province. Let us, in spite of the results today, not be disheartened.”

Selinger retained his Winnipeg seat of St. Boniface and McFadyen was re-elected in the city’s Fort Whyte constituency.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper sent his congratulations to Selinger. “I look forward to continuing to work with him on promoting prosperity in the province and country,” Harper said in a news release.

The win is a personal victory for the premier, who took over from Gary Doer, the charismatic leader who was the face of the NDP for 20 years. Doer left to become Canada’s ambassador to the United States and party support dipped under Selinger. He had served as the province’s finance minister for a decade but struggled as leader to connect with voters.

As recently as seven months ago, polls suggested the Tories were well out in front of the New Democrats, but Selinger polished his public-speaking skills and developed a more aggressive tone when debating his opponents.

That tone was evident throughout the hotly contested four-week election campaign. The parties were differentiated more by their attacks ads than by policies.

On billboards, television and in print, the NDP accused McFadyen of having a secret agenda to privatize Crown corporations and cut health care.

McFadyen, 44, is a former lawyer who has led the Tories through two unsuccessful campaigns. He was painted by the NDP as a neo-conservative threat to government programs based on his time as a policy adviser to the Tory government of the 1990s, which sold off the province’s telephone company.

McFadyen spent much of the campaign on the defensive. He took out ads that promised no such cuts would occur.

But the Tories also took their own jabs. They accused the NDP of having a soft-on-crime stance and letting criminals roam free. One candidate’s radio ad called the Point Douglas area north of downtown Winnipeg “a war zone.”

All three parties promised to hire more doctors and nurses to improve health care and to put more police officers on the streets to fight the province’s high crime rate.

Gerrard, 63, has had four kicks at the can and has failed to bring the Liberals out of the political wilderness. He struggled in a campaign that was personally disheartening and, at times, riven with dissent.

One week before the election, one Liberal candidate said he was worried the party might not win any seats and placed part of the blame on Gerrard.

Days later, two former Liberal members of Parliament wrote letters of support for New Democrats in two constituencies. The Liberals won two seats in the 2007 election. One became vacant last year when Kevin Lamoureux resigned for a successful run at federal politics.

When the election was called, the NDP had 36 seats, the Tories had 18, the Liberals had one and there were two vacancies.

— With files from Chinta Puxley