Winnipeggers unhappy with city leadership, but mostly unwilling to do anything about it

This is not an endorsement (not my job) nor is it a prediction (predictions are for suckers) of what will happen Wednesday in Winnipeg’s mayoral race. It is, however, a call to arms for voters.

The latest Free Press-Abacus Data (formerly Probe Research) poll, published this past weekend recorded a noticeable decline in support for the two theoretical front-runners (Scott Gillingham and Kevin Klein, respectively) and an increase from modest to significant for just about everyone else.

Gillingham saw his support from decided voters drop from 55 per cent to 36 per cent. Klein, the former city councillor and MLA, saw support drop from 23 to 19 per cent.

And what of the rest? Business owner Mike Vogiatzakis, who generated most of his headlines in this campaign by engaging in NHL-grade trash-talking with Klein, was up three points to 14 per cent. And Noah Redden, the 27-year-old software developer, saw his support jump by 10 points, from four to 14 per cent.

For the two purported front-runners, this is the kind of erosion in support that goes off like an air-raid siren, particularly when it may (emphasis on “may”) signal some sort of shift in the trend lines of this campaign.

There are a couple of important takeaways from the results.

First, media organizations that held mayoral candidate debates and then limited participation to only those with more than 10 per cent support in polls taken earlier in the campaign should probably re-think their criteria.

Excluding Redden, who now has more than 10 per cent support, seems like an incredibly bad break. Perhaps the debate hosts could look at other metrics, such as the number of announcements or the complexity of their platforms. Just saying.

Which brings us to the big, new question in the campaign: is Redden worthy of the surge in support in this latest poll?

Redden has no experience in politics or government, which can be a huge plus for some voters. And he is younger than the three candidates who are either tied with him or ahead of him in poll results. Young can sometimes, but not always, motivate younger voters which, in most but not all instances, boosts voter turnout.

In other words, if Redden’s support is a precursor to a higher turnout, then he is likely to outperform even the very respectable numbers in the poll.

As for his platform, Redden has ticked all the right boxes for top-of-mind issues; public safety, homelessness, transit, housing. He has clearly paid attention to the issues that voters are paying attention to, and that’s not nothing.

Where things break down is costing. Candidates who have never served in municipal government tend to make unaffordable promises because, from the outside, it always looks as if there are savings to pay for new ideas that can be exploited.

Unfortunately, the city simply does not have enough money because of limited opportunities to generate revenue and woefully inadequate and out-of-date funding models from the federal and provincial governments.

Redden, for example, has promised to help Winnipeg Transit by increasing the frequency of buses on key routes, touchless card payment options and a light-rail system on the Main Street-St. Mary’s Road corridor.

These are all the right things to do. City hall is trying to do the first two, but given that there isn’t clear, committed funding to finish the dedicated bus rapid transit network, LRT seems like a worthy, but unrealistic suggestion.

Redden has also tried to tackle homelessness and unaffordable housing, with a pledge to support community groups and “work with developers to prioritize building and refitting more affordable housing units.” This is the right solution, but it’s also largely what the city — which has neither the money nor the jurisdiction — is already trying to do, with very limited success.

Although Redden’s surge in popularity is intriguing, it’s not the most interesting part of this poll. That distinction will fall to the precipitous decline in support for Gillingham and, to a lesser extent, Klein and what it says about the mood of the electorate.

Gillingham remains the most popular of a relatively unpopular field, and more than 60 per cent of respondents said they’d like to give someone other than the incumbent a shot at running the city. That’s a powerful statement, but the math tells us that far too many of the people who said that have yet to indicate a preference for the candidate they do want.

That poll result paints a picture of an electorate that is frustrated and cynical, but not particularly motivated to do anything about it. Like voters in most other major cities, we are complainers without the intestinal fortitude to identify and support a better candidate.

I won’t predict a winner, but I will predict historically low turnout. And that’s saying something, given that the 2022 mayoral turnout was 37 per cent.

Apathetic voters often complain that they don’t vote because their vote doesn’t mean anything.

However, with no true front-runner in this campaign, there is a an opportunity for apathetic voters to rise up and make a difference.

Lamentably, that might be too big an ask from an electorate that would rather complain than vote.

dan.lett@winnipegfreepress.com