October 8, 2013 (2013-10-08) 40th → 11 seats, 27.20% 10 seats, 24.54% 12 7 Start date October 8, 2013 | Turnout 59.08% 10 seats, 24.54% 31 seats, 45.24% 7 31 | |
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Winner Stephen McNeil | ||
The 2013 Nova Scotia general election, formally the 39th Nova Scotia general election, was held on October 8, 2013, to elect members to the Nova Scotia House of Assembly.
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The result of the election was a Liberal victory under the leadership of Stephen McNeil, with the Liberals winning their first election since 1998. The Progressive Conservatives under the leadership of Jamie Baillie improved on their 2009 results and formed the official opposition, despite winning fewer votes than the New Democratic Party (NDP). The NDP, which had won power for the first time in 2009 under the leadership of Darrell Dexter was reduced to third place and became the first one-term government since 1882. Dexter was defeated in the riding he contested in Cole Harbour-Portland Valley by Liberal candidate Tony Ince.
Timeline
Retiring incumbents
Campaign
The election campaign began the week after Labour Day, when the Legislature would normally have been expected to return to work, had there been no election campaign. As criticism or defence of government policy would dominate the agenda, and by convention electoral mandates are understood to last about four years, despite a lack of fixed election dates, the timing was not controversial.
The Muskrat Falls or Lower Churchill Project, its associated Maritime Link, and electricity policy generally, immediately emerged as the key issue in the early campaign. [1] [2][3][4]. Liberals emphasized Nova Scotia Power's (NSPI) dominance of power generation, and its ability to exclude alternatives through its near-monopoly ownership of the distribution network, covering 129/130 Nova Scotians. They also promised to remove a conservation charge, named for demand response programs that never materialized (though many passive conservation programs run by Efficiency Nova Scotia did prove effective) – instead proposing that NSPI pay for it from its return. Liberals and Conservatives criticized NSPI's unaccountable 9.2% guaranteed rate of return even for unwise investments. Conservatives acknowledged that it was under pressure to meet a tough renewable standard (which they would relax) but also promised to freeze rates. The NDP government continued to defend Muskrat Falls as the only viable alternative to replace coal-fired power, even though this project was before the Nova Scotia Utilities Review Board as of the election call, remained unchanged and this was reflected in their campaign materials – they criticized the Liberal plan as likely to lead to higher power rates. The basis for these criticisms was unclear. However, a similar attempt to open generation competition in New Brunswick failed, in part because New Brunswick Power retained monopoly control of the distribution and transmission network, which intimidates competitors and makes it easy in practice to exclude them.
Other issues in the campaign:
Analysis
On election night, the Liberal Party formed a majority government by a comfortable margin. This was the first time the Liberals had formed government in Nova Scotia since 1999, and their first majority government victory since the 1993 election. From mid 2012, the Liberals had led every public poll and entered the campaign with a 20-point lead over the New Democratic Party (NDP).
While the Liberals had been relatively successful in the Annapolis Valley and on Cape Breton Island during the 2009 election, they were completely shut out of the South Shore, Fundy, and Central Nova Scotia. More importantly, the NDP had dominated the Halifax metropolitan area, winning 14 out of 20 seats. In 2009, the NDP had been able to count on a large number of ridings in and around Halifax, while achieving historic gains across the province, including in traditionally Progressive Conservative (PC) and Liberal areas of rural Nova Scotia. In 2009, the PCs fell from first place to third place in the Legislature, and were completely shut out of the Halifax metropolitan area.
In the 2013 election, NDP support collapsed across the province, as it lost all of its seats in Central Nova Scotia, three of its seats in Fundy, and three of its seats on the South Shore. However, the most important shift was in the Halifax metropolitan area, where NDP support dropped from 54.07% in 2009 to 31.29% in 2013. The party wound up losing 13 of its seats, as the Liberals won 18 of 20 seats in and around Halifax. Strong NDP areas in 2009, like Dartmouth, Central Halifax, and suburban areas north and east of the Harbour swung from the NDP to the Liberals. Among the casualties was Dexter, who lost his own seat to Liberal challenger Tony Ince by 21 votes. He was the first premier since Ernest Armstrong to be defeated in his own riding.
The NDP had very poor vote concentration in the 2013 election. In Halifax, where it won 31.29% of the vote, it won only two seats. While the party finished second in the popular vote ahead of the PCs, its support was spread out around the province and not concentrated in enough areas to translate into seats. Combined with its collapse in Halifax, this left the NDP with only seven seats to the Tories' 11.