LA RONGE, Sask. — It came down to the wire but the Saskatchewan NDP managed to pull ahead by barely a nostril Wednesday to win a byelection in the province's northeast.
The party has held the constituency of Cumberland since 1971 but there were some nervous moments for odds-on favourite Doyle Vermette, who see-sawed all night with dark horse Dale McAuley, the former mayor of Cumberland House who was running for the Saskatchewan Party.
"In the end, a win's a win's a win," said a thrilled NDP Leader Lorne Calvert. "Close only counts in horseshoes."
During the campaign, Vermette had dismissed suggestions that voters wanted a member in government to represent them, but after the vote he admitted that may have been a factor.
"People definitely looked at that," he said. "(But) even though the Saskatchewan Party is in power, they decided to elect an NDP candidate to represent them."
Calvert agreed the Saskatchewan Party's push to elect a government member was a "powerful argument" but also observed "that argument didn't carry the day."
By the time Wednesday's counting was done, Vermette, a one-time councillor for the northern village of Air Ronge, was declared the winner by just 164 votes.
With all 39 polls reporting, the unofficial tally was 1,564 for Vermette, 1,400 for McAuley and just 181 for Tory McGregor of the Greens. The Liberals didn't run a candidate.
Absentee and hospital ballots were still to be counted on July 7, but they numbered only about a dozen and were unlikely to alter the outcome.
McAuley hedged on whether he would apply for a judicial recount, which the Elections Act says he can ask for if the margin of victory is less than the total number of all unopened envelopes, rejected ballots and ballots objected to.
At first he said it was unlikely, then he said he'd like to sleep on it. Calvert said he thought the margin was sufficient to make a recount unlikely.
"I would have liked to have won, but I guess (it was) just not quite enough votes to come to be victorious," said McAuley, who was also at one time an area director for the Metis Nation of Saskatchewan.
"But it was close. I thought I was going to win."
While conceding defeat to the NDP, Ken Krawetz, the Saskatchewan Party's deputy leader, counted the closeness of the vote as "a huge success."
"It clearly shows there isn't a safe NDP seat in Saskatchewan," he said. "I think the Saskatchewan Party has proven itself in a short while and we're going to be competitive in every constituency in the province."
Cumberland is a massive constituency with a small population. It covers the entire northeastern quarter of the province, but had only 9,413 eligible voters in the provincial election last November in which the Saskatchewan Party wrested power from the NDP.
New Democrat Joan Beatty easily captured the seat with more than 3,000, or 66 per cent, of the 4,700 ballots cast.
But Beatty quit in January to run for the federal Liberals in a March byelection, which she lost. On Wednesday, she said she would again seek the Liberal nomination in the riding of Desnethe-Missinipi-Churchill River for the next federal election.
The vote did not change the balance of power because the governing Saskatchewan Party holds 38 seats to the NDP's 20.
Wednesday's result was just the latest tight election race in Saskatchewan.
Following the Nov. 7 election, three constituencies - Prince Albert Carlton, Moose Jaw North and Meadow Lake - had close results.
The final tally Nov. 19 gave the Saskatchewan Party wins in Prince Albert Carlton and Moose Jaw North. But in Meadow Lake, it took a judicial recount a month after the election to confirm that Saskatchewan Party candidate Jeremy Harrison had defeated NDP incumbent and former industry minister Maynard Sonntag by 36 votes.
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