Does the Sask. NDP even CARE anymore?

That should read "COULD lose a number of those next time". Can the mod please correct that?

Fair enough, and I agree that in the short term things look brighter there. A big part of that is because people still remember the Filmon years, and I think the NDP in Manitoba are in part riding on that.

As someone who lived through those years, and saw the selloff of MTS, I am glad I moved here.

Isn't the left/NDP well represented on Saskatoon City Council at least?

I think it still goes back to Romanow's embrace of right-wing economic and spending policies.  Once he did that, once it became clear that the SNDP wouldn't do any more to defend working-class people and the poor than the old PC's would(or their mutant BC Socred-style successors the "Saskatchewan Party" would) people who would have been natural SNDP supporters came to the conclusion that, well, there really wasn't any reason for them to bother...there'd be cuts and lost ground no matter what, and the rich would crush everyone else no matter what.

The SNDP STILL refuses to break with any of Romanow's major policies, so there is no reason for the kind of voters who would support a party that defended the values Tommy D. fought for to think that they should care who runs the provincial government anymore.

This is what always happens when you reduce the whole thing to "it's enough to get 'our side' into power, period". 

Having lived most of my life in SK (I left less than two years ago), I don't think that's how it worked, Ken.

Romanow did move the party more to the centre, but I really don't think the NDP would have successfully held on to the government for as long as they did if he hadn't.  I think there was an attempt to keep a balance.  It's debatable whether they were successful.

The SP are the former Liberals and PC party members.  It's not so much that they aren't appealing to "natural" supporters of the left, it's that the province no longer has very many of those anymore.  Saskatchewan's "character", if you will, has undergone a dramatic shift to the right, especially in the rural areas.  The Saskatchewan I grew up in doesn't exist anymore. 

Of course, it didn't help that the SNDP gave a great performance in the art of self-immolation by electing Lingenfelter as party leader.  They'll be decades rebuilding after that stunt.

I couldn't say.  It's a very clear split between urban and rural, though.  There's also no viable third option, so more people will go to the SP side if they're pissed off at the NDP.  I really have the sense that there is a smaller swing vote than there used to be.

Yes, and having relocated to MB after SK killed their film and tv industry, it scares the crap out of me. As does Pallister.

I remember when Malcolm was part of this community, and he often said that every couple of decades a window opens for a third party to displace one of the main contenders. I think what happens is that when a party gets used to always being one of the main 2 contenders for power, there's a sort of complacency that sets in throughout the organization, as if all they have to do is wait for the government to screw up badly enough and they will be rewarded without any work or taking any risks. Meanwhile, parties that are not regular contenders for power have to reach out and bring in new people and try new things for survival, and sometimes this inspiration is enough to over take one of the other parties. You look at the history of Saskatchewan and BC, there is (not yet) a third party capable of displacing them, so they are still of the mindset I described, even though I'm not sure the Saskatchewan NDP realizes that it's unprecedented for them to lose seats to a right-wing party while in opposition. On the other hand, the NDP in Ontario and Manitoba fell to third place, and generally once you lead your party into the ground that badly there's nothing standing between you and the tar and feathers, and you can renew. (I was talking to a long-standing MLA from that era who said that the advantage of experiencing a crushing defeat is that it helps clean out the deadwood in the organization.)

I just checked Saskatchewan election results going back to 1944 courtesy of Wikipedia, and with a few exceptions, elections have generally tended to polarize between 2 parties, with others generally playing a more marginal role, if at all. The Greens actually beat the Liberals in the 2011 election, and given the general upward trend of green politics around the world lately, I expect that number to go nowhere but up, although they don't seem to have any areas of natural strength to build on.

I actually get the sense that in 2011 the NDP would have actually finished below second place had there been more than 2 parties represented in the Legislature prior to that election.

Having lived. In SK and AB all my life I notice that the two provinces are becoming more alike. The exception might be Edmonton where social democracy still has some life.

I tend to think that the NDP's problems go deeper than historic shifts. Thinking back 30 years ago, among my peers (say my scout troop I was involved in as a teen) with one exception there wasn't a conservative in the bunch. Few of them would line up to the modern understanding of a New Democrat today. There was and is something socially wrong in the NDP. I feel like they ran eccentric single men in family neighbourhoods, old social gospel preachers in new young areas, socialists in heavily Catholic areas, and union bosses who couldn't lead their members. A number of those people were real bastards too. Ticking boxes that made one a good New Democrat was often more important than picking people who were good members of the community. Quite a few of the current crop of MLAs are career politicians or children of activists. Not relatable to average people.

Wall is authentic, and I think when he breaks rank with Harper it's genuine. This is also true when he is cheap with teachers and gets really white hot and angry over squabbles with organized labour - it's real and not a tactic. I think this is important in the social media world. Cam Broten doesn't make people angry but he hasn't necessarily made a connection. The NDP are pushing a health and education message, and it's getting some traction but I don't think they are flipping voters. My guess is that the next non-SP government will be some coalition of Left Liberals, Greens, and disaffected New Democrats but that is years away.

Is "eccentric single men" meant to be a euphemism for openly gay men there?

Just...wow! The mistakes made by the provincial NDP sections in the provinces that regularly elect them are just...and the federal party continues to look at these parties as models for success?

Please tell me there's an up-and-coming viable third party to vote for in Saskatchewan.

It's not as if voters who oppose revenue sharing would ever vote NDP anyway.  Anyone who wants to reduce FN revenues would be a hardline white supremacist, and people with that worldview would always vote for Wall's SaskCreds.