Voters in Kildonan-St. Paul's most volatile polling area offer little hint of election-day fate

In the Winnipeg-area riding of Kildonan-St. Paul, there's a U-shaped slice of the Riverbend neighbourhood with no collective allegiance to any of Canada's three most popular political parties.

On election day in 2015, when Liberal MaryAnn Mihychuk won this riding, voters in this particular polling area couldn't decide between the Liberal victor and her Conservative opponent.

In 2019, when Conservative Raquel Dancho wrested the riding away from Mihychuk by more than 7,000 votes overall, she only edged out the Liberal incumbent by 19 votes in this polling area.

And when Dancho won the riding decisively once more in 2021, voters in this polling area couldn't decide between the incumbent Conservative and her NDP opponent.

If there are such things as swing voters in Kildonan-St. Paul, they live on streets like Le Peress Avenue, Endcliffe Place and Wisteria Way. True to recent form, residents of this polling area offered little in the way of consensus as they enjoyed one of the first sunny days of spring.

"This is a very difficult election," said Kathie Kraychuk, who said she's worried about Donald Trump's 51st-state talk about Canada and plans to vote for NDP candidate Emily Clark.

"I've never voted for the other two parties. However, there is one party in particular that I think if they do get in, we're in very serious trouble."

Kraychuk said that party is Dancho's Conservatives — who have Karen Makara's vote.

"They're a little bit more tight when it comes to money, but it's a good thing because they actually always take Canada out of debt," she said, sipping coffee outside her home.

Darcy Fehr, meanwhile, plans to vote for Liberal Thomas Naaykens because he too is concerned with the trade disruptions created by Trump.

"I'm more NDP usually, but I think now we're just in a situation where we have to go more centre and hopefully we survive all this," he said from a passing vehicle. "It's a big risk to … all of our livelihoods right now."

If voters in Kildonan-St. Paul's most undecided polling area can't point to an outcome on election day 2025, polling data offers a suggestion.

With five days to go in this campaign, CBC's Poll Tracker and 338canada.com suggest nationwide support for Mark Carney's Liberal Party is hovering around 43 per cent, which is nearly four percentage points more than it ended up being on election day in 2015, when Liberal Mihychuk won Kildonan-St. Paul.

The Liberal lead in polls prior to election day does not faze Conservative candidate Dancho, who is seeking her third election victory in a riding she contends is itching to help her party form the next government.

"What I'm hearing at the door, particularly from young families that are working harder than ever and struggling to get ahead. There is an overwhelming desire to see a change of government," Dancho said in an interview at her campaign office in a North Kildonan strip mall.

Dancho said prior to this election cycle, she had never heard of her Liberal opponent Naaykens. He's one of several political novices who won a Liberal Party nomination by acclamation this winter, when the polls suggested the Liberals faced electoral disaster under then-leader Justin Trudeau.

Naaykens, who studied accounting and served in the Canadian military as an armour officer, said he doesn't believe his inexperience or lack of profile is a detriment in his competition with the twice-elected Dancho.

"She does have the name of the incumbent, but what does that mean for the people of our riding, right? Is she actually able to do something for them?" he said in an interview outside Seven Oaks House in West Kildonan.

Dancho does not just have name recognition in her favour. New boundaries for Kildonan-St. Paul appear to favour the Conservatives.

Since the 2019 election, the riding has been extended to the east and now encompasses Conservative-leaning polling areas inside the rural municipality of Springfield, including the Winnipeg bedroom community of Oakbank.

Dancho, Naaykens and the NDP's Clark are joined on the Kildonan-St. Paul ballot by Erik Holmes of the People's Party of Canada.