EDMONTON — I have no idea who is going to win the NCAA Men’s Basketball title next Monday — but I have a pretty good idea who’s going to win the Saskatchewan election on the same day.

Brad Wall’s approval rating among Saskatchewanians is consistently near or in the 60 per cent range — close to double the second tier of his fellow premiers. Recent polling indicates he’s poised to form his third consecutive majority government. Last year saw the defeat of the Stephen Harper Conservatives and the PCs in both Newfoundland/Labrador and Alberta — but something still has Saskatchewan voters bucking the trend.

To understand why, you have to understand the place. I grew up in Saskatchewan, lived exactly half of my 51 years there and proudly call it home. The people are what make it special — hardworking, common-sense types, frugal and lacking even an ounce of pretension. Politics is a vital topic in Saskatchewan and frequently dominates dinner table conversation. Governments usually change every 8 or 12 years (Liberal to Conservative, back to Liberal, then CCF, then Liberal, then NDP, Conservative, NDP again and finally the Saskatchewan Party).

Elections in Saskatchewan are competitive and voters are always engaged. But what distinguishes the province’s politics more than anything else is its emphasis on the pragmatic over the ideological.

And Brad Wall is the very image of the practical Prairie conservative. I met him at the University of Saskatchewan in 1983; we were in the PC Campus Club together and he was already ambitious. The party he leads was formed in 1997 from the ashes of the Progressive Conservative and Liberal provincial caucuses. It was conceived as a united front to prevent the vote-splitting that kept the NDP in power. (There was no formal party merger; the PCs and Liberals still exist and are running candidates in this election, although neither party is particularly competitive.)

Wall assumed the leadership of the Saskatchewan Party in 2004. His first act was to unveil a platform more moderate than that of his predecessor — particularly in its defence of Saskatchewan’s many Crown corporations and rejection of wholesale privatization. He became premier in 2007 and his government reduced income taxes and debt, while making record-level investments in infrastructure. When Saskatchewan’s economy was booming, Wall’s government was able to allocate almost $2 billion to the province’s rainy-day Growth and Financial Security Fund.

When it comes to policy, Wall is anything but dogmatic — and in Saskatchewan, that works. He’s perfectly capable of throwing out the conservative policy playbook when necessary. When it comes to policy, Wall is anything but dogmatic — and in Saskatchewan, that works. He’s perfectly capable of throwing out the conservative policy playbook when necessary.

Wall was re-elected in a landslide in 2011, with the Saskatchewan Party taking 49 of 58 seats and 64 per cent of the popular vote. The NDP lost every seat outside of the two major cities and the north. Right now, the Sask Party is competitive in the major urban areas and dominant in rural ridings. NDP Leader Cam Broten appears competent and affable, but his party’s inability to connect with rural voters will keep him leading the Official Opposition.

Urban-rural electoral calculations are critical in Saskatchewan politics. Rural ridings generally have fewer electors but disproportionate political clout, thanks in part to first-past-the-post. In 1986, the NDP won the popular vote but Grant Devine won a majority government, due to overwhelming rural support. Here in Alberta, fully two-thirds of us live in the Calgary-Red Deer-Edmonton corridor — but less than half of Saskatchewan’s 1.14 million residents live in Regina or Saskatoon.

When the economy stalls — as it has in Saskatchewan — voters often take it out on the incumbent. But Wall’s been very good at positioning himself as Saskatchewan’s champion against the forces threatening the province’s resource-based economy. He’s fiercely opposed to a federal carbon tax and is a staunch promoter of pipelines. He likes to remind Ottawa and Quebec of Saskatchewan’s contributions to the national equalization formula — and isn’t subtle when he argues that it’s time the rest of the country returned the favour. Westerners like a politician who isn’t afraid to go into the corners with the feds.

When it comes to policy, Wall is anything but dogmatic — and in Saskatchewan, that works. The Saskatchewan Party’s 2016 policy platform contains some conservative proposals such as the privatization of some liquor stores, private CT scans and tax incentives. It also offers some ‘progressive’ measures, such as more affordable housing for seniors, more green solar power capacity and individualized funding for children with autism.

And it contains some policies that can’t neatly be classified as left or right, such as investing in highways and growing local home-based food industries.

Fiscally, Wall’s still a hawk. While the province’s Security Fund has been spent and Saskatchewan’s posting a $427 million deficit this year, Wall claims that if he’s re-elected, he’ll bring Saskatchewan back into surplus by 2017-18.

On the other hand, Wall is perfectly capable of throwing out the conservative policy playbook when necessary. In 2010, the premier successfully lobbied the Harper government to block the sale of Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan to Australian Mining giant BHP Billiton. Although this move was universally popular in Saskatchewan, it seriously compromised both Wall and Stephen Harper’s claims to be laissez faire conservatives loathe to interfere in free markets.

But that’s the secret of Wall’s success: He takes his cue from voters, not political theory. He is a politician with a strong sense of what people want from him — a Prairie populist for a practical people.

Brent Rathgeber was the Conservative MP for the riding of Edmonton—St. Albert from 2008 to 2013, when he resigned from the Conservative caucus to protest the Harper government’s lack of commitment to transparency and open government. He ran and lost in the 2015 federal election to a Conservative candidate. He is the author of Irresponsible Government: The Decline of Parliamentary Democracy in Canada.

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