Premier Scott Moe and the Saskatchewan Party won a fifth straight majority government Monday, losing in big cities but retaining their iron grip on rural areas to secure victory.

Moe’s party was shut out by Carla Beck’s NDP in Regina and lost all but two seats in Saskatoon.

But he found enough support everywhere else to be elected with 35 seats in the 61-seat legislature, compared to 26 for the NDP.

“Thank you once again, Saskatchewan for putting your trust in our party, the Saskatchewan Party,” Moe said as Shellbrook supporters clapped and shouted.

“This was a much closer election than we’ve seen in some time.”

He said his government heard the message sent by voters that the province was unhappy with how it provided health care, education and made life affordable.

“We have to do better and we certainly will,” he said.

The New Democrats nearly doubled their seat total from the 14 they had at dissolution, retaining seats and gaining more in Regina and Saskatoon. In doing so, they defeated Saskatoon ministers Christine Tell, Bronwyn Eyre and Paul Merriman as well as Regina’s Laura Ross and Gene Makowsky.

Beck retained his seat in Regina Lakeview.

The NDP also reclaimed the rural northern riding of Athabasca, which it won in 2020 only to lose to the Saskatchewan Party in a subsequent by-election.

But with 31 rural seats versus 30 urban seats, the NDP’s margin for error was very slim. He needed victories in both Moose Jaw seats and both Prince Albert seats – but he didn’t get it.

Beck delivered his concession speech in Regina to cheers from his supporters and chants of “Carla! Carla!

“My friends, we are so close,” Beck said. “A lot of people didn’t give us much of a chance, but we believed in it.

“We’ve given people a reason to hope, and that’s no small thing. That’s a victory in itself.

“We have changed the landscape of this province.”

Moe, in his second election as leader of the Saskatchewan Party, retained his seat in Rosthern-Shellbrook.

Other Saskatchewan Party ministers re-elected: David Marit, Jim Reiter, Colleen Young, Lori Carr, Everett Hindley, Terry Jenson, Jeremy Cockrill, Tim McLeod and Jeremy Harrison.

Harrison was a controversial figure during election campaigns. Earlier this year, he apologized for carrying a gun into the Legislature about a decade ago while on his way hunting.

Moe’s Saskatchewan Party has been in power for 17 years, while Beck’s NDP sought to take back government for the first time since 2007.

This is the third consecutive campaign where the Saskatchewan Party has lost seats — from 51 in 2016 to 48 in 2020. The party had 42 seats when it dissolved due to by-election losses, retirements and two members facing criminal charges.

The vote capped a monthslong campaign focused on health care, affordability and crime.

Beck has pledged to spend more to improve health care and education, suspend the gas tax and eliminate the provincial sales tax on children’s clothing and some groceries.

Moe promised broad tax breaks and to continue withholding federal carbon tax payments to Ottawa.

He also promised that his first order of business, if re-elected, would be to ban “biological boys” from using school locker rooms with “biological girls.”

He said he made the promise after learning of a complaint at a southeastern Saskatchewan school about two biological boys using a girls’ locker room.

It was later revealed that a parent of the two children subject to the complaint was an NDP candidate. Moe said he didn’t know that when he made the promise.

Beck said such a ban would make vulnerable children even more vulnerable. She also promised to repeal a Saskatchewan Party law that requires parental consent if children under 16 want to change their name or pronoun at school.

Moe has been criticized for using the Charter’s notwithstanding clause to enforce the pronoun law, facing accusations of pandering to social conservatives.

Political scientist Charles Smith of St. Thomas More College in Saskatoon said the Saskatchewan Party’s seat loss signals disapproval of its more right-wing policy proposals.

“I think we saw some rejection of the Sask. Party’s last term in government by a significant percentage of voters,” Smith said.

“I think it’s a very conservative party that ran a very conservative campaign and presented a very conservative policy agenda over the last three years, and I think that partly explains these results.”

Political scientist Daniel Westlake of the University of Saskatchewan said Beck and the NDP should be a more vocal force in Saskatchewan thanks to the gains they’ve made.

“I think it makes the NDP seem more of a threat to the Saskatchewan party, which probably makes the Saskatchewan party more honest,” Westlake said.

“I think they should be happy to have a much larger caucus in the Legislature.

“But they still have a lot of work to do.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published October 28, 2024.

— With files from Jack Farrell in Edmonton

Jeremy Simes and Aaron Sousa, The Canadian Press