Constituency Profile: Cutknife-Turtleford

The Cut Knife-Turtleford constituency is outline on the map in red.

For more information on the Cutknife-Turtleford constituency, please click here.

The constituency of Cut Knife-Turtleford took on its present boundaries for the 2003 election and is a merger of the former Battleford-Cut Knife and Turtleford constituencies. This riding entirely surrounds the Battlefords constituency in its southeast corner.

The 2003 race in Cut Knife-Turtleford was a relatively close one between the Saskatchewan Party and the NDP. However when all the ballots were counted, Mike Chisholm had defeated John Vinek of the NDP, 3,130 votes to 2,505. The percentages of the vote were 48 percent to 39 percent, respectively. However in 2007, Chisholm rolled to a 30 percentage point win over the NDP. Chisholm is not seeking re-election, and the Sask Party candidate this time is Larry Doke, a councillor from the resort village of Metinota. The NDP candidate is Bernadette Gopher. There is a very good chance there will be a Liberal candidate in this seat this time,and given the recent electoral history of this seat, a Western Independence Party of Sasaktchewan candidate is likely here too. The Green candidate is Vinessa Currie, was also the Green candidate in Cutknife-Turtleford in 2007.

While in the past the NDP were very competitive in portions of this seat, it is not clear how the fortunes of the New Democrats will play out here this time. The party has nominated an active local candidate, but the party's provincewide polling numbers are being dragged down by the unpopularity of NDP Leader Dwain Lingenfelter. Thus is it easy to predict an easy Sask Party win here again this time. However if for some reason NDP fortunes happen to rebound around the province, evidence of an NDP revival would begin to show up in a seat like Cutknife-Turtleford.