Politically, the province of Manitoba is split into roughly two camps.
In the north, both the rural north and the north side of Winnipeg, the NDP is dominant. In the southern farm country, the Progressive Conservatives are the preferred party. This makes the southern section of Winnipeg the traditional battlefield, although in the last three elections the NDP has continued to make gains there.
This geographic tendency is typically explained as a class-based adherence to party, with the wealthier southern farm belt and the professionals in southern Winnipeg backing the Tories and the poorer northern farms and the blue-collar north Winnipeg ridings going NDP.
Despite the simple geographic and class explanation, Manitoba politics in increasingly subject to a number of demographic trend that should concern the governing New Democrats.
A paper (PDF) presented at last years CPSA conference by Christopher Adams shows that the realignment to the NDP appears to have crested in the 2007 election.
More troubling for New Democrats (or encouraging to PCs) is changes in age cohorts. During the 1999 and 2003 elections, the NDP enjoyed much strong support among younger and middle-aged voters than among seniors. However, in the 2007 election, this trend reversed with the PCs attracting more voters among those under 35 than the NDP did. It was only the dramatic increase in support among seniors that kept the NDP in office in the 2007 election.
The challenge with being the party of seniors is that your voters get four years older every year. Younger voters buy houses and have children, increasing their turnout. Older voters have a worrying tendency to pass away, severely limiting their turnout.
Faced with a leadership convention, Manitoba New Democrats need to think about who can appeal not just to their regional bases in the north but also address this worrying fall in support among younger voters.