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Alberta election, 2012 (thread #5)
April 24, 2012 - 1:24am
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'Going to need a slightly bigger phone booth:' NDP doubles seats to 4 in Alberta
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/going-to-need-a-slightly-bigger-...
Pratt: Redford now has to accommodate left-of-centre voters
http://www.canada.com/technology/Pratt+Redford+accommodate+left+centre+v...
Seats
Party / 2008 / 2012 / Change
PC / 72 / 61 / Down 9
WR / 0 / 19 / Up 19
Lib / 9 / 5 / Down 4
NDP / 2 / 4 / Up 2
Total: 87 seats
Per Cent
Party / 2008 /2012 / Change
PCs / 53% / 44% / Down 9%
WR / 7% / 34% / Up 27%
Lib / 26% / 10% / Down 16%
NDP / 9% / 10% / Up 1%
Tks for update ghoris
Another in a series of devasting election results for Liberals
Alberta Liberals lose half their seats and title as official Opposition
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/alberta-liberals-lose-half-their...
Actually it was Smith's response to the comments that helped to do her in.
Danielle Smith blames controversial remarks, strategic voting for loss in Alberta election
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/danielle-smith-blames-contr...
The Liberals have pipped the NDP for third place in the seat count with 5 in total (Calgary-Buffalo, Calgary-McCall, Calgary-Mountain View, Edmonton-Centre and Edmonton-Meadowlark). The NDP appears to have won 4 seats (Edmonton-Beverly-Clareview, Edmonton-Calder, Edmonton-Highlands-Norwood and Edmonton-Strathcona), although three polls are not yet in for Edmonton-Beverly-Clareview, where the NDP is clinging to a 272-vote lead. Right now the Liberals and the NDP are in a virtual dead heat in terms of total votes (124,431 Libs vs. 124,194 NDP or 10% each) with 6724 of 6765 polls reporting.
According to Elections Alberta, the current tally is PC 62, WR 16, Lib 5, NDP 4. Calgary-Fish Creek is on the knife edge with a 61-vote PC lead and one poll left to report.
Edited to add: the last poll in Fish Creek just reported. Wildrose incumbent Heather Forsyth survives by 74 votes, giving Wildrose its second Calgary seat (barring recounts of course). It will be tough for Wildrose to swallow the fact that they got fewer seats in Calgary than the Liberals.
With that change, final numbers should be PC 61, WR 17, Lib 5 and NDP 4 (again barring recounts).
Either every polling company in the province missed the mark or Redford received a final day 8 to 13 point bump from undecided and strategic voters. If this was a third world country we'd all wonder if we just witnessed election fraud. What we saw instead was Albertans stampede (no pun intended) to stop the WRP's social conservative agenda. Between this and Nenshi's and Mandel's overwhelming popularity in Calgary and Edmonton it's safe to say Alberta has nudged a step away from the extreme right towards sanity. This makes me smile. It does not make me celebrate.
Redford is not a social democrat. She is not an environmentalist. She is not a capital-L or small-l liberal. She is, at best, a red Tory who was totally down for working with Mulroney and running under Harper. Still lots of work to do in this province. Lots of work.
CBC is reporting PC 62 WRA 17 LIB 4 NDP 4
The NDP has re-gained Edmonton-Calder (David Eggen regains seat) and Edmonton-Beverly-Clareview (Deron Bilous, new MLA) on right-wing vote splits. The NDP is back to its 2004 seats while -0.4% lower in the popular vote.
PC floor-crosser turned Liberal leader Raj Sherman survives in his Edmonton seat. Edmonton Centre stays Liberal along with Calgary Mountainview and Calgary Buffalo. Every Liberal win is due to the PC-WRA vote split. Liberals lose -19.6% of vote on 2008.
The only silver lining I am seeing on this result is the number of extremist right-wingers that appear to have gone down to defeat including such notables as Ted Morton, Link Byfield, and Paul Hinman.
ETA: You could make the case that the extremist force of the WRA (i.e. their loopy libertarian views) has been beaten back. They are official opposition however, and their brand of conservatism mixes like water and wine with that of the PCs.
As far as the polling goes...
I think this is a case study not of how far off polling can generally be. More its about how polling is just unable to capture waht is in practice a work in progress of an unusual degree of shifting sands due to the extreme surge of a party with unconsolidated momentum.
Voting takes place at what is more than in other elections, a huge amount of volatile swinging. Things are not consolidating at all- we just get a stop action snapshot of where they are at that moment
Some time that momentum carries consdierably further than the polling was indicating. NDP in Quebec. Sometimes that momentum falls well short and voters settle back vastly closer to where they started from. Wild Rose.
Would PR also have likely (re-)elected extremists like Ted Morton because they would have been placed so high on party lists (as a top cabinet minister)?
Re: the polling:
One day polls on the eve of an election have their obvious attention getting attractions, which is why polling companies do them. I dont think they'll go away. But being so wrong hurts. So maybe in the future their will be more caveat- maybe even pointing out that this has been known to go wrong.
Okay, so the unofficial results on the Elections Alberta page say the Liberals won 5 seats and beat the NDP in the popular vote. That is probably more accurate than the CBC website. link
Another province where the Liberals are not completely dead
Right-wingers try to justify their own propaganda machines
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/04/24/gerry-nicholls-read-it-he...
Top 10 winners and losers
http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/djclimenhaga/2012/04/top-ten-losers-and-...
On Newsworld right now: federal Conservatives unhappy with defeat of WRA, will extend arms to bridge any differences between them and help WRA win next time.
Tks BB
How Alberta PCs pulled off a win
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/how-alberta-pcs-pulled-off-...
Not really.
Forum had it but due to election blackout was unable to publish results - check previous article in Globe
Do you mean they are going to have a Catholic communion ceremony?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacramental_wine
I've generally been persuaded by views on this forum that strategic voting isn't effective. Now I'm wondering. It certainly seems to have worked in Alberta. (Of course, the concensus that strategic voting is a reason for the PC win is the same consensus that 24 hours ago agreed the WRA would win in a romp.) I'm just wondering if anyone with a better grasp of Alberta politics than me can make a case that strategic voting didn't help turn the tide. And I wonder about the applicability of "Anybody But X" voting to, say, federal politics. (I know there are ethical/philosophical arguments against it, but at the moment I'm just taken aback by the apparent effectiveness of the tactic in Alberta.)
On that, from another thread:
There was no generalized 'strategic voting'.
Some Liberals who dont really see that much difference in the first place between their habitual choice and the PCs went that way. Besides the Redford PCs are sounding more liberal, and their party gets even more flakey. Thats not simple strategic voting.
As much effect from PC voters coming out in greater numbers than past elections.
And NDP voters did NOT vote 'strategically'. In fact, the NDP vote increased. In not marginally when you consider the vote share leftover over with WR in the picture.
And most of all, its real simple.... lots and lots of people who like/liked the WildRose, had second thoughts about that.
No strategic voting in there.
This is another illustration of the fallacy of how much simple stratgic voting is out there.
Not speaking of Alberta in paricular, people habitually voting Liberal when they preferred the NDP, that was chalked up to voting strategically.
Some did indeed vote Liberal simply because the NDP 'cant win my riding'.
But there are many many more where it is a nuanced 'calculation' that goes something like this: "I like the NDP better. But the Liberals are not bad and I think they'll bring in what is most important to me anyway. So I'll vote for them." If your model runs on notions of straight up strategic voting, you'll miss the boat on the actual shifting going out there.
Strategic voting is the toxic waste product of the FPTP system. IMO it does not fix the inherent anti-democratic nature of our electoral system it exacerbates it.
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/04/24/john-ivison-federal-torie...
Of COURSE there was a "generalized" strategic voting strategy, yesterday. We heard it on the doorsteps, heard it in the media all week, read it on online comments, and heard it from friends and colleagues just talking all week long. After some powerful medai suggestions, people slightly left of Attila the hun decided en masse they would "stop the Wildrose" by holding their noses and voting for the PCs. (They were encouraged to do this in part by that purposeful, puerile viral video that suggested to them that was a "best" thing to do.)
What is ludicrous was when Dwayne Bratt, political analyst, said today on CBC at noon, that there "was no strategic voting," just as Ken S is suggesting now. Oh really???
In 2008, 40% of the popular vote was for NDP and Liberals. Yesterday, that ratio dropped to 20%. Where do you think those 20% of votes disappeared to? To the PCs, of course, coming from progressives who were told be frightened to death of the WR, not realizing that they opted to stay in frying pan A instead of jumping into frying pan B.
A lot of strategic voting happened in Alberta, I think. The reason it worked so well was because liberal voters are spread so evenly throughout the province
The PC has been such a dominating incumbent ent entire provinice for so many decades and their popular support never collasped completely (they were always at leasting polling in the 30 percentage tile). People know theres only one party that can stop the wildrose and that is the PC.
On a federal level, people would be divided between voting for liberals or the ndp to stop Harper, strategic voting did not work as well when there are more parties strategizing for the strategic votes.
Actually the Liberals had 26% and the NDP had 10% in 2008. The Greens also had 4% so maybe that is where your 40% comes from. The NDP held its vote at 10 and the Liberals lost 16%. I don't think the Greens even contested the election so those voters had to switch. I would thinnk the bulk of the Green voters and Liberal voters switched to the PC's. As I thought it looks like few NDPer's could hold their noses long enough to vote PC.
kropotkin1951... the Alberta Greens were deregistered in July 2009 for failure to file Annual Financial Statements with Elections Alberta and consequently were unable to particpate in the election just passed. Their membership itself appears to have gravitated towards the Alberta Party and the new Evergreen Party... the former taking 1.3% of the popular vote yesterday, the latter 0.4%. The last provincial election they (Alberta Greens) contested (2008) they received 4.58% of the popular vote.