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Go balance of power NDP Go! How sweet that would be.
Alberta rivals Smith, Redford 'still neck and neck'http://www.canada.com/news/Alberta+rivals+Smith+Redford+still+neck+neck/...
NDP Leader Brian Mason was seen by 38 per cent of the viewers as the most fair to other leaders, while only 18 per cent thought Smith and Redford were the most fair to others.
Mason said his goal in the debate was to get across the message that the NDP would fight to protect public education, public health care, the environment and higher energy royalties.
"We were able to show that the other leaders were not being as straight with people as they should be, or as thorough in their costing (of their budgets)."
Mason was seen by 21 per cent of the viewers as the most trustworthy, compared to 23 per cent who thought Redford was the most trustworthy and 25 per cent who thought Smith the most trustworthy. Only 15 per cent thought Sherman was the most trustworthy.
Sherman, whom many experts thought performed well in the debate, ranked last in most categories by respondents,
Why B.C. voters should worry about Danielle Smith and the Wildrose party in Alberta
http://www.straight.com/article-655026/vancouver/why-bc-voters-should-wo...
Alberta Election 2012: Wildrose adviser backer of private B.C. hospital, Tories say
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/alberta-politics/6456244/story.html
Ask Andrea Horwath.
Yikes!
Den Tandt: Wildrose victory in Alberta election would hardly be surprising
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Tandt+Wildrose+victory+Alberta+election+would+hardly+surprising/6462596/story.html
The route to eventual success for the NDP both provincially and federally
Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!
The good paying ones, not the McJobs
NDP push for more bitumen upgrading in Alberta
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/push+more+bitumen+upgrading+Alberta/6460966/story.html
I emplore you all to read this page. Its a compilation of everything the Wildrose stands for in thier own words.
http://www.facebook.com/antiwildrosealberta
Is your link correct?
No, I guess there was a space at the end of the link. Try this:
http://www.facebook.com/antiwildrosealberta
Well, sadly (based on the latest polling I've seen this morning) it looks like the Wildrose are on their way to a majority government. The PC's haven't got enough strength left to even hold WR to a minority. The ground has dropped out beneath the Liberals and they are set to lose all of their seats across the province. The NDP is set to win 4 seats.
My thoughts, having watched the campaign closely, is that none of this is a surprise.
The Conservatives have run a horrible campaign. After 41 years, everything wrong in this province is their fault, and they're failing to convince people that they deserve another chance to fix their own problems. Redford is ineffective, and strangely unlikeable (and her out-of-control facial tics during the debate must have turned off a lot of people who were watching her). She seems able to lead only by outside pressure or other's making decisions for her.
The Liberals have also run a horrible campaign. Sherman is astonishingly bad at communicating his ideas to an audience, with a slow and halting delivery that makes him seem calculated and rehearsed, and completely un-natural. He's reduced his campaign to cheesy one-liners, and even traditional Liberal supporters are fleeing the party.
I'm sorry to say that the NDP has also run a poor campaign. The clearest message I've seen from Brian Mason is that everyone should be nice to each other. Well, that's fine, but he's been ineffective in getting passionate and fighting against the rising WR threat. I wrote to the NDP about this very topic and received a curt one-line response that had a very defensive tone about it. Disappointing. I think Mason has got to go - he's uncharismatic, and if 4 seats is cause for a celebration I think priorities need to be re-set.
And also sad is that the Wildrose have run a quite good campaign. Danielle Smith is charismatic, knows how to work an audience and how to perform on television, and has been largely able to use her own likeability as a cover for the horrendous hatred that bubbles among her party. Even when large issues like conscience rights hit the media, she was able to dispell the fear in a large portion of the public. So, she has clearly been the most effective leader of the four. I see no surprise that she is about to be premier, despite the fact I am horrified about the WR party.
I am most disappointed in the NDP and Liberals for spending almost the entire debate, and much of the campaign, going after the PC's and Redford, while WR rose and rose...
We are about to have the most right-wing goverment this country has ever seen, filled with far-right extremists and religious fundamentalists, and the PC's, NDP and Liberals combined can't muster up the strength to show people what they're really about to vote for.
I'm dreading the results on the 23rd.
In what way would a Wildrose government be any worse than the PCs were all those years under Ralph Klein when they were savagely cutting and slashing everything in sight!
Viewing earlier Danielle Smith clips on youtube, such as: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLUI_6FOsNs , an interview with the Pembina Institute.
At heart she appears to be, as she described herself in one clip, "centre-right." Though not a Red Tory, I think she still stands to the left of most of her party. She's a "mediatique" leader, the party would not be soaring without her, and this would be another boring PC cakewalk. In power, my guess is there will be some simmering tension between her true beliefs and those of many of her MLAs.
But backroom strategists like Tom Flanagan will keep the boat from rocking too much. This election looks like a stepping stone for the WRA leader's eventual succession to the federal CPC leadership.
Who would run for WRA leader if Smith left? (That said, would a WRA victory really be a change of party in the province? It's just another faction taking over, isn't it?)
I hope for a silver lining to the fall of the PC's - momentum for proportional representation. I think the political ground in Alberta is fundamentally becoming more diverse, witness Naheed Nenshi. But if Alberta's other parties cannot coordinate themselves to have the province adopt a PR system (by forming a coalition and winning in another 4 years, I dream), then they deserve to be run over, time and time again, by the stampede-like voting behavior of the Alberta electorate, which is grossly magnified by the disproportionate weight of rural votes.
I don't believe that she speaks any French - GONG!
Something to what you say. To hear Redford and Company tell it, the only Conservative premiers that anyone needs to remember are Peter Lougheed, and Redford herself.
One thing, though: A WRP government would probably be more beholden to the TheoCons than Klein was. Klein put the kibosh on delisting abortion by saying that he'd only fund the ones that were "medically neccessary", and then, after consulting the doctors' association and being told that all all abortions are medically neccessary, shrugged his shoulders and said "Well, that's that".
Klein also resisted pressure from his own MLAs to invoke notwithstanding in the Delwin Vriend court decision. Suffice to say, given the makeup of her candidates(which includes people who regularly attacked Klein for his social views and even his religion), I wouldn't trust Danielle Smith to let sleeping dogs lie when it comes to these issues.
Not that I'm saying go out and vote PC to stop Wildrose. I'm pretty sure I'd still be voting NDP if I were in Alberta.
It's just a family feud ... the federal Cons are trying to consolidate their hold (quite successfully it seems). I am somewhat amused to see reports that the Liberal vote is collapsing... despite contentions to the contrary by some posters here, I have never really been able to distinguish between the provincial PCs and the provincial Liberals. I guess their calls to unite the "progressive" vote were pretty much what I have called them all along... opportunistic posturing. Well it looks like my winning streak (I voted for Nenshi and the winning candidate for councillor in my ward in the last municipal election) is coming to an end again... next Monday I will be making my way to the polls and voting NDP and defacing my "senator in waiting" ballot -- nothing new to see.
Strange new poll; it has the PCs leading Calgary & Wildrose leading Edmonton
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/despite-pc-surge-wildrose-maintains-lead-as-alberta-election-day-nears/article2403600/
Very misleading headline by the Globe. How can it be a "PC surge" when they are down 10% from the last poll by this firm?
http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/336576-cbc-roi-april-16-vote-intention.html#document/p1
I have never really been able to distinguish between the provincial PCs and the provincial Liberals.
Indeed, it was Laurence Decore who coined the phrase "massive and brutal cuts", to describe his own plans for Alberta in the 1993 election. That campaign actually started off with the Liberals attacking the Tories from the right, with the Tories only moving rightward later.
Also in that election, Decore made anti-choice statements to the press, which were rebutted by Klein. Granted, Decore was answering a reporter's question off the cuff, not stating party policy, but still.
link
Strange new poll; it has the PCs leading Calgary & Wildrose leading Edmonton
Possibly not so strange, if you factor in that Edmonton has a more "loyal" contingent of left-wing voters than Calgary, where liberals are more easily stampeded into voting Tory to keep Wildrose out. That's what the pollster's analysis seemed to be saying, anyway.
Even so, though, I am kind of wondering about Wildrose's absolute numbers in the capital, and which areas are giving them such high levels of support. I'm guessing maybe that that poll was including the surrounding areas(eg. St Albert and Sherwood Park) as Edmonton?
That's too easy. It's because the Globe wants the PCs to win of course.
Here it comes
Smith seeks to dampen outcry over Wildrose candidate’s anti-gay bloghttp://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/alberta-election/smith-seek...
It looks as if the Conservatives will rout the Tories in Alberta. It's revolutionary as far as conservative Albertans are concerned.
Albertans that I have interfaced with, if I can summarize, are looking to make a change to a fiscally responsible government that is committed to the future economic surety for Alberta. I have heard; "the PC's have become another free spending 'programs' government". Given the general mindset of Albertans and their historical vote patterns, I guess the conclusion is; PC out and WRA in...
Said tics = Richard Nixon's five o'clock shadow?
I've actually been thinking of the Nixon vs Kennedy parallel here: two female leaders in their 40s, a photogenic and fresh younger one vs a wan and awkward older one, etc...
Wildrose: Untested, untried, unfit to lead
http://www.torontosun.com/2012/04/16/wildrose-untested-untried-unfit-to-...
Danielle Smith wants to build a Harper-like firewall around Alberta. I'm sick of these angry, intolant one per centers, who absolutely hate and rarely pay taxes, and I don't care what the constitution says about resources. Either we are all Canadians and share in the good and the bad or we aren't. Just because some right-wing yahoos are sitting on a pile of black gold due strickly to geography does not give them a right to destroy what Canada has always stood for which is a lot more equality. If Albertans want to play that game I suggest we build a Canadian firewall around Alberta and force them to pay now for all the ewnvironmental degradation the oil sands are creating, and charge them for losing all the good paying jobs by shipping our raw resources out of the country. In other words it is time for some kind of Trudeau-type leader to kick Alberta's ass back into the Canadian fold. And BC should lead the way and give a big "Nyet" to pipelines.
Enough is enough.
Harper's legacy to Canada - the new Wildrose Government of Alberta.
Wildrose’s flame for an Alberta ‘firewall’ may prove problematic for other provinces
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/04/16/wildrose-keeps-flame-for-firewal...
One of the worst things about winner-take-all voting is the exaggerated regionalism the election results suggest, and the exaggerated regional differences those results engender.
The fact is, if our voting system let every vote count equally, last May Calgary would have elected five local Conservative MPs, one Liberal regional MP (Jennifer Pollock?), one NDP (Collin Anderson?), and one Green (Heather MacIntosh?). Edmonton would have elected five Conservatives, two New Democrats (Linda Duncan and Ray Martin?), and a Liberal (Mary MacDonald?). Voters in the rest of Alberta would have elected nine Conservative MPs, two New Democrats (Mark Sandilands and Jennifer Villebrun?), and a Liberal (Norm Boucher?).
Electoral battle for Alberta hinges on a changing Calgary
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/electoral-battle-for-albert...
Former Lethbridge mayor endorses NDP:
I agree with the "enough is enough" part. The rest is a rather poor stategy. I can't think of any province that will have their ass kicked back into the Canadian fold, it's a counter productive strategy in my opinion.