Alberta Party

Did the left blow it in Alberta?

Posted on April 30, 2012 by CalgaryGrit in 2012 Alberta Election, Alberta Politics | Leave a comment

Even though the end result was a Stephen Harper majority government, the NDP took a giant leap forward last May. In one election, the party may very well have taken the first step in killing off Canada’s natural governing party, positioning the Dippers to one day form government.

Although last Monday’s Alberta election was a battle between two conservative parties, it’s not far flung to imagine how a similar scenario could have unfolded there.

Let’s close our eyes and go back in time to the spring of 2008 – Leona Lewis topped the billboard charts, and Ed Stelmach had just stumbled his way to a crushing 70-seat majority. In our scenario, perhaps the Liberals and NDP finally decide that 50 years of fighting each other for second place has been counterproductive. They talk to some disaffected PCs and non-partisans and decide to start a new progressive party from scratch – let’s call it the “Alberta Party” for lack of a more creative name.

Since there’s general displeasure with Stelmach and no viable alternative on the right (remember, this is pre-Danielle), a few polls show this party is popular at the conceptual level. Maybe Dave Bronconnier finally has enough guts to jump to provincial politics. Or maybe the leadership goes to a little known Mount Royal professor by the name of Nenshi.

In either event, this new party is seen as credible by voters, setting up a real three-way election battle. Maybe the Alberta Party follows the federal NDP’s path and winds up as the official opposition to a Wildrose government. Maybe we get Alberta’s first minority government. Hell, maybe the PCs choose Gary Mar or Ted Morton as their leader, and all those “Redford Liberals” find a home in the new Alberta Party, sweeping them into power.

Yes, it’s all fantasy, but fantasyland is the only place the left ever comes close to power in Alberta so there’s no harm in closing our eyes and imagining it.

Now, let’s try another scenario, grounded slightly more in reality – what would have happened had the “strategic voters” been less strategic? Could progressives have made a breakthrough on Monday night?

It’s important to remember that despite being the punchline of Canadian politics, the left in Alberta is not nonexistent. Since the Liberals’ near-victory in 1993, the Liberals and NDP have combined for between 35% and 42% of the vote in each election, falling victim to the unforgiving nature of first past the post.

The Liberals’ did not bled to the Wildrose Party this election, but to Allison Redford. The final Abacus poll showed around 10% of 2008 Liberal and NDP voters jumping to the Wildrose Party, but this is off-set by the 5% of past PC voters who planned to follow Raj Sherman to the grits. Toss in the departure of the Alberta Greens from the ballot, and it’s not unreasonable to assume the Liberals and NDP could have held their 2008 vote, had things broken a little differently.

So what if they had?

To find out, I moved PC voters “back” to the Liberals, until the 2012 regional totals matched the 2008 numbers. As an example, to get the Liberals back to 33% in Calgary, I needed to shift 11% of the total vote from the PCs to the Liberals in each riding. I recognize this is an inexact science but, once again, this is perfectly legitimate math for fantasyland.

Here’s what that legislature would have looked like:

WR 42
PC 26
Lib 14
NDP 5

That may not be an overly appealing outcome, but it does leave the Liberals and NDP as players in a minority government. Moreover, if you shift to 2004 levels of support, suddenly we get 23 Liberal MLAs and 13 for the PCs, with the Wildrose holding a slim majority. That’s a scenario similar to last May, and one that could eventually lead to the Liberals squeezing the PCs out of existence.

Again, we’re playing with hypotheticals in the land of make believe, but it does show that the landscape isn’t so completely barren for progressives that the only option left is assimilation by the PCs. Situations can change – even in Alberta.

Where do we go from here?

Posted on April 25, 2012 by CalgaryGrit in 2012 Alberta Election, Alberta Politics, Featured Posts | Leave a comment

The end result of Monday’s Alberta election may have been yet another crushing PC majority, but it’s impossible to deny Alberta’s political climate hasn’t been permanently altered. With the Wildrose Party now her majesty’s loyal opposition, each party faces unique challenges in adapting to this new political climate. Voters showed a willingness to change their vote this election, so any party failing to adapt risks extinction.

The PCs

Yes, they nearly blew it. Yes, they lost seats. But Monday was nothing short of complete triumph and total dominance by the PCs. In other words – the usual.

While the PCs have never been shy about knifing successful leaders, most of the discontents have fled to the Wildrose Party, so Redford’s leadership is likely safe…for now.

The challenge facing Redford is that she leads a very different PC Party than the one she inherited less than a year ago. Ted Morton and much of the rural caucus went down in defeat, and the PCs won their mandate from a vastly different coalition of voters than in 2008. If the polls are to be believed (ha ha ha!), half of all 2008 PC voters saddled up with Smith this campaign, while half of all 2008 Liberal voters jumped to Redford. In the process, the PC “base” has shifted considerably – Redford’s mandate was effectively given to her by liberals. If she governs like “your father’s PC Party”, there’s no way those voters will buy in to any kind of “Stop Smith” movement in 2016.

Of course, if she governs like a Liberal, she risks more bleeding to the Wildrose Party, who will now be staring her down in the legislature. In the past, the PCs have faced off against Liberal professors and doctors who cared more about policy than sound bytes. Now, they’ll be up against a well funded and media savvy libertarian. Gone are the days when elections could be won with a few simple chants of “NEP!” and by outspending their opponents by a factor of ten.

The Wildrose represent a new kind of opponent. The PCs have never had to worry about their right flank before, so Redford will have her hands full keeping everyone inside the PC tent happy.

Wildrose Party

Once the tears have dried, my advice to the Wildrose Party is to take a deep breath, take a vacation, and look at the big picture.

This party rose from the ground up, and won over 34% of the electorate in their first election with Danielle Smith. That’s better than Peter Lougheed fared in his rookie campaign as PC leader, and it leaves the Wildrose well positioned to form government in 2016.

To do that, Smith need look no further than the path to power taken by another Albertan, Stephen Harper. After coming close in 2004, Harper regrouped, developed a plan, and came back with a vengeance in 2006, running one of the best campaigns in Canadian political history. He had a moderate and focused platform, took social issues completely off the table, and avoided the “bozo eruptions” that had doomed him two years earlier.

Smith’s challenge in the coming years is therefore to silence the extremists in her party, and present her caucus as a government in waiting. To do that, she will need to tone down the rhetoric in the legislature and moderate her positions – Smith’s musings on reconsidering the party’s climate change, firewall, and conscience rights positions is already a step in the right direction.

What’s Left of the Left

For a party that lost over half of its vote Monday night, the Liberals have actually got to be feeling pretty good about the outcome. They held 5 seats when many were predicting a shut-out, and stayed (barely) ahead of the NDP both in terms of seats and popular vote.

While the NDP would have liked to vault ahead of the Grits, they doubled their caucus to four seats, tying their best showing in 20 years. Brian Mason can stick around as leader if he wants to, but the NDP are usually pretty good about giving all their MLAs a turn as party leader so it wouldn’t surprise me if the torch is passed to Rachel Notley or David Eggen.

Of course, these feel good results mask the reality that the status quo isn’t working. With the PCs shifting under Redford, there simply isn’t enough room for both these parties to be viable on the left of the spectrum.

In an ideal world, the two would simply merge, take the Alberta Party’s name and Twitter handle, and recruit a charismatic leader from outside their current MLA ranks. The thing is, I just can’t see a situation where the membership of either the Liberals, NDP, or Alberta Party would agree to this type of arrangement. Such has always been the story among Alberta progressives, who value pride above power.

That’s not to say it’s a hopeless situation. If Redford falters, the opportunity for someone on the left to squeeze out the PCs could present itself. The 30-40% of Albertans who always voted Liberal or NDP before this last election are still around, even if many parked their vote with Redford. If someone comes along able to capture their imagination, it wouldn’t be unfathomable for them to move ahead of the PCs, the same way Jack Layton vaulted ahead of the Liberals federally last spring.

I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for that to happen, but when you consider how volatile Alberta’s political climate has been of late, it would be foolish to assume there won’t be a surprise or two in the coming years.

Alberta Votes Day 28: What to expect tomorrow

Posted on April 22, 2012 by CalgaryGrit in 2012 Alberta Election, Alberta Politics, Seat Projections | Leave a comment

I’ve already written about the difficulties of using seat projection models due to the unique circumstances of this Alberta election. So rather than crunch the numbers, I thought it might prove more useful to conduct a “wisdom of the masses” exercise, by looking at the predictions being made in the Great Alberta Election pool. Here’s what the nearly 100 politicos who have entered so far are expecting tomorrow:

Seat Totals

The above graph shows the median prediction for each party, with the bars representing the first-to-third quartile range – that is, where the “middle half” of all entries fall. Looking strictly at the means, we get a “best guess” of 42 Wildrose seats, 37 PC seats, 4 NDP seats, 3 Liberal seats, and 1 for the Alberta Party. That’s a slightly narrower gap than my prediction of WR 44, PC 35, NDP 4, Lib 4, AP 0 – and it suggests there’s some skepticism out there about Smith’s ability to seal the deal. After all, three-in-ten respondents still predict a PC victory and only a minority (41%) expect Smith to win a majority.

Races to Watch

Nine-in-ten expect Redford to hold her seat, but respondents are less certain about Raj Sherman (43%) and Ted Morton’s (19%) chances. It’s a little counter intuitive for Morton to get drowned in the Wildrose wave given he’d be right at home in the party, but I have a hard time seeing any PCs left standing in southern rural Alberta.

As for the Wildrose Party’s more colourful candidates, only 36% expect Allan Hunsperger (of “gays burn in hell” fame) or Ron Leech (of “being white is an advantage” fame) to be elected Monday. I’d be shocked if Hunsperger won, but Leech took 26% of the vote running as an independent last election – add in the Wildrose boost, and he seems like the odds on favourite to find his way to Edmonton, perhaps as Danielle Smith’s Multiculturalism Minister*.

Edmonton Glenora figures to be one of the most hotly contested seats – the PCs beat the Liberals by 100 votes last time, but both the NDP and Alberta Party are running strong candidates and have targeted the riding. And with the Wildrose’s Edmonton poll numbers, even they could pull it out on the vote split. This unpredictability is born out in the pool, where 56% expect the PCs to hold the riding, 21% (myself included) see it as an NDP pick-up, 11% pick the Alberta Party, 10% pick the Liberals, and 2% pick the Wildrose.

The Alberta Party

This being their first election, it’s difficult to know what to expect from the Alberta Party. Only one-in-three predict they’ll win a seat, and the mean guess on their best riding vote is 15-20%. That’s the most I’d expect them to get anywhere, but many pool entries had them winning multiple seats, and up to 40 or 50 percent of the vote in some ridings.

The Senate

The Wildrose Party is predicted to pick up 1.7 of the 3 Senate seats. Personally, I expect a clean sweep – given the low level attention paid to the Senate election, I expect most will vote party lines.

The Morning After

Close to half (44%) expect Liberal leader Raj Sherman to announce his resignation within 48 hours of the vote – perhaps not surprising since most expect Sherman to lose his seat and just 18% think the Liberals will win more votes than the NDP.

One-in-three expect Redford to resign after the election – presumably not the same people voting for her as “the most progressive option”. Personally, I’d be surprised if any of the four opposition leaders are around come next election – hell, I’d be surprised if all four opposition parties still exist come the next election. But my best guess is that they’ll all take a bit of time before coming to a decision…or being forced into one.

*That’s obviously a joke. We all know Danielle Smith won’t name a Multiculturalism Minister.

A Beginner’s Guide to Alberta Politics, or, "What the @$#! is going on in Alberta?"

Posted on February 3, 2011 by CalgaryGrit in Alberta Politics, Featured Posts, Humour | Leave a comment

Like an oil reserve, Alberta politics tends to lie dormant for thousands of years, only to gush to the surface without warning. And when it does, it’s usually messy.

Like the last two weeks.

For those of you lucky enough to not follow Alberta politics, it must have all seemed rather perplexing. A caucus coup against a Premier coming off a landslide victory last election. The Premier and Finance Minister both resigning in the span of 48 hours…Only to be followed by the leader of the opposition less than a week later. Hell, it was perplexing to even Alberta’s most rabid political junkies.

So, for those of you in other parts of the country, I do my best here to summarize last week’s political geyser with this helpful FAQ.

Last time I checked Ralph Klein was Premier. Who’s this new guy?

Ed Stelmach won the PC leadership on the same day and in the same way Stephane Dion won the LPC leadership. Ted Morton and Jim Dinning had spent all of 2006 hitting each other over the head, so Ed Stelmach took his 15% of vote and came up the middle as the compromise candidate. PC members were so sick of the frontrunners that they didn’t worry much about Ed’s vision (or lack thereof) or his ability to communicate with other human beings (or lack thereof).

After that, the Calgary media ripped him apart for a year, Dave Bronconnier went all Danny Williams on his ass, and voters humbled Ed in a by election.

Not that it mattered. Alberta being Alberta, and Ed being a Conservative, he won a staggering 72 of 83 seats, 10 more than Ralph Klein left him. Maybe seeing that a guy like Ed could be Premier made voters feel better about themselves. Maybe he won on the strength of the insomniac vote, thankful for the cure his speeches offered them. For whatever reason, Ed appealed to voters and Ed won. It’s hard to argue with success.

Unless, of course, you’re the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta.

So why do they want him out?

There are two competing theories. One is that the PCs are scared stiff of the Wildrose Alliance, a party with only 5% of the seats in the legislature but 80% of the media coverage in the province. Even though the Wildrose Alliance has never won a seat in a general election, Alberta has a history of new parties wiping out dynasties in the blink of an eye. A lot of PC MLAs now gaze longingly at the great right hope, Ted Morton, to ensure the dynasty lives on.

The other theory is that the PCs have been in power for so long they don’t worry about the things most other parties worry about – like winning elections. Instead, it’s all about internal power struggles. It’s no secret the PC power brokers don’t like Ed Stelmach. They’ve been waiting to drop him since he won and were the only people more disappointed with the last election results than Alberta Liberals. So when they saw an opening to defenestrate Ed, they didn’t hesitate.

Regardless of the reason, Ed was pressured to quit. His Finance Minister and heir apparent, Ted Morton, said he’d quit if Stelmach made him deliver the budget. (I’m not sure if Morton really understood the responsibilities of being Finance Minister when he took the job)

Jean Chretien or Ralph Klein would have snarled, fired Morton, and fought on. Ed quit.

Woah, woah, easy there partner. Wildrose what? Who are these guys?

The Alberta Alliance was a protest party that won 1 seat in the 2004 election. They merged with the Wildrose Party (another protest party) before the 2008 election to avoid the vote split…and won 0 seats.

Then, in 2009, things changed. The PCs tabled Alberta’s first deficit in 15 years. People began talking about the Wildrose Alliance. When Danielle Smith was named leader, they really started talking about the Wildrose Alliance.

Although a political rookie, Smith is smart, well spoken, and media savvy. Of course, it’s hard for her not to impress when compared to the current crop of provincial party leaders – even the Oilers would look good lined up against a Bantam hockey team.

So the Alliance won the Calgary Glenmore by election. They showed they were different from the PCs by adding a PC cast-off and a pair of disgruntled PC back benchers. There may only be 4 Wildrose MLAs, but they have the 67-member PC caucus scared stiff.

In their current form, it’s easiest to think of the Wildrose Alliance as an Alberta version of the ADQ – a charismatic leader in charge of an untested party with some very questionable policies. Luckily for Danielle Smith, the only policy the media seem interested in asking her about is her policy of “being awesome”. She might be in trouble if they start asking about Health Care cuts.

A right wing vote split must be manna from heaven for the Liberals. Are they poised to form government?

Errr…

I mean, running against a pair of far right wingers like Danielle Smith and Ted Morton – that’s a political double rainbow if I ever saw one. It seems impossible to mess up a gift like that.

Ummm…

So, yeah, with everything coming up roses, why did their leader quit?

Basically, the same reason Ed did. People got spooked by lackluster poll results, and the leader couldn’t control an unruly caucus.

And the Alberta Party, what’s their deal?

The Alberta Party came into existence last year when progressives, worried that a right-wing vote split might cause them to stumble into power for the first time in 90 years, decided to found another party.

Alberta Party turn ons include “listening” and “Twitter”, and their turn offs include “politics as usual” and “explaining what politics as usual actually means”.

They are made up of a loose coalition of Albertans disillusioned with the province’s major parties and disgruntled Liberals who feel “Do you support Alberta?” is an easier door knocking pitch than “So how about that NEP, eh?“.

They’re still in the embryonic stage but in Alberta we believe political life begins at conception or, at the very least, your first floor crossing. And they got their first last week – Dave Taylor, a former Liberal MLA, who had grown disenchanted with the Alberta Liberals’ policy of not picking Dave Taylor as their leader.

They are very much a wild card at this point.

And what about the NDP? Where do they figure into the current political landscape?

Good question.

And the Greens?

They were desanctioned after the last election, so they’re basically about as relevant now as the NDP.

Desanctioned?

That’s what happens when you try to stick up for the environment in Alberta.

There is, however, a movement afoot to create a new Green Party, called Vision 2012. Because after all, the one thing missing in Alberta is a 4th opposition party to left of the PCs. At the rate we’re going, there will be more parties than voters by the next election.

So what happens now?

Ted Morton will run for the PC leadership. Morton, who brought in Alberta’s first deficit budget in a generation, is expected to position himself as the only candidate fiscally conservative enough to stop the Wildrose Alliance. Assuming he avoids the fate of every other front runner in every leadership contest fought in Canada and around the world over the past decade, he will win.

And when is the next election again? I assume that Alberta, being Canada’s bastion of democratic reform, has fixed election dates, right?

Ha ha ha. Good one.

Expect an election roughly 60 days after the first poll of 2012 which shows the PCs more than 12 points up on the Wildrosers.

And who will win?

The smart money is on the PC dynasty surviving into its 40s, but for the first time since 1993 we may actually have to wait until the election before calling it. Hell, if we’re lucky, the campaign might actually be worth watching.

MEET THE KEY PLAYERS

Ed Stelmach enjoys a lighter moment at his farewell news conference

Danielle Smith not only walks on water, she runs on it!

Ted Morton is likely to be Alberta’s next Premier. He’s a University professor who thinks he’s a cowboy.

David Swann is the most genuine and honest human being on the face of the earth. So, of course, he was doomed from the start.

This is NDP leader Brian Mason. You will never see or hear about him again as long as you live, so don’t feel bad if you forget his name. Hell, it even happens to the Premier sometimes.