{"id":1479,"date":"2007-08-15T01:49:00","date_gmt":"2007-08-15T05:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=1479"},"modified":"2007-08-15T01:49:00","modified_gmt":"2007-08-15T05:49:00","slug":"best-premier-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=1479","title":{"rendered":"Best Premier Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_L6NW1UySEKs\/RsKSThe9qaI\/AAAAAAAAALY\/Kn_lwtAgxn8\/s1600-h\/best+premier.jpg\"><img id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5098798592240232866\" style=\"DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_L6NW1UySEKs\/RsKSThe9qaI\/AAAAAAAAALY\/Kn_lwtAgxn8\/s320\/best+premier.jpg\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>After the predictable wild ride in the <a href=\"http:\/\/calgarygrit.blogspot.com\/2007\/08\/more-voting.html\">Douglas\/<span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\" id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_0\"><span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\" id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_0\">Lougheed<\/span><\/span> shoot-out<\/a>, I thought this would be a good time to give an update on the Best Premier contest. First, the clash of prairie titans.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\" id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_1\"><span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\" id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_1\">Lougheed<\/span><\/span> and Douglas were locked in a tight battle, with Tommy holding a slight lead up until mid-afternoon today when legions of Peter <span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\" id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_2\"><span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\" id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_2\">Lougheed<\/span><\/span> fans <span class=\"blsp-spelling-corrected\" id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_3\">descended<\/span> upon this site, sent here by Small Dead Animals. No doubt energized by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/servlet\/story\/RTGAM.20070814.wlougheed0814\/BNStory\/National\">this article <\/a>on the Globe and Mail site where <span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\" id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_4\"><span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\" id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_3\">Lougheed<\/span><\/span> slams Harper for not holding first ministers meetings and trashes Ed <span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\" id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_5\"><span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\" id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_4\">Stelmach<\/span><\/span> and Ralph Klein for neglecting the Heritage Fund, Tories from coast to coast cast a moral vote in support of <span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\" id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_6\"><span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\" id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_5\">Lougheed&#8217;s<\/span><\/span> criticism. <\/p>\n<p>Then, around dinner time, the Douglas vote started to climb. Hitting refresh on my computer, I literally saw it jump by about 20 votes a second. While it is possible that <span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\" id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_6\">NDP<\/span> members saw the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sesresearch.com\/library\/polls\/POLONT-S07-T240.pdf\">latest <span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\" id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_7\">SES<\/span> poll <\/a>and concluded this might be their only chance at electoral victory in a long time and voted <em>en <span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\" id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_8\">masse<\/span><\/em>, some <span class=\"blsp-spelling-corrected\" id=\"SPELLING_ERROR_9\">snooping<\/span> around has led me to conclude that this was computerized vote rigging. I was all set to DQ Douglas on this one, but a late surge has pushed Lougheed back in front and on to the next round, where he will meet yet another NDP Premier in Ed Schreyer.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s how the other quarter-final battles have turned out so far:<\/p>\n<p>Rene Levesque (16) over Angus MacDonald (1): 51% to 49%<\/p>\n<p>WAC Bennett (14) over Alex Campbell (3): 55% to 45%<\/p>\n<p>Oliver Mowat (12) over John Robarts (5): 59% to 41%<\/p>\n<p>Ed Schreyer (7) over Dave Barrett (10): 74% to 26%<\/p>\n<p>Louis Robichaud (4) over Joey Smallwood (13): 66% to 34%<\/p>\n<p>Peter Lougheed (2) over Tommy Douglas (15): 54% to 46%<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>The final two quarter-finals matchups will be posted tomorrow, with the semis getting underway this weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After the predictable wild ride in the Douglas\/Lougheed shoot-out, I thought this would be a good time to give an update on the Best Premier contest. First, the clash of prairie titans. Lougheed and Douglas were locked in a tight battle, with Tommy holding a slight lead up until mid-afternoon today when legions of Peter [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[121],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1479"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1479\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}