{"id":3133,"date":"2011-09-11T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-11T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=3133"},"modified":"2011-09-11T11:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-09-11T15:00:00","slug":"the-alberta-test-drive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=3133","title":{"rendered":"The Alberta Test Drive"},"content":{"rendered":"
No surprise, as Raj Sherman wins the Alberta Liberal leadership race on the first ballot<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Raj Sherman:<\/a> 54% (4684 votes)
Hugh MacDonald:<\/a> 26% (2239 votes)
Laurie Blakeman:<\/a> 9% (854 votes)
Bill Harvey:<\/a> 7% (626 votes)
Bruce Payne:<\/a> 2% (197 votes)<\/p>\n

As I wrote on Friday<\/a>, this leadership race deserved watching, even outside Alberta, since it was the first in Canada to be run on a supporter system. The vote was open to all Liberal supporters, not just party members.<\/p>\n

So how did the test drive go?<\/p>\n

The number most will look at is 8,640<\/strong> – the number of Albertans who voted, nearly double the total in the 2008 race. Of course, you take Sherman out of the equation and we’re back to 2008 levels. I have anecdotal evidence to suggest some supporters wouldn’t have taken out memberships, but if we’re being honest about it, the new system clearly didn’t lead to a stampede of interest in the Alberta grits.<\/p>\n

What it did do was get the party contact information for 27,000<\/strong> Albertans. Even if only a fraction take lawnsigns, volunteer, or donate money in the next election, that’s a win.<\/p>\n

But the most telling number in this little primary experiment is probably 626 <\/strong>– the number of votes Bill Harvey collected. Whenever I pitch the supporter system to Ontario Liberals, their biggest concern is that right-wing special interest groups will take over the party. I never really understood this, since there’s nothing to stop them from paying $5 or $10 a head for memberships now. If anything, the primary system makes a takeover more <\/span>difficult because it means more votes are needed to win. But the fear exists and, up until yesterday, there wasn’t a good case study to dispute it.<\/p>\n

Harvey was endorsed by Craig Chandler’s PGIB group<\/a>, yet he was a non-factor in this contest. If a sickly provincial Liberal Party had no problem fighting off a right-wing insurgency in Alberta<\/em>, it seems clear the federal grits have little to fear from a supporter system.<\/p>\n

No, this wouldn’t solve all that plagues the LPC, because a lot of problems plague the LPC. But the Alberta test-drive shows it works, with little downside.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No surprise, as Raj Sherman wins the Alberta Liberal leadership race on the first ballot: Raj Sherman: 54% (4684 votes)Hugh MacDonald: 26% (2239 votes)Laurie Blakeman: 9% (854 votes)Bill Harvey: 7% (626 votes)Bruce Payne: 2% (197 votes) As I wrote on Friday, this leadership race deserved watching, even outside Alberta, since it was the first in […]<\/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":[369],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3133"}],"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=3133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3133\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}