PCs, The Victors

Smoky Lake Signal Article No. 219 (May 2, 2012) Whispering in the Wind Albertans – The Real Winners! Alberta’s election of April 23, 2012 will go down in history as an election that defied all the pollsters and media types who predicted a Danielle Smith, Wildrose majority government. Well, it didn’t happen – the Alberta PC party, under the leadership of Alison Redford, persevered in what some would call a bitter battle for the conservative vote. The actual numbers are: Alberta PC won 61 seats (of the 87 seat Legislative Assembly) and 44 percent of the popular vote; the Wildrose secured 17 seats with 34 percent of the vote; the Liberals won 5 seats and 10 percent of the vote; and the New Democrats won 4 seats and 10 percent of the vote. All in all it is a very comfortable majority for the PCs and the Wildrose will have an opportunity to prove themselves as the Official Opposition – the Liberals and New Democrats appear to be satisfied with their election outcomes; first, they weren’t severely damaged in the election and probably given more attention than they deserved and second, there is good evidence that there is a solid 20 percent of the voting public in Alberta who think on the left side of the political spectrum. In my view the real losers in this campaign are all the pollsters who are now scrambling around trying to justify their forecasts and misreads – including their over-used and miss-used of technologies such as the use of robocalls in trying to measure the political mood of Albertans. Did Danielle Smith Really Lose? Danielle Smith credits her party’s less than perfect performance in the election on two decisive factors. First factor in Ms Smith’s view; the controversial comments made by a couple of Wildrose candidates – critics of the comments have suggested that the comments were unacceptable and intolerant, if not homophobic and racist. More telling in my view is the lack of strong action from Danielle Smith on the candidates involved and her miss-judgment on impact the comments would likely have on the voting public in the major cities. To put it into Ms. Smiths own words: “[the two candidates and their comments] …caused people to pause and worry about what our [the Wildrose] candidates might be like.” Second decisive factor in the Wildrose less than expected performance, according to Ms. Smith it was the “strategic voting” by Liberals and the New Democrats favoring the PCs. Danielle Smith is quite wrong in this assessment because the math clearly indicates that there was little (if any) strategic voting on the part of the Liberals and NDs toward the PCs. In my view Danielle Smith and the Wildrose party had a good run at grabbing the “brass ring” but lost because of a confusing libertarian attitude by many in the party’s leadership; extremism in some quarters of the party; and basically poor campaign management, particularly in the last 10 days of the campaign – nevertheless Danielle Smith leads the Official Opposition, let’s see how she performs.