Alberta 2012

[DL]

It's for the best; if a province ever needed a "united left", it's Alberta.

Would the Alberta PCs under Redford be part of a "united left" in Alberta?

[DL]

There was also a poll on Stephen Taylor's blog by those "evil people" at Campaign Research that confirmed a Wildrose lead at also had very good NDP numbers in Edmonton.

[DL]

The way I see it there are 6 winnable seats for the NDP - all in Edmonton (plus a possible longshot in Lethbridge West)

Edmonton-Strathcona and Edmonton Highlands Norwood are easy holds
Edmonton-Calder and Edmonton-Beverly-Clareview were very narrow losses last time and should be very low hanging fruit this time what with the collapsing PC and Liberal vote
Edmonton-Glenora is a good target with ray Martin
Edmonton-Gold Bar is entirely part of the Linda Duncan's federal riding and redistribution has added even more NDP territory to it. With no Liberal incumbent and a strong NDP campaign that is building on the federal NDP check-marks - this is highly winnable for the NDP in a four way split.

[DL]

Stat noise or are we seeing pro-PC strategic voting emerging?

The Liberals are polling at about half of what they got in 2008 when they had something like 26% of the vote province-wide...but their vote collapsed before the election was even called. Some of it was probably a generic anti-PC vote that shifted to the Wild Rose and some of it probably went to the PC when Redford won the leadership since she is a Liberal masquerading as a PC in the first place. I think that at 10-13% the Liberals are at their floor and are unlikely to go any lower. The NDP is consistently up a bit from the 8.5% they got in 2008 and are likely to get 11-12% this time. They will almost certainly get more seats than the Liberals (who may get wiped off the map). I don't see NDP voters going PC at all.

The one thing that COULD still happen is that if enough doubts are raised about Danielle Smith - some WRA votes might go back to the PCs or to a seemingly safer anti-PC party like the Libs or NDP.

[DL]

Regarding Lethbridge, keep in mind that the federal NDP got 27% of the vote in 2011 and the federal riding is not just the city of Lethbridge but also includes a lot of rock-ribbed Tory rural areas. The University of lethbridge did a poll of the two Lethbridge provincial seats in February and they had the NDP at 20% in Leth-West back then.

[DL]

The voting pattern in Alberta was remarkably similar to what we saw in Manitoba and Ontario...the party seen to be on the centre-left (within the context of that province's political culture - ie: PC in Alberta, NDP in MB, Libs and NDP in Ontario) swept the cities and suburbs while the party of the far right (PCs in Ontario and MB and WRA in AB) was relegated to being purely a rural phenomenon.

[DL]

It tells you something about Canada compared to the US that Alberta is by far the most rightwing province in Canada, and even in Alberta Danielle Smith of Wildrose stated that she favoured same sex marriage and abortion rights and still got crushed in the election because Albertans saw her as a rightwing crackpot.