Alberta 2012

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My first prediction for Alberta: http://canadianelectionatlas.blogspot.ca/2012/03/2012-alberta-election-prediction-march.html

My favourite candidate name: "Garnett Genius" (WR, Sherwood Park)

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At this rate, I'm wondering if Wildrose might wind up doing to the PCs what the federal NDP did to the Bloc Quebecois a year ago.  (Or if we might even be facing a retro-Lougheed circumstance in which no opposition party has official party status)

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I think your Canadian bias is coming out here.

The WRP is almost a carbon copy of the latest dominant wave of movement conservatism down here in the states. It does have a distinctly western flavor and reminds me a lot of the modern Idaho GOP's rhetoric. In general, Albertan politics reminds me of Idahoan politics in style, rhetoric and even the demographic divides to an extent. The PCs are like perceived RINOs in Idaho.

You mean like (if we go a state southward) Jon Huntsman Republicans?

Even so, it's hard for me to concile the WRP that aggressively with, if we may take an Idaho example, the "Helen Chenoweth" school of nutbar Republicanism...

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This is part of the fun: Trying to figure out where the WRP wont win. All I can do is use uniform swings in most cases until someone says that there is a reason why a certain candidate will not win.

At this point, the least-likelies are probably the seats of Mason and Notley, if that can be taken as a hint-hint.

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Interesting with Doug Faulkner in Ft McMurray: a Wildrose candidate who ran for the federal PCs in 2000 and the federal Libs in 2004...

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Crowfoot's "most Conservative" advantage is gained from having no scrap of Lethbridge/Medicine Hat urbanity or Banff/Canmore leftish resort-cosmopolitanism or big blotches of First Nations a la Macleod to skew the picture.

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Why are the BC Liberals the de-facto conservative party in the province anyways? Aren't the federal Liberals more left-wing? (although that isn't saying much).

The result of its usurping the Socreds in 1991--and then when Gord Campbell assumed the leadership a few years later, the BC Grits officially inherited the "anti-socialist-horde party of record" mantle from Social Credit.  (Which led the leader responsible for the Liberals' 1991 breakthrough, Gordon Wilson, to set up a breakaway party and later to join the NDP.)

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If the PC candidates lost 5 points to WRA in all seats, we'd be looking at a near-tie (or actual tie?) in seat count.

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I see Houston more like Calgary because of the oil industries, but unlike Calgary; Houston is liberal inner-city proper with conservative suburbs. Calgary seems to be conservative all over no matter where.

Then again, the whys and wherefores of US racial politics play a big part in that--and of course, provincially, the central two Calgary seats remain Liberal.

(And beyond that, we can also USify the election by viewing Redford as the incumbent Democratic governor and Smith as her Republican challenger.  Remember: by US standards, Canadian conservativism can be quite moderate or even "liberal"--certainly so in Redford's case)

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Then again, I can also see Alberta as the kind of place which swung significantly ObamaBiden-ward in 2008, a la the Midwest/Mountain states (Utah not excluded).

As far as 2008 McCain-Palin swingers go...is there a Canadian equivalent at all?

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On paper, the "changing demographics favouring the right wing" argument makes sense.  But if we go according to US parameters, a lot of that fast-growth-burbia may be too cosmopolitan for present-day Republicans.  (And remember, too, that there's a common countervailing demographic factor: as the right-friendly outer 'burbs boom, the aging inner burbs swing away from the right.  Notwithstanding Harper's 905/416 inroads, Ford Nation, etc.)