Which is more liberal: Alberta or Colorado?

[King of Kensington]

Canadians seem to like to compare Alberta to Texas: mainly due to the oil industry and the Calgary Stampede, but it's a pretty superficial comparison; Alberta has more in common with Alaska than it does with Texas and there are just as many if not more "cowboys" per capita in Wyoming and Montana as there are in Texas.

Both have "mile high cities" (Calgary and Denver look quite a bit like in my opinion) and world-famous ski resorts in the Rockies, and have a fairly bifurcated religious profile with a both a lot of religious "nones" as well as pockets of evangelicals and Mormons.  Alberta strikes me as a bit Colorado-like politically, if it were in the US I could see it as a libertarian-leaning Republican state that broke for Obama in 2008.

There's the "it's Canada" argument for Alberta, but then again oil politics drives it rightward, and Colorado has Boulder and has legalized marijuana etc. (though I would guess every province of Canada favors legalizaton or decriminalization).

[King of Kensington]

Alberta is more like Montana, but with large cities. Colorado proved its liberalness by legalizing pot. Do you think Alberta will even be close to the first province to do so?

Ha, even B.C. hasn't done it yet.  How on earth could they have not got enough signatures on the ballot for a referendum?  Is it just too readily available anyway and thus nobody saw the point?

[King of Kensington]

There are some small signs that things are changing in Alberta too.  A few years ago the right-wing upstart Wildrose Party lost to the PC's who have morphed into a sort of "moderate Republican to DLC Democrat" type party.  And the federal Liberals have been doing better in by-elections and polls recently.

But it's still got the petro-state politics going and the Conservatives are sort of a "party of the region" on the federal scene, while there's still a lot of resentment toward the "Easterners" in the Liberal Party.  It's also become so filled with transplants that long-time Albertans are shrinking as a share of the population, they're more likely to be social conservatives and the most inclined to vote Wildrose, and to hold "Eastern bastards freeze in the dark" sentiment.  Still, don't see the province voting anything but majority-Conservative federally for a long time.

[King of Kensington]

Colorado = the Vermont of the Rockies

[King of Kensington]

I'm not either. 

[King of Kensington]

Funny I recall quite well "fiscally conservative not socially conservative" Alberta dragged kicking and screaming into accepting same-sex marriage as the law of the land in Canada.  But of course that was a decade ago and now many people have accepted it and realized the sky wouldn't fall, plus there's been demographic changes etc.  

On the Vote Compass I don't see much of a north/south difference on abortion (the Mormons in the south are balanced out by evangelicals further north I suppose?).  Only inner city Calgary and inner city Edmonton are notably more pro-choice than the Canadian average.

http://votecompass.com/results/ca-2011/abortion/

There's a Canadian pro-choice majority, but 80% is way higher than most polling I've seen and we don't what they mean.  Here's an Angus Reid poll from 2008:

http://www.angusreidglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/archived-pdf/2008.06.20_Abortion.pdf

[King of Kensington]

Wow Colorado is cleaning up.  I also find it interesting that this seems to have sparked much more interest than New York State vs. Ontario.

Wonder if we're going to see demographic changes in Colorado as a result of its leftward shift on social issues.

[King of Kensington]

Edmonton-Strathcona = the Boulder of Alberta?

[King of Kensington]

For the record, I don't think Alberta is the most socially conservative province.  It's probably either PEI or New Brunswick.  Saskatchewan is probably more socially conservative as well.

[King of Kensington]

Well given the events in Alberta, does anyone want to re-consider? 

[King of Kensington]

No it wasn't "laughably wrong" in the last election - to quote Lord Ashcroft, polling is a snapshot in time, not a prediction. 

[King of Kensington]

I don't think the Alberta NDP is that much further to the left than the Colorado Democrats.

Maybe not, but is it so "obvious" that Colorado is ahead of Alberta?