Alberta 2012

[Hatman 🍁]

The Liberals are in 3rd place in PV now, but some of the outstanding polls are in NDP ridings, so I think the NDP will overtake the Liberals again (1000 vote difference)

[Hatman 🍁]

Manitoba wasn't that shocking, it was my best prediction of the Fall (and 308 did even better). In fact, all the provincial elections in the Fall matched the polls more or less. This one didn't. At all. I don't care what spin the pollsters give.

[Hatman 🍁]

With just one poll to go in the entire province, it looks like the Liberals will hang on to third place by 900 votes.

Senate race
Doug Black, PC - 16% "elected"
Scott Tannas, PC - 13% "elected"
Mike Shaikh, PC - 11% "elected" (ahead by 7000 votes)
Raymond Germain, WRP - 11%
Rob Gregory, WRP - 11%
Vitor Marciano, WRP - 9%
Elizabeth Johansson, EVG - 6%
Len Bracko, Ind - 5%
David Fletcher, Ind - 4%
Ian Urquhart, Ind - 4%
Paul Frank, Ind - 3%
William Exelby, Ind - 3%
Perry Chanal, Ind - 2%

[Hatman 🍁]

The Evergreen Senate candidate is in 2nd place in Edmonton-Strathcona with 21 polls still to report. She could "win" it.

[Hatman 🍁]

Turnout is 57%, extremely high for Alberta.

[Hatman 🍁]

Map/chart complete: http://canadianelectionatlas.blogspot.ca/2012/04/alberta-2012-provincial-election.html

I hope it is very Leipish.

[Hatman 🍁]

Yeah, it is kind of like a primary election, isn't it. I dont buy the argument that Liberals ditched their party at the last minute for the PCs, they got about what they polled. Most of the vote switching was from WRP to PC.

[Hatman 🍁]

How strange: one day, the far-right does far better in France than polls had predicted.  The very next day, they do much worse than polls predicted in Alberta. 

The FN's type of "far-right" is much different from the WRP's type.

Still though, he has a point. I suppose Albertans are less ashamed to back a right wing party like WRP, because they're well, Albertan. Maybe they were ashamed to say they'd support the Tories?

My theory is that a large majority of undecideds went PC. They made up their decision at the last minute. Also, the larger voter turnout means that people who dont normally vote came out of the wood work to stop Wildrose.

[Hatman 🍁]

You'd think it'd be the opposite - the type of disaffected Tory > WRP would be more likely to turnout, to my mind, than FN voters.

That was Ezra Levant's theory.

The FN in 1984 might be something like the Wildrose, but the FN in 2012 is clearly nothing like the Wildrose. The Wildrose is closer to the Droite populaire of the UMP if you're looking for an analogy, though the xenophobia of course isn't there.

There's a small bit of xenophobia, I'm sure. I know a large % of Albertans are racist. It's second nature for a lot of Albertans. I have some racist family members who live there... it's quite common to complain about those lazy injuns or the corrupt "pakis".

[Hatman 🍁]

Alberta is more like Texas or Montana.

[Hatman 🍁]

Excellent work, Smid. I was wondering if I was going to have to do those myself

[Hatman 🍁]

Well, take a look at my 2004 Senator map, Smid. It's in this thread, but also on my site under "Alberta maps".

BTW, I'm reading Hashemite's analysis on his site. Very well done (as always). I think I learned a bit or two myself, despite immersing myself in Alberta political history/geography these past few weeks.

[Hatman 🍁]

Strange map. I noticed the key is different from mine, as I used percentage of ballots while used percentage of votes.

[Hatman 🍁]

Alberta is more like Texas or Montana.

I've been told its more OK or UT than TX or MT, but to me it's more like Alabama or Georgia.

Well, the border area is like Utah in the sense that there are a lot of Mormons there. But, I'm not sure why it would be like the US south at all. It's not poor, it doesn't have a huge number of African Americans, it has very different industries. They might both be conservative, but Alberta is far more libertarian than the south, which is more populist. I'd say parts of Ontario are more like the US south (SW Ontario, Central and Eastern Ontario maybe), but even that's a stretch.

There's also a few communities in Nova Scotia that have descendants of the underground railroad. I believe they still have a southern dialect.

[Hatman 🍁]

Texas seems like a fairly reasonable comparison, with Dallas taking the place of Calgary and Houston that of Edmonton.

Why because of the Houston Oilers are the Edmonton Oilers? Heh. Parts of Edmonton are more like Austin, really.

[Hatman 🍁]

My analysis: http://canadianelectionatlas.blogspot.ca/2012/04/2012-alberta-provincial-election.html