Declining a ballot and other means of protest

April 23, 2012 Leave a comment

I have seen some discussion on what one should do if one does not like any of the choices they are presented with. Here are some mechanisms through which a voter can choose ‘none of the above’ in the absence of an actual ‘none of the above’ option.

1) Stay home. This is the easiest option. While there is no way to determine how many voters stayed home out of apathy and how many made a conscious decision to stay home, this still accomplishes the objective of voting for ‘none of the above’.

2) Spoil your ballot. This involves receiving your ballot and marking it in any way other than a clearly marked choice for a single candidate. All invalid ballots are tallied up and recorded in their own category. This also accomplishes the objective of choosing ‘none of the above’, though there is no way to determine if the ballot was spoiled intentionally or if the voter simply did not understand the instructions clearly.

3) Decline your ballot. This involves going to the polling station and telling the clerk you wish to decline your ballot. When the results are tallied up, your ‘vote’ will be counted in the ‘declined’ category, not the ‘invalid’ category. These votes are, unambiguously, a rejection of all options presented to the voter.

I am not encouraging voters to do any of these actions, but I think citizens deserve to know they do have alternatives when none of the conventional options are tolerable to them.

I pass no judgement on voters, whether they vote for a party, vote for a candidate, vote for a policy, vote against a policy, are single-issue voters, are die-hard partisans, vote strategically, vote ‘none of the above’, or even if they decide not to vote at all.

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My prediction: PC minority

April 23, 2012 Leave a comment

Here are some election predictions. I thought I had submitted my election predictions to the CalgaryGrit/Daveberta election pool, but I had not, so most of these are items from their pool.

Why do I anticipate the PCs winning? They were able to salvage their ship going into the last week, whereas the Wildrose campaign imploded. I subscribe to the theory that opposition parties do not ‘win’ elections; governments lose them, and the ‘bozo eruptions’ in the last week of the campaign will have many average Albertans thinking the Wildrose are not ready for prime time yet. The last-minute reversal of standings in the polls corroborate that. Moreover, close races tend to favour incumbency.

The drama will not stop at this election, though. A minority government will be incredibly unstable, and I think it is within the realm of possibility that the NDP and Liberals could cooperate with the Wildrose, if the government lost the confidence of the house. Then there is the issue of leadership: Alison Redford’s leadership has been called into question during the campaign, and she will have to retain the confidence of her party. Even Smith, who supposedly had the election in the bag, could come under scrutiny for a last-minute collapse in the campaign.

All of that being said, I am not very confident in this prediction–I am only more confident in this one over the other scenarios I have envisaged. The Wildrose could win. There could be a majority government. However, regardless of the outcome, Alberta politics will continue to be much more exciting than anything we have seen in the last two decades.

Overall outcome: PC minority, with a north-south split between the PCs and Wildrose and the PCs facing decimation in rural central/south Alberta.

PC: 43

Wildrose: 38

NDP: 3

Liberal: 3

Alison Redford: Holds Calgary-Elbow, but her biggest fight yet will be her leadership review, which she may not survive (unless I’m wrong about all of this and the PCs lose).

Raj Sherman: Loses Edmonton-Meadowlark; will step down as Liberal leader shortly after the election.

Ted Morton: Loses Foothills-Rockyview.

Edmonton-Glenora: Heather Klimchuck will hold for the PCs.

Best PC showing: Ray Danyluk in Lac La Biche-St. Paul-Two Hills.

Best Alberta Party showing: Michael Walters in Edmonton-Rutherford with 15 percent of the vote.

Neither Allan Hunsperger nor Ron Leech will win their seats.

The Wildrose will win one senate seat (likely Vitor Marciano).

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The conservative civil war is older than people think

April 21, 2012 Leave a comment

Every news story, editorial, or blog post about this election has said that it will be a watershed in Alberta’s political history. The province of political dynasties is on a precipice that happens only once every few decades, and this election will either be a repeat of 1993 when the reigning dynasty was able to reinvent itself or of 1971 when even the weight of history could not withstand the winds of change.

What is this election about? From a purely political standpoint, this is a battle between the factions of the conservative movement in Canada that have been at war with each other for decade. Alison Redford is the vanguard of the possible return of Torydom to Alberta. By ‘Tory’, I do not mean the colloquial term describing Canadian conservatives in general, but the specific strain of Canadian conservatism that traces its lineage all the way back to John A. MacDonald, but is most personified by the Tories of the second half of the twentieth century like Robert Stanfield, Dalton Camp, Joe Clark, Brian Mulroney, and  Peter Lougheed. Redford is merely the latest standard-bearer of a prestigious political pedigree.

Danielle Smith and the Wildrose, on the other hand, are part of the ‘new right’, the rise of which has been ascribed to populist champion Preston Manning and his intellectual allies such as Tom Flanagan, Barry Cooper, Rainer Knopff, Stephen Harper, and, ironically, now-Tory Ted Morton. However, this western Canadian brand of conservatism is older than the 1980s, and can be traced back to prairie populists like John Diefenbaker, Ernest Manning, and William Aberhart.

(Colby Cosh’s piece on the Wildrose and Kevin Libin’s piece on Alison Redford discuss the political pedigrees of both leaders.)

The details are usually only of interest to political scientists, historians, and journalists, but suffice it to say that the 2012 Alberta Election is merely the latest flare-up of a long-standing conservative civil war. The fight between moderate Tory elites and populist and ideological conservatives does not just describe the duel between Redford’s PCs and Smith’s Wildrose but is the same battle fought by Robert Stanfield’s faction of the federal PCs against the Diefenbaker loyalists in the 1960s.

So what about the Ralph Klein years? How could Ralph’s PC party—a party that led a decade-long scorched earth campaign against the debt decried even by his successors—be the same party as that of Peter Lougheed, who started government corporations and supported the National Energy Program?

It wasn’t.

The anointed successor to Don Getty was fellow Tory Nancy Betkowski, but she was defeated by populist Ralph Klein. Ralph Klein was more of a populist than a true conservative because, though he was (in)famous for slaying the dragon that was the deficit, he was known as a Liberal before entering provincial politics, and government spending during his final term could hardly be called conservative. His populist appeal, however, remained constant throughout his political career.

Moreover, there was a zeitgeist in the 1990s of paring back the welfare state. 1993 was the peak of the Alberta Liberals, and, like Klein, opposition leader Laurence Decore also ran on a platform of deficit-slaying. One has to wonder if anything would have changed in the 1990s had Decore won; I personally believe the Liberals would have slashed-and-burned just as much as Klein did, if not moreso, just to prove that Liberals could govern austerely. This popular sentiment was seen on the federal level too, where—in one of the greatest ironies in Canadian political history–the spiritual successor of the Liberal Party’s left wing, Jean Chretien, also slashed-and-burned and led one of the most fiscally conservative governments in Canadian history during his first two terms.

But, I digress.

The battle between Redford’s PCs and Smith’s Wildrose is a proxy for the struggle between the two visions of Canadian conservatism. The former is more moderate and driven by a cadre of elites who broker between segments of society. The latter is more ideological and populist, relying on plebiscitarian mechanisms to make decisions rather than brokerage done by elites.

This tension is easily seen in the controversy over social issues that has dominated the coverage of this election campaign. In the increasing social liberalism of today, it is not surprising that social conservatives have made their home in populist parties. As the members of the new right have argued, (ironically, one of the biggest champions of this argument is Ted Morton) there is an alliance between Liberal elites and ‘rights-seeking’ individuals (gays, feminists, environmentalists, etc.) to use the courts to bypass the usual legislative channels in order to achieve social change and expand the welfare state to provide service to the aforementioned groups. Thus, while libertarians, social conservatives, and fiscal hawks may have disagreements with each other, they are united in their common opposition to the welfare state and its allies. They argue that old-school Tories, because they rely on brokerage, do not have the backbone to stand up to ‘special interests’ and that these groups do not even have to go through the courts anymore because they can simply approach a government that is all too happy to accommodate their requests.

The Tories, meanwhile, argue their support for these groups is not anything revolutionary, but simply an acceptance that society has changed. Furthermore, as the Tories are more typified by technocratic governance through elites, academics, and professionals rather than the ‘common sense governance’ advocated by populists, Tories more readily accept the intellectual push for change that tends to predate popular acceptance.

Anyone who has been following Alberta politics has seen Redford’s technocratic tendencies and Smith’s repeated invocation of the populist mantra of ‘common sense politics’.

Progressive ‘conservatives’ versus ‘real’ conservatives.

Elites versus populists.

Brokerage versus direct democracy.

Technocracy versus common sense.

No matter how you describe it, the Alberta 2012 election is another chapter in the long-standing internal rivalry within the Canadian conservative movement—a rivalry that has been a civil war since the post-Diefenbaker days, and a rivalry that was only recently pacified at the federal level when the Canadian Alliance absorbed the Progressive Conservatives in 2003. Which side will win in Alberta remains to be seen. Toryism outside of the Maritimes is confined to Alberta and Manitoba. Elsewhere, it has had to ally with the Liberals (as is the case in British Columbia and Saskatchewan) or has been taken over by the new right altogether, as is the case with the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party.

Popular interest in politics might wane after April 23, 2012, but the followers, practitioners, and students of politics will watch with interest as the two conservative factions continue to do battle in Alberta’s 28th Legislative Assembly.

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Danielle Smith versus the social conservatives

April 20, 2012 Leave a comment

Wildrose leader Danielle Smith continues to come under fire for not doing more to reign in (or expel outright) controversial candidates such as Allan Hunsperger and Ron Leech. In the rush to discuss the ethics of Smith’s inaction, there seems to be little discussion of the motivations thereof, so here is another post about the inside baseball that goes on in politics.

Before I begin, I want to emphasize that the discussion of the ethics of Smith’s response is a very important one. I write about the backroom dynamics because they are another layer of politics that can explain—though not necessarily ‘justify’—why certain political actions do or not happen. I am not saying that the backroom dynamics are more important, but that they cannot be ignored.

From a purely political and strategic perspective, Hunsperger and Leech’s comments could cost the Wildrose the election. The PCs have tried from the onset of the election campaign to attack Smith on hot-button social issues. The attacks have largely failed against Smith, given her well-known social libertarianism. However, the Wildrose’s candidates were wild cards, and Canadian politics has several examples of staunch conservatives putting their feet in their mouths because they either had poor media training and well-meaning statements came out sideways, or in a few cases, they were actually bigots. Alberta Liberal leader’s ill-fated foray into the abortion issue in 1993 is well-known, but it seems that Hunsperger and Leech forgot that homosexuality and race on the same list of ‘topics banned from election campaigns’ as abortion. Thus. the hits the PC campaign could not land on Smith ended up being self-inflicted by the Wildrose’s own candidates. One would think that the sin of torpedoing your party’s election campaign merits some sort of sanction, but none has come.

My best guess is that Smith is afraid of her party’s rank-and-file, and throwing prominent, albeit inarticulate, social conservatives under the bus would risk a leadership review and possible expulsion from her post. Given their populist nature, the Wildrose constitution has easy mechanisms for both the party and the caucus to compel, restrain, or even depose the leader, and I would bet on the social conservatives being able to outmaneuver and out-muscle the libertarians, fiscal-hawks-but-social-liberals, and disgruntled-but-not-ideological-former-Tories in the Wildrose.

If the PC-Wildrose feud is a messy divorce, then the Wildrose electoral coalition is an awkward marriage of the four aforementioned groups. While Smith won an overwhelming leadership mandate, she was elected in the midst of an economic crisis that untied the factions within the Wildrose on the common ground of economic hawkishness and antipathy towards Ed Stelmach. With Ed gone and the economy improving, the unifying forces within the Wildrose may be giving way to the long-standing divisions between the factions within the party.

Moreover, the social conservatives know that they are in the minority these days and that choosing Smith was a compromise they had to make in order to deal with the greater evil of the progressives who have taken over the PCs. Now that they can smell victory, I am sure the temptation exists to replace Smith with a more ideologically pure leader who is conservative on both sets of issues. Leader says all things that seem to mean something but really mean something else, and, “I stand by my members,” or “My members are behind me when I say…” often mean, “I was told by members to…” or “My members have threatened to depose me unless…” I will not name any names, but even casual observers of politics know of the ambitions of certain Wildrose members. Thus, do not think it so much that Smith supports Hunsperger and Leech, as much as she cannot public oppose them and hope to survive the wrath of the well-mobilized social conservatives within her party.

The irony, of course, is that the constraints imposed on Smith by social conservatives is similar to the constraints imposed on Redford by her old guard, albeit, the latter case is more of a purely political issue rather than an ideological one. If I feel up to it, I might write that post tomorrow.

Smith, and her fellow libertarian, Tom Flanagan, know that social issues are a political minefield in Canada, and the impressive discipline of the Wildrose campaign in the first three weeks are a testament to the lessons learned from Reform’s ill-disciplined 1993 federal campaign.  If the PCs do manage to complete the Hail Mary pass on Monday, the Wildrose might have to go through the same long and arduous learning process that their federal counterpart spent the better part of 11 years doing. If history is an indicator, the opportunity to change governments in Alberta only comes once every twenty years or so, and the would-be-government’s ship can easily crash on the rocks just before reaching port.

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All Leger polls during the election campaign

April 18, 2012 Leave a comment

The post-debate polls are out, and both Return on Insight and Leger are showing that there have been some shifts. Both are showing that the race has gotten tighter in the two major cities, which means the Tories are catching up in Calgary and the Wildrose is catching up in Edmonton. There is more than enough commentary on polls, but, unless you are watching  TV, you rarely see charts, which really show just how dramatic this race has been. Since I actually do this in my spare time so I know what the current numbers stand, I figured I would post them for everyone’s enjoyment.

The caveat is that these polls are pre-Hunsperger and pre-Leech, so there is a high likelihood that the numbers have shifted since them, given the brouhaha over those incidents in mainstream and social media.

The Wildrose have recovered in both Edmonton and outside of the two major cities. Regional subsamples have a higher margin of error, so caution should be approached when evaluating those numbers. Still, the jump is high enough that a margin of error would only change the degree and not direction of the shift. The PCs, on the other hand, have recovered in Calgary, while the Wildrose numbers have been remarkably consistent, resulting in both of them being in a dead heat.

What is also interesting is where the movement is coming from. I wrote earlier that Liberal and even New Democrat voters might cast a strategic vote for the PCs to stop the Wildrose, and we see evidence of that in Calgary, with the PCs being up 11 points and the centre/left vote collapsing by 10 points between both the Liberals and the NDP. The story is a little different in Edmonton where both the Wildrose and the PCs are up, and both the NDP and Liberals are down. It is curious that the PC and Liberal shifts are equal and in opposite directions, as are the Wildrose and NDP shifts. As it is impossible to tell individual level shifts over the course of the campaign, it would be dangerous to suggest that there is vote trading going on between certain parties, and it is possible that several shifts have happened for a variety of reasons, which has led to this shift on the aggregate level.

The biggest problem for the Wildrose, in the context of the events that happened after this poll, is that they may have peaked too soon. The Wildrose’s detractors smiled in delight as the wheels fell off the Wildrose bus this week, on account of Hunsperger and Leech’s comments. I can only imagine the consternation of the strategists in the Wildrose war room, who are re-living the nightmares of Reform Campaign Past, complete with randomly appearing spectres of unshackled and colourful candidates who have not yet learned to couch their language.

*A note on why I use Leger’s polls: Leger has published weekly updates on the horse race numbers, which is why I use their numbers. Once Abacus releases their latest numbers I plot both sets on charts.

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A sampling of curiosities and contradictions.

April 17, 2012 Leave a comment

Last night, I was talking to someone who does not follow politics. They are very intelligent, but are very busy and do not have a lot of time to keep with the news. As I was explaining some of the issues, they remarked that the complexity of politics made it difficult to follow along. After the conversation, I took off my political scientist and former staffer hats and saw that, to many casual observers, there are probably a lot of things that do not make sense at first glance.

Here is a sampling of seeming curiosities and contradictions that we have seen in this race so far.

Danielle Smith is a pro-choice, pro-same-sex-marriage libertarian leading a party with several prominent social conservatives. She has pledged not to legislate on contentious social issues, yet it is Wildrose policy to support the ‘conscience rights’ of public servants.

Alison Redford initially criticized Smith for being too socially progressive (re: legalizing prostitution) and then says the Wildrose is socially regressive on the issue of conscience rights (amongst others). This is especially notable, given her energy minister’s staunch social conservatism and his previous attempts to introduce conscience rights. (I also wrote an earlier post about both parties’ connections to private health care providers, though I also said that was an inside baseball issue that few really care about.)

Raj Sherman, a former Tory, was elected Liberal leader on a platform of being fiscally conservative and socially progressive, but the Liberals are running on a platform that includes raising taxes and re-regulating electricity.

Brian Mason, who usually characterized the Liberals as being no different from the Tories, is criticizing the Liberals’ proposed tax reforms for increasing tax revenue too much.

The Alberta Party, which has proposed less centralized leadership and ‘new politics’ has a candidate that is running to be a spoiler and has called for a candidate nomination to be overturned.

Now, I am not saying that there are no explanations for these happenings—indeed, I can think of valid explanations for all of them—but I can see how it would be perplexing to someone who does not follow politics all that closely.

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What 2008 might show us about 2012

April 16, 2012 1 Comment

This weekend, I was looking at my spreadsheet of results from 2008 and wondered how the regional vote varied by region. (Yes, I lead a very exciting life!) Regional support patterns have varied considerably in this current election, and, if the election were held today, Alberta would have:

  • A Wildrose government based mainly out of Calgary and Southern Alberta
  • A PC opposition based mainly out of Edmonton and Northern Alberta
  • The NDP as a third party with anywhere from two to six seats
  • Possibly a few Liberals in Calgary and Edmonton

However, regionalism is nothing new in either Alberta or Canadian politics. In fact, good or bad, it is one of the defining features of our politics. The 1993 election saw a PC government overwhelmingly from Calgary, a Liberal opposition overwhelmingly from Edmonton, and rural Alberta carved up in a two-thirds to one-third split favouring the Tories. The 1971 election was an urban/rural split, with the PCs dominating cities and towns.

That being said, what did regional support patterns look like in 2008? Moreover, how do the current horse-race standings compare to the popular vote in the last election? First, here is how the parties stack up against each other, as of the Postmedia/Leger Marketing poll published April 9, 2012 in the Calgary Herald and Edmonton Journal.

Table 1: Postmedia/Leger Marketing poll published April 9, 2012

PC

Liberal

NDP

WAP

AP
Province

34%

36%

13%

13%

3%
Edmonton

33%

15%

23%

24%

4%
Calgary

29%

15%

8%

43%

2%
Outside Calgary/Edmonton

41%

16%

8%

40%

2%

Next, here is the distribution of the 2008 popular vote on a regional basis. In an effort to follow some kind of precedent, I used the regional description in Wikipedia’s article on the 2008 election, though I have issues with how some ridings are classified (e.g. Calgary-Fish Creek in “inner-city Calgary”). The table excludes votes for the Social Credit, Separation, Alberta, and Communist Parties and independent candidates, which only amount to a total of one percent of the popular vote. The regional averages are calculated by averaging the percentage of the popular vote a party garnered across all ridings in a given region. Admittedly, it would be more accurate to do the calculation with raw vote totals, but the two methods do not produce significantly or substantially different results, and the method I used was more expedient.

For the purposes of this analysis, ‘rural’ is ‘an area not in either of the two major cities, or the principal regional urban areas’ (i.e. Fort McMurray, Grande Prairie, Red Deer, Lethbridge and Medicine Hat).

Table 2: 2008 popular vote by region

PC

Liberal

NDP

WAP

Green
Province

53.33%

25.47%

8.66%

6.97%

4.48%
Edmonton (inner-city)

38.32%

35.40%

20.69%

1.90%

3.54%
Edmonton (suburbs)

49.54%

31.51%

13.30%

1.19%

3.00%
Edmonton (all)

45.46%

32.92%

15.99%

1.45%

3.19%
Calgary (inner city)

43.95%

36.86%

4.46%

7.11%

5.27%
Calgary (suburbs)

48.41%

29.71%

4.61%

10.21%

4.57%
Calgary (all)

46.08%

33.44%

4.53%

8.59%

4.93%
Combined inner-city

41.70%

36.27%

10.95%

5.02%

4.58%
Combined suburbs

49.04%

30.72%

9.48%

5.16%

3.69%
Combined YEG/YYC

45.78%

33.19%

10.13%

5.10%

4.08%
Northern AB (Fort McMurray)

63.41%

24.67%

7.72%

0.00%

4.21%
Northern AB (Grande Pairie)

63.07%

15.24%

10.56%

6.54%

4.60%
Northern AB (cities)

65.20%

18.23%

9.95%

3.27%

3.35%
Northern AB (rural)

66.69%

11.77%

12.07%

6.38%

2.70%
Northern AB (all)

65.64%

13.75%

11.34%

5.78%

3.23%
Central AB (Red Deer)

57.06%

24.31%

5.79%

7.60%

5.24%
Central AB (west)

58.77%

16.59%

5.93%

11.13%

7.21%
Central AB (east)

70.76%

12.15%

5.99%

4.45%

6.66%
Central AB (rural)

64.24%

14.14%

5.76%

8.24%

6.96%
Central AB (all)

63.44%

15.27%

5.76%

8.17%

6.77%
Southern AB (Lethbridge)

41.45%

40.78%

8.01%

6.84%

2.93%
Southern AB (Medicine Hat)

51.18%

34.43%

4.60%

7.09%

2.71%
Sotherrn AB (cities)

44.69%

38.66%

6.87%

6.92%

2.85%
Southern AB (rural)

61.98%

13.22%

3.57%

17.65%

3.58%
Southern AB (all)

56.79%

20.85%

4.56%

14.43%

3.36%
Smaller cites (all)

54.72%

27.47%

7.63%

6.13%

4.06%
Rural AB (all)

64.28%

13.37%

6.72%

10.00%

5.18%
Outside Calgary/Edmonton (all)

62.27%

16.34%

6.91%

9.19%

4.94%

*Note: This chart is available in a pretty colour-coded version that shows regional support relative to provincial levels. See the bottom of this post for that chart.

The PCs’ strongholds are Northern and Central Alberta. While they still won big in the two major cities, there is a nine-point difference between PC support levels in the suburbs versus the inner-city. When the PCs’ inner-city support is compared against their rural support, there is a difference of over 22 points. PC support levels in Lethbridge are similar to that of the two major cities, and while the PCs still dominate Medicine Hat, their support there is still 13 point lower than the rural average. Outside of the two major cities, the PCs support levels follow a gradient, increasing in intensity from south to north.

Surprisingly, on the chart, the Liberals’ strongest support levels are in Lethbridge. While the Liberals won Lethbridge-East and were competitive in Lethbridge-West, this is an artifact of the regional classification system, which makes some questionable classification decisions in the cities. 2008 was unique in that it shifted the opposition’s centre of gravity to Calgary. The Liberals have not historically done well in Calgary, and, in 1993, Laurence Decore actually won more seats in rural Alberta than he did in Calgary, so it is interesting to see that Liberal support is remarkably consistent between the two major cities in 2008.

The NDP has historically been a party of Edmonton and Northern Alberta, and their 2008 regional support patterns are a continuation of that trend. Though they only won two ridings in 2008, they were competitive enough across the capital to play spoilers against the Liberals. Historically, there has not been room for both a strong Liberal Party and a strong NDP, and some have taken it upon themselves to coordinate the non-conservative vote in an effort to reduce vote-splitting amongst the left. The NDP also had double-digit support levels in former NDP leader Grant Notely’s old stomping grounds of Northern Alberta, where there are groups active in both the environment and the public health care lobby.

Though the Wildrose Alliance received less than nine percent of the popular vote in 2008, they had a significant presence in a few key areas, and had double-digit support levels in suburban Calgary, West-Central Alberta, and rural Southern Alberta, where then-leader Paul Hinman was the incumbent in Cardston-Taber-Warner. They were also competitive in the far northern riding of Dunvegan-Central Peace. Though small compared to the Liberals, the WAP’s 2008 support foreshadows the Wildrose’s current standings of being, principally, a party of Calgary and Central and Southern Alberta. In fact, the Wildrose and NDP, in addition to being ideological foils to each other, are also regional foils with the Wildrose being stronger in the south and the NDP being stronger in the North.

The Greens, though stereotyped as a party for inner-city hippie types, actually fared best in Central Alberta, where they fielded notable local figures such as Edwin Erickson and Joe Anglin as candidates. With the dissolution and reincarnation of the Greens and the departure of these same two party notables (Erickson to the Alberta Party and Anglin to the Wildrose), the future of Alberta’s small but dedicated green movement is uncertain.

So what’s the bottom line? For all the talk of change in the air, come April 23rd, the 2012 election results may have been foreshadowed to some extent by the 2008 results. Even in 2008, the PCs support thinned (in a relative manner of speaking) from north to south, where as the WAP was stronger in the south and weaker in the north. The NDP’s support follows the same trend as the PCs, whereas the Liberals have similar support levels across both major cities. While the intensity of these patterns has changed exponentially, the nature of the patterns has remained relatively static between 2008 and 2012.

The one party for which there is no benchmark is the Alberta Party. Most polls show that their support is concentrated in the two major cities, so comparing them to the Greens in a regional sense does not work.

Notwithstanding the chance for seismic shifts in the final week of the campaign, these regional disparities in party support will have serious consequences for political debate in the next Legislature. The Calgary-Edmonton rivalry could become a proxy for the civil war in the conservative movement in Alberta, which has become far more heated than the rivalry between the PCs, Liberals, and NDP ever was. Given the increasingly antagonistic and divisive tenor of the election campaign, one cannot help but fear what effect this will have on our politics over the next for years—especially with the very real possibility for a minority government.

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The privatization conspiracy theory, Oberg, Jivraj, and inside baseball

April 14, 2012 1 Comment

Before I begin this post, I want to emphasize that I am not wading into a public policy debate here. The private versus public health care debate has been done enough times that my input would add little to that conversation. Instead, I want to discuss inside baseball and the privatization of public health care conspiracy theory.

The PCs have been running firmly in the centre throughout this entire election campaign. Alison Redford’s tactics in the debate have matched the campaign’s strategy of portraying the Wildrose as an untested commodity that, if elected, will take Alberta back to the past, threaten the rights of gays and women, and privatize health care. Their latest offensive against the Wildrose attacks Danielle Smith’s ties to former PC MLA-turned-health-care-entrepreneur Lyle Oberg. Oberg had a rocky relationship with his former party, having famously alleged that he knew where the skeletons were in the government’s closet, only to be subsequently suspended from the PC caucus. That, in addition to the fact that he was one of the more right-leaning PCs, meant it was not much of a surprise when he jumped to the Wildrose. (Incidentally, Oberg’s wife works for Wildrose MLA Guy Boutilier, who supported Oberg’s failed leadership bid back in 2006). Anyway, the point is, Oberg, a doctor, is now in the for-profit health care business, which, given his ties to the Wildrose, gives further proof of the Wildrose’s plan to privatize health care. Right? Sure, why not?

Except, I am not sure this argument will fly, especially given the messenger. In Calgary, where the PCs are far behind, most people either do not buy the privatization conspiracy theory or they support it. At least that was the case several years ago when I was campaigning for the Liberals, and the privatization conspiracy was standard Liberal messaging du jour. Given that much of Calgary supports the Wildrose, who has labelled Redford a Liberal, I do not think the simple privatization conspiracy line would work again, even if it were the PCs using it.

So, if not Calgary, then perhaps it would work in Edmonton? In the capital, the PCs have a ten point lead at 33 percent, with the New Democrats and Wildrose tied at around 23 percent. The Liberals are in third at 15 percent, and both the Liberals and the NDs have momentum, whereas the Wildrose is static, and PCs are slipping. Bringing up the Wildrose’s hidden privatization agenda will at least hurt the Wildrose, which could be enough to help the PCs, even if it does not actually bump up the PCs numbers.

So if it could help the PCs in Edmonton, then what is the problem? The problem is inside baseball.

“Inside baseball” is a term used to describe issues that politicos and pundits care about, but that are largely irrelevant to the average citizen–like a complicated web of backroom connections. However, it is not just that the average person does not care about inside baseball, but that the Tories have their own inside baseball issues that pertain to private health care.

During the PC leadership race, many donations were made by numbered corporations. Among these, were three donations of amounts of $10,000, $12,500, and $12,500 made to three different leadership campaigns (including that of Alison Redford) made by three different numbered companies controlled by Dr. Kabir Jivraj. Jivraj is the managing director of AgeCare, which is a company that operates for-profit long-term seniors care facilities across the province. Jivraj and his companies have also donated close to $16,000 to the PCs from 2004 to 2009. Jivraj was also a principal shareholder of Surgical Centres Inc., a private surgery clinic operating out of Calgary. Moreover, Redford is a proponent of the “aging-in-place” concept for seniors’ care, which, is the same model used by the private company AgeCare–a model that critics allege will lead to increased privatization.  Surely, this link between Redford, the PCs, and private health care providers is just as good, if not better than the link between Smith, Oberg and private health care providers. In a final parallel, both Redford and Smith have denied being influenced by Jivraj and Oberg, respectively. There are enough parallels that a cynic might wonder if anyone would be able to distinguish one case from the either, if all of the names were stripped from the story.

This leads me back to my original point about inside baseball and whether Redford’s use of the privatization conspiracy against Smith will work. To the average voter, this intricate web of backroom ties is irrelevant, which means that the average voter likely does not even know about Lyle Oberg or Kabir Jivraj’s private health care operations, let alone care. However, anyone who follows inside baseball would likely know both cases and be able to see the parallels. Furthermore, the inside baseball fans on the left probably think that both Oberg and Jivarj and their respective political allies are all dangers to public health care.

To most people, Redford’s use of the privatization conspiracy theory is just too much inside baseball, and, many people who follow inside baseball already believe that the PCs have been part of that conspiracy all along.

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Memorable Debate Moments

April 12, 2012 5 Comments

There will be enough posts discussing who won the debate, so I will not bother with that.

The four leaders square off.

Well, okay, I will say this: no one won. Redford and Smith drew.  Redford was more polished, but Smith was the underdog and was polished enough. All either of them had to do was survive, and they both did. Neither landed a knock-out punch. Both managed to get through the tough questions (MLA pay and conscience rights) damaged, but not destroyed. On the other side, Sherman was not stellar, but he had some good one-liners and he showed he was neither a one-trick-pony nor crazy. I was disappointed with Mason, who I thought won the 2008 debate; tonight, he was not as quick or witty as he normally was.

As for some select moments, here they are.

Raj Sherman invokes Alabama. While I think his “This is Alberta, not Alabama” line is unstatesmanlike and unnecessary, it is pithy, it plays well to the voters the Liberals are targeting, and it is another one of those Raj one-liners that puts grins on people’s faces.

Danielle Smith discusses ‘inexperience’. In a classic channeling of conservative demigod Ronald Regan, Smith turns her weakness against her opponent. Redford pointed out Smith’s lack of legislature experience, and Smith replied, “I don’t have experience running deficits, I don’t have experience bullying doctors and I don’t have experience voting myself a 30-per-cent pay raise.” Of all the witty remarks, this one was probably my favourite.

Alison Redford teaches Westminster Democracy 101. After Smith extolled the virtues of populism, Redford replies back with everyone’s favourite example of populism-gone-wrong: California. While Mason said the “Americanization of Alberta politics” line, it was Redford who explained what the actually meant, and she outlined the problems with raising government revenue (without actually saying “raising government revenue”) when major spending proposals are continually subjected to referenda. Then, she explained the concept of government mandates. As a political science major, this response brought be back to my electoral systems class.

Brian Mason talks about committee pay, accidentally insults journalists. I do not think Mason intended to take a swipe at journalists (he loves them and they love him), but he was clearly flustered on the issue of MLA pay, so he blamed the media for oversimplifying the issue. Given that he is a funny soundbite-dispensing-machine, I am sure the journalists will forgive him for that.

Mason and Sherman’s “one-on-one” on taxes. Given that both parties have pledged tax reforms that would raise taxes on the rich, they had little to say to each other on this issue… so both of them ignored each other and went after Redford. I actually lol’d.

Alison Redford takes a page out of the federal Liberals’ 2004 platform, goes after the scary social conservatives in the Wildrose. This was not unexpected, though I was surprised Redford ended with the line, “rights for all.” While her closing statement was still the strongest out of all the leaders’, I thought this line was too narrow in scope to be the closing line. Then again, maybe testing indicated it was the best line against Smith.

Smith invokes the Reform forefathers. In an attempt to recreate the federal Conservative coalition in Alberta, Smith (a libertarian) invoked Preston Manning (populist) and Stephen Harper (classical liberal) as politicians who have been victims of ‘liberal fear-mongering’.

Smith trashes Peter Lougheed. If you are thinking, “Wait, I don’t remember this!” it is because Smith did not actually name him. Rather, she said that the PC party has NEVER manged the province’s finances properly. That was pretty audacious, given Peter Lougheed’s near-apotheosis in Alberta. Even Liberals worship him.

Finally, it did not occur during the debate, but, after the debate, Mason had one of his aides get him a slurpee. He wins the award for best photograph from the debate.

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Week 3 Polls

April 11, 2012 Leave a comment

Note: The charts are at the bottom of the post. All data is from Leger’s latest poll. To skip to the discussion on leaners, click here.

Leger’s week three numbers show that the real battle is happening outside of Alberta’s two major cities. In Edmonton, the PCs continue to lose ground to the NDs, and the Wildrose, Liberals and Alberta Parties all remain the same level of support as in week one. In Calgary, both the PCs and Wildrose seem to be losing ground to the Liberals, with the NDs and Alberta Party remaining static. As I originally, said, the excitement is in rural Alberta, where the Wildrose and PCs battle back and forth and are currently in a dead heat.

This is good news for the NDP, and their growth in Edmonton could translate into seat gains at either the PCs’ or Liberals’ expense. Conversely, the Liberals have a tough fight on their hands in both cities. In Edmonton, they face the resurgent NDP and the Alberta Party, which will have a greater ‘spoiler effect’ for the Liberals than in Calgary. In Calgary, while the Liberals’ momentum will make them competitive in several ridings, they will have to ensure their vote is fully mobilized in order to run up the middle between the PCs and Wildrose.

Because the regional sample sizes are already small (they tend to have margin of errors of around five percent, as opposed to the provincial sample, which has a margin of error around three percent), the ‘rest of Alberta’ results cannot be further subdivided into northern, central and southern Alberta. However, it is likely that support outside of Calgary and Edmonton mirrors support within Calgary and Edmonton with the Wildrose being stronger in the south and the PCs being stronger in the north.

Why have the PCs rebounded? It could be that the PCs’ efforts to reach out to voters outside of the two smaller cities seem to be paying off. Or the issue of conscience right may have done real damage to the Wildrose. Or some disgruntled-but-not-quite-angry PC supporters decided to return to the mothership. My guess is no better than anyone else’s, but, given that many people do not start paying attention to the election until mid-way through the campaign, it may be the case that many voters who are traditionally Tory but are not overtly political have only just realized that the home team is in trouble.

Province-wide

Edmonton

Calgary

Rest of Alberta



Growth Potential

The next chart looks at the parties that undecided voters are leaning towards. The percentage of respondents who are undecided has consistently been around 20 percent during the entire campaign. While that remains relatively constant, how that support is distributed has changed significantly. Take these numbers with a grain of salt, as the margin of error would be quite high, given how small the sub-sample of undecideds is. some trends can be seen. After experiencing some growth amongst undecided voters, the Wildrose has plateaued at around 18 percent. The PCs, after taking a nose dive between the first and second week, is now attracting potential supporters at the expense of the Liberals and New Democrats.

It goes without saying that these numbers will likely change after the leaders’ debate, which, given its timing within the campaign, will be a significant turning point or maybe even the deciding factor.

Leaners

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