Alberta General Election - May 5th, 2015

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

If the PCs lose then either the NDP or Wildrose win.  That government, if NDP, will likely last one term (possibly two) thanks to how right-wing Alberta is.  That means that likely either the PCs or Wildrose win next.  No governing party in Alberta has ever returned to government.  That means that the PCs are probably (the probability of this increases depending on how much seats they lose) going to go in a slow tailspin until they die.  A Wildrose government?  I don't want that.  Correct my presumptions here if they are wrong, but that's why I'm currently backing Jim Prentice.

Truisms about an area's political history are always true until they're not. A polity has always done something until it doesn't and has never done something until it does.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

This had to happen during AP season, didn't it? Oh, well. Looking forward to either a very fun election, or perhaps not much fun at all if the NDP do end up winning a historic majority (though the patterns will be interesting to observe).

How is the NDP winning not fun? Ending 44 years of one party rule is the best kind of election.

Not when it's a party like the NDP. I was very excited for Wildrose's majority in 2012

Vosem, out of curiosity, are there any circumstances in which you’d concede that a left-of-center government would be desirable? I ask because I genuinely think that my preferred political history of any given country in an ideal world would involve an alternation of staunchly left-wing and moderately conservative governments, wherein the latter would serve to contextualize and when necessary moderate the gains made under the former, and reconcile them to the more traditionalist elements of society. For example, while I don’t actually think that the Churchill-Eden-Macmillan-Home string of governments was a good thing (possibly excepting Macmillan; I have a soft spot for the guy and am not sure why), if somebody like Bevan had been Prime Minister instead of Attlee I might. Similarly I can see an argument for one term of Thatcher having been a good thing, but for the love of all that is holy not all three. I might feel likewise about Eisenhower had Truman’s veto of Taft-Hartley been sustained. Would you be willing to concede the inverse? Because if you wouldn’t, what you’ll be left with is at best a situation like Japan, where there’s a structural bias towards the right so strong that the same right-leaning party has provided Prime Ministers for fifty-four out of the past sixty years, and over that time has developed into more a series of interlocking and ostensibly allied criminal and anticonstitutional conspiracies than anything else (admittedly, as I suppose any entity cofounded by Kishi Nobusuke would have to eventually).

Or a situation like, well, Alberta.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

It begins.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

How long does it usually take for polls to start reporting?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

*snip*

All right, good to know. I thought so, I just wanted to make sure. Your point about your preference for the Alberta Liberals is well-taken, though I suspect you and David Swann may be the only people who think that at this point.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

...what the [Inks] is happening

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Is there any hope of this just being an oddity of the first few polling places to report?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Oh. We're talking like double-digit numbers of votes in per riding. Okay.

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ORANGE CRUSH

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39-21-12 NDP-PC-WR.

Is it too early to say 'LOL Wildrose'?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

NDP now ahead in Peace River but not the ancestral Notley riding to its immediate south yet.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Notley ancestral riding is a three-way horse race.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'm seeing 44-20-13-1, but those numbers don't add up. What gives?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Peace River just went orange on the CBC map. The map looks much nicer now.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Peace River: 129 vote lead for NDP, 2 boxes left.

Excellent. And Lesser Slave Lake?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

This is not a good day for conservatives in Alberta... On another note, how many Tories and Wildrose voters will start calling for IRV in Alberta?

I don't know too much about Albertan politics, aside from a brief history of the different periods of government. So, I was wondering, given Alberta's long history of conservatism:

• Did the incumbent government do something extremely bad to lose?
• Was it vote-splitting between the Tories and Wildrose?
• Or did people just want a change?

Kind of all of the above, as I understand it.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

David Swann seems like a legitimately great guy so I'm sad that he won't be speaker. Agreed that a brand-spanking-new MLA is probably a bad pick.