Alberta election 2023

[adma]

Knowing that so many people vote in advance these days, they should just assign advanced votes to polling stations/precincts. Isn't this how it's done in some US states? I think NB does this too.

Doing so complicates and delays the counting of advance votes for no real benefit other than psephological curiosity.

Then may I ask you something: why don't *you* have that psephological curiosity?  Why do you look upon electoral geography in such drab, utilitarian terms?

You know, if there's a term for the highest-operating version of such curiosity, it might be: "electoral psychogeography".  Related to this concept

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychogeography

And it's a positive reflex, in that it breeds an free-form electoral "engagement to place", akin to other psychogeographical applications--but it's also not *too* far removed from how actual election campaigns work; and moreover, it can fuel the game plan for candidates and campaign teams, and in a way that's "meaningful" even in losing causes.  Because the finer the polling-station detail, the more one can superengage to super-local conditions, even within so-called/supposed "alien territory"--it gives it all dimension, it gives it all structure, more so than big amorphous megapoll blobs.

So maybe when I bring up the left, it's because in Canada, at least, the left's been ahead when it comes to an inherently "psychogeography-adjacent" approach to electioneering--an iconic case in point being the provincial byelection in Riverdale in 1964, where the NDP mastered door-to-door canvassing techniques that have subsequently become universal.  But then again, the notion of psychogeography has *always* been left-adjacent, whether "revolutionary" (the Situationist International) or "bourgeois" (the Jane Jacobs-inspired Jane's Walks).  

Nevertheless, the nature of "electoral psychogeography" is such that, in essence, it transcends partisanship--it's more of an "electoral bystander" reflex, actually.  And as such, it's the purest form of "electoral sense of place", and in a way that can make someplace superficially electorally boring as dirt (those monolithically rural UCP, or for that matter urban NDP, ridings) show "added dimension".  It brings you right there; breeds curiosity about a place, even if it's about a spot polling station that's only 75% Conservative vs 85% riding-wide, and how the non-Conservative candidates line up (which works best when it's not a baldly binary race--that is, the *dullest* Alberta races were those where there were only two candidates: UCP and NDP).  Do that in combination with Google Earth, and it's practically an alibi for a carbon-neutral form of road-trip-and-beyond "travel", urban study, etc.

And I know that you, yourself, might have bigger fish to fry than to dig into the Canadian poll-by-polls--but if you're one to discount the value of that kind of electoral-and-beyond curiosity *entirely*, then you truly are an uninspired individual...

[adma]

It is kind of amusing though, when it comes to leadership races, the NDP doesn't really care about the geography of the vote at all. It's only of interest in general or by-elections, when they're running against other parties. Makes sense of course, but there is no desire to look at the geography of the vote for curiosity's sake.

Which might be more of a holdover from the "big convention hall" days of leadership races, where the vote really is more of a stewing pot repeated over and over each round--as opposed to the remote-voting/ranked-choice points-based/electoral-district-based setup for recent Conservative races...

[adma]

And maybe another thing, electorally speaking, about "fine-grained" psephologically-based electioneering versus big dumb polling subdivisions is that the latter really works best for major "establishment" parties who don't *need* to engage or operate on that worm's-eye level.  SUV-scaled polling subdivisions serving SUV-scaled electoral politics, and everyone else is overwhelmed and sorted out of the picture...