Alberta election 2023

[Njall]

Today's Mainstreet tracker has the UCP lead down to 1.2%: 47.1-45.9.

[GM Team Member and Deputy PPT WB]

Meanwhile in the Alberta Liberal Party:

https://twitter.com/ksituan/status/1659307887850844161

I made a better sign for my congressional write in campaign with a budget of like 5$

[GM Team Member and Deputy PPT WB]

Meanwhile in the Alberta Liberal Party:

https://twitter.com/ksituan/status/1659307887850844161

...I also just realized the person tweeting this is a furry, lol

[Hatman 🍁]

Alex McPhee is not a furry lol

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Today's Mainstreet tracker has the UCP lead down to 1.2%: 47.1-45.9.

Given what can probably be assumed, the UCP needs to lead by a few points to have a tied seat count most likely, right?

[Benjamin Frank]

Meanwhile in the Alberta Liberal Party:

https://twitter.com/ksituan/status/1659307887850844161

I made a better sign for my congressional write in campaign with a budget of like 5$

Esthetics shaming is wrong.

[Tintrlvr]

Today's Mainstreet tracker has the UCP lead down to 1.2%: 47.1-45.9.

Given what can probably be assumed, the UCP needs to lead by a few points to have a tied seat count most likely, right?

I would say nobody really knows. There is a belief that the NDP won't rack up the enormous majorities in Edmonton that they had in 2015, and that's probably right, but it's hard to be certain. Conversely, it's also hard to be sure that the minor right-wing parties won't have decent showings in rural areas to the point of keeping UCP margins out of the stratosphere there. FPTP is very random, and Alberta has undergone so many political shifts in recent years that trying to predict seat count in a close popular vote election is tough.

That said, I think the UCP is probably going to be underpolled and win by around 6-8 points. But maybe that's just the pessimism speaking.

[GM Team Member and Deputy PPT WB]

Alex McPhee is not a furry lol

What is this profile pic then because that looks like a sona to me (bio also says “pronghorn”)

[Harlow]

Alex McPhee is not a furry lol

What is this profile pic then because that looks like a sona to me (bio also says “pronghorn”)

Why do you care?

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Today's Mainstreet tracker has the UCP lead down to 1.2%: 47.1-45.9.

Given what can probably be assumed, the UCP needs to lead by a few points to have a tied seat count most likely, right?

I would say nobody really knows. There is a belief that the NDP won't rack up the enormous majorities in Edmonton that they had in 2015, and that's probably right, but it's hard to be certain. Conversely, it's also hard to be sure that the minor right-wing parties won't have decent showings in rural areas to the point of keeping UCP margins out of the stratosphere there. FPTP is very random, and Alberta has undergone so many political shifts in recent years that trying to predict seat count in a close popular vote election is tough.

That said, I think the UCP is probably going to be underpolled and win by around 6-8 points. But maybe that's just the pessimism speaking.

Even if the NDP does rack up enormous majorities in Edmonton, the UCP will rack up similar majorities in rural ridings, and there are more uber-Tory rural ridings than uber-NDP Edmonton ridings. So yes, I think it's fair to say that if the PV is tied, NDP probably wins more seats.

I think it's also fair to assume that the UCP is being underpolled, because going back for over a decade, every party with "Conservative" in their name - the UCP, the old PCs, and the CPC - have been underpolled in Alberta. The past doesn't determine the future, but I haven't heard anything about polling errors that caused this or what (if anything) has been done to mitigate it, so I'd stick with that assumption for now.

Maybe Hatman has some insight into why Conservatives are seemingly always underpolled in Alberta.

[GM Team Member and Deputy PPT WB]

Alex McPhee is not a furry lol

What is this profile pic then because that looks like a sona to me (bio also says “pronghorn”)

Why do you care?

I was making an observation

And I like seeing other furries around lol

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Another thing: I think it's very likely that there will be a "shy Smith voter" phenomenon in this election. Danielle Smith is the kind of politician who is deeply unpopular with university-educated voters, as right-wing populists often are. But university-educated voters in Alberta, and especially in Calgary, haven't shifted left in any significant number.

Calgary is pretty unique in the relative lack of education polarization, compared to just about everywhere else in North America. About 36% of Calgarians have a bachelor's degree or higher, which is higher than Edmonton, Alberta, and Canada as a whole. It's certainly hard to think of anywhere else in Canada or the US with above-average university education rates that vote predominantly for the right, other than Utah which is unique for obvious reasons. To the extent the left has gained ground in Calgary, it's happening in the northeast, and that's for different reasons.

Anyway, if I had to think of a type of voter who wouldn't want to admit that they would vote for a wacky populist like Smith, but will still vote Conservative, it's a university-educated Calgary suburbanite. That might help the UCP hang on to ridings like Calgary-North West, -Bow, -Acadia, etc which are the key battlegrounds of this election.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Why is the thinking that the NDP majorities in Edmonton will be down from 2015, Smith seems like she is designed to repeal Edmonton voters.

[Lord Halifax]

To the extent the left has gained ground in Calgary, it's happening in the northeast, and that's for different reasons.

such as?

[Hatman 🍁]

Alex McPhee is not a furry lol

What is this profile pic then because that looks like a sona to me (bio also says “pronghorn”)

Why do you care?

I was making an observation

And I like seeing other furries around lol

Haven't seen any pics of him as a furry. I'm not sure if the NDP would've let him run if such things existed (he was a federal NDP candidate in Saskatchewan in 2021) - though who knows.

[Hatman 🍁]

Today's Mainstreet tracker has the UCP lead down to 1.2%: 47.1-45.9.

Given what can probably be assumed, the UCP needs to lead by a few points to have a tied seat count most likely, right?

I would say nobody really knows. There is a belief that the NDP won't rack up the enormous majorities in Edmonton that they had in 2015, and that's probably right, but it's hard to be certain. Conversely, it's also hard to be sure that the minor right-wing parties won't have decent showings in rural areas to the point of keeping UCP margins out of the stratosphere there. FPTP is very random, and Alberta has undergone so many political shifts in recent years that trying to predict seat count in a close popular vote election is tough.

That said, I think the UCP is probably going to be underpolled and win by around 6-8 points. But maybe that's just the pessimism speaking.

Maybe Hatman has some insight into why Conservatives are seemingly always underpolled in Alberta.

Based on the polling we're doing now, there are definitely some categories of low response rate populations that are prone to voting UCP, and there is a lot of demographic polarization in this race. How pollsters weight their data will play a huge roll in their accuracy, and is probably why we saw a lot of variation in the polls early on. I think the pollsters are herding now, so they've settled on their weighting schemes for now.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

To the extent the left has gained ground in Calgary, it's happening in the northeast, and that's for different reasons.

such as?

In the federal Calgary Skyview riding, under current boundaries, 41% of the population is south asian, and only 21% is white. So that already shifts the riding significantly to the left of Calgary at large, where the white population is about two-thirds. Plus, my understanding is that most of this population is very recent immigrants compared to somewhere like Vancouver or the GTA with more established communities, and generally the more recent immigrants are, the more they lean left. Under the new redistributed ridings, Calgary Skyview gets whiter and more Conservative but the new Calgary McKnight gets even more ethnic, and seems like a lock for the Liberals. A safe Liberal seat in the suburbs, in a city where you can't even gerrymander the Liberals a safe seat downtown. Pretty unusual, considering how pretty much anywhere else, no matter how poorly conservatives do with recent immigrants, they do even worse with predominantly white downtown dwellers.

Although there's clearly an "Alberta effect" on recent immigrants in Calgary too, considering how strongly Calgary Skyview voted Conservative in 2019 despite Scheer doing noticeably worse than Harper with similar populations in ON and BC.

[Njall]

To the extent the left has gained ground in Calgary, it's happening in the northeast, and that's for different reasons.

such as?

In the federal Calgary Skyview riding, under current boundaries, 41% of the population is south asian, and only 21% is white. So that already shifts the riding significantly to the left of Calgary at large, where the white population is about two-thirds. Plus, my understanding is that most of this population is very recent immigrants compared to somewhere like Vancouver or the GTA with more established communities, and generally the more recent immigrants are, the more they lean left. Under the new redistributed ridings, Calgary Skyview gets whiter and more Conservative but the new Calgary McKnight gets even more ethnic, and seems like a lock for the Liberals. A safe Liberal seat in the suburbs in a city where you can't even gerrymander the Liberals a safe seat downtown.

Although there's clearly an "Alberta effect" on them too, considering how strongly Calgary Skyview voted Conservative in 2019 despite Scheer doing noticeably worse than Harper with similar populations in ON and BC.

Northeast Calgary is a very interesting place politically. This is particularly true in the provincial ridings of Calgary-Bhullar-McCall and Calgary-Falconridge (roughly the same area as the new federal Calgary McKnight riding), and to a lesser extent in the provincial Calgary-North East and Calgary-Cross ridings. A lot of political organizing in that area happens through different ethnocultural and religious groups, and there's a lot of informal influence and interest-trading that goes on. I've found that residents of Northeast Calgary, particularly those from organized immigrant/minority communities, are much more likely than average Calgarians to volunteer politically, but are simultaneously much less partisan than average - it's not uncommon to see houses sporting lawn signs from 3 or more parties during elections, and voters will join multiple parties to vote in nomination and leadership elections (in part because these are the only kinds of elections where non-citizen permanent residents are allowed to vote). As an illustration, I distinctly remember how in the 2015 provincial election, the 6-candidate PC nomination race in Calgary-McCall saw over 5,000 votes cast, while in the general election, the PC candidate only got about 2,300 votes. Voters see things much more through lenses of patronage and personal/social connections to politicians, as opposed to through lenses of ideology or partisanship.

Anyways, that is all to say that apparent party strength in Northeast Calgary is more indicative of candidate quality and the success of local party organizers than anything to do with ideology. The choice of a candidate matters a lot more than in other ridings - the candidate needs to be known in and connected to the local community. As an example, the provincial Liberals weren't competitive in Calgary-McCall until Darshan Kang came along in 2004 and nearly doubled their vote share, before winning the seat in 2008. Federally, the Liberals flipped Calgary Skyview in 2015 with Kang as their candidate. They likely would have lost it in 2019 regardless, but they completely wrote it off by nominating Nirmala Naidoo, who's not from the Northeast. In 2021, they won it back in-part by nominating George Chahal, a lifelong Northeast resident who had had the organizing chops to win municipally in 2017.

Elections and political sentiments in Northeast Calgary can also turn based on hyperlocal issues. There were two major things that soured a lot of Northeast residents on Jason Kenney and the UCP. First, there was a major hailstorm a few years ago that caused over a billion dollars of damage to residents' houses, cars. etc., and to the extent that the provincial government provided any assistance, it was seen as too little and too late. Second, during the height of the pandemic, Jason Kenney had made comments that were basically seen as blaming a lot of the spread of covid on minority communities in the Northeast, when this area actually had one of the highest vaccination rates in the province. His comments were also tone-deaf in the sense that any disproportionate spread of covid in the Northeast was not due to factors that residents there could control - being an area with a concentration of recent immigrants, residents there much more commonly live in larger multigenerational households than elsewhere in Calgary, and are much more likely to work lower-wage jobs that were designated as essential (service jobs, taxi/bus drivers, meatpacking plant workers, etc.) than the average Calgarian.

[Njall]

The UCP seems to have gained a few points in the polls over the last few days. Mainstreet now has the UCP up 50-44 (although Twitter comments from Mainstreet subscribers suggest that they still have the NDP ahead in Calgary) and the latest Abacus has the UCP up 51-47.

[DL]

Anyway, if I had to think of a type of voter who wouldn't want to admit that they would vote for a wacky populist like Smith, but will still vote Conservative, it's a university-educated Calgary suburbanite. That might help the UCP hang on to ridings like Calgary-North West, -Bow, -Acadia, etc which are the key battlegrounds of this election.

These theories about certain types of voters being "shy about admitting they would vote for so-and-so" seem very dated to me. It made some sense 10 years ago and further back when most election polling was done by phone with live interviewers. But nowadays very very little polling is done by that method. The polls we see in Alberta are either IVR (in which case you are just keying in a number in response to a computer voice) or you are doing an online survey in which case you just click a box. There is zero interaction with a human being who one could possibly be shy or embarrassed in front of.

There may well be valid reasons why polls might underestimate UCP support - but i don't buy the idea that people embarrassed to tell a computer who they are voting for.

[Tintrlvr]

Anyway, if I had to think of a type of voter who wouldn't want to admit that they would vote for a wacky populist like Smith, but will still vote Conservative, it's a university-educated Calgary suburbanite. That might help the UCP hang on to ridings like Calgary-North West, -Bow, -Acadia, etc which are the key battlegrounds of this election.

These theories about certain types of voters being "shy about admitting they would vote for so-and-so" seem very dated to me. It made some sense 10 years ago and further back when most election polling was done by phone with live interviewers. But nowadays very very little polling is done by that method. The polls we see in Alberta are either IVR (in which case you are just keying in a number in response to a computer voice) or you are doing an online survey in which case you just click a box. There is zero interaction with a human being who one could possibly be shy or embarrassed in front of.

There may well be valid reasons why polls might underestimate UCP support - but i don't buy the idea that people embarrassed to tell a computer who they are voting for.

There may be people who are unwilling to tell a pollster who they are voting for generally - but I'd expect the profile to be different from the one described above and closer to the stereotypical anti-system right-wing voter, who are going to be concentrated in rural and exurban areas. I do think a fairly significant degree of UCP underpolling could be underpolling in "Rest of Alberta", where the regional breakdowns seem a little weak for the UCP/strong for the NDP compared to expectations (while the NDP is only seriously competitive in a few seats there so underpolling of the UCP there is largely irrelevant to the final result, seats-wise). That would be good news for the NDP-loses-the-popular-vote-but-wins-most-seats scenario.

[adma]

I think it's also fair to assume that the UCP is being underpolled, because going back for over a decade, every party with "Conservative" in their name - the UCP, the old PCs, and the CPC - have been underpolled in Alberta. The past doesn't determine the future, but I haven't heard anything about polling errors that caused this or what (if anything) has been done to mitigate it, so I'd stick with that assumption for now.

Maybe Hatman has some insight into why Conservatives are seemingly always underpolled in Alberta.

Though underpolled relative to *whom* might be another question--like in 2012, it was to a party to the *right* of them (and one led by none other than one Danielle Smith)

[Harlow]

Alex McPhee is not a furry lol

What is this profile pic then because that looks like a sona to me (bio also says “pronghorn”)

Why do you care?

I was making an observation

And I like seeing other furries around lol

Haven't seen any pics of him as a furry. I'm not sure if the NDP would've let him run if such things existed (he was a federal NDP candidate in Saskatchewan in 2021) - though who knows.

You don't have to dress in a fursuit to be a furry. Regardless, I don't think it's prohibitive nowadays to be one especially from a progressive party.

[Njall]

Anyway, if I had to think of a type of voter who wouldn't want to admit that they would vote for a wacky populist like Smith, but will still vote Conservative, it's a university-educated Calgary suburbanite. That might help the UCP hang on to ridings like Calgary-North West, -Bow, -Acadia, etc which are the key battlegrounds of this election.

These theories about certain types of voters being "shy about admitting they would vote for so-and-so" seem very dated to me. It made some sense 10 years ago and further back when most election polling was done by phone with live interviewers. But nowadays very very little polling is done by that method. The polls we see in Alberta are either IVR (in which case you are just keying in a number in response to a computer voice) or you are doing an online survey in which case you just click a box. There is zero interaction with a human being who one could possibly be shy or embarrassed in front of.

There may well be valid reasons why polls might underestimate UCP support - but i don't buy the idea that people embarrassed to tell a computer who they are voting for.

There may be people who are unwilling to tell a pollster who they are voting for generally - but I'd expect the profile to be different from the one described above and closer to the stereotypical anti-system right-wing voter, who are going to be concentrated in rural and exurban areas. I do think a fairly significant degree of UCP underpolling could be underpolling in "Rest of Alberta", where the regional breakdowns seem a little weak for the UCP/strong for the NDP compared to expectations (while the NDP is only seriously competitive in a few seats there so underpolling of the UCP there is largely irrelevant to the final result, seats-wise). That would be good news for the NDP-loses-the-popular-vote-but-wins-most-seats scenario.

For whatever it’s worth, Quito Maggi from Mainstreet is (as of this evening) calling an NDP majority government despite his provincewide polls having the UCP up by a few points. He seems confident that the NDP have what they need in Calgary while the UCP are going to run up their margins in the rurals.

Granted, this is the same pollster who was confident that Bill Smith would win the 2017 mayoral race and cussed me (and many others) out on Twitter for questioning his methodology. So who really knows.

[Benjamin Frank]

Alex McPhee is not a furry lol

What is this profile pic then because that looks like a sona to me (bio also says “pronghorn”)

Why do you care?

I was making an observation

And I like seeing other furries around lol

Haven't seen any pics of him as a furry. I'm not sure if the NDP would've let him run if such things existed (he was a federal NDP candidate in Saskatchewan in 2021) - though who knows.

You don't have to dress in a fursuit to be a furry. Regardless, I don't think it's prohibitive nowadays to be one especially from a progressive party.

People shouldn't shame over esthetics anyway. I think that sign looks nice: very sparse and not at all busy.