Alberta Election 2019

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Two Calgary NDP cabinet ministers (and first term MLAs) have both announced they aren't running again:  Brandy Payne a while back and Stephanie McLean a few days ago.  They both essentially said they wanted to spend more time with their families.  (Stephanie McLean also said she wanted to return to her legal practice.)  

Normally that is the standard line and is generally nonsense, but both are likely telling the truth here as they both gave birth while in office. (Stephanie McLean was the first woman in Alberta to give birth while an MLA and Brandy Payne was the second or third.)  The other, current Attorney General Kathleen Ganley seems to be running again.

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Transportation Minister and longtime NDP MLA Brian Mason is retiring from politics at the 2019 election. I believe that Mason is the longest-currently-serving MLA, having represented Edmonton-Highlands-Norwood since a 2000 by-election. His political career will have spanned nearly 30 years at the next election, as he was first elected to Edmonton city council in 1989. He was NDP leader between 2004 and 2014, and has been lauded across the aisle as one of the most hardworking, capable, and passionate MLAs in Alberta (even winning praise from arch-conservatives like MLA Derek Fildebrandt and Calgary Sun columnist Rick Bell).

I wouldn't mind going with David Christopherson and Brian Mason on a road trip across Canada.

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Transportation Minister and longtime NDP MLA Brian Mason is retiring from politics at the 2019 election. I believe that Mason is the longest-currently-serving MLA, having represented Edmonton-Highlands-Norwood since a 2000 by-election. His political career will have spanned nearly 30 years at the next election, as he was first elected to Edmonton city council in 1989. He was NDP leader between 2004 and 2014, and has been lauded across the aisle as one of the most hardworking, capable, and passionate MLAs in Alberta (even winning praise from arch-conservatives like MLA Derek Fildebrandt and Calgary Sun columnist Rick Bell).

It will be interesting to see who NDP gets as I think this might attract a strong candidate including even someone with future leadership ambitions.  It is a very safe NDP riding so even if the NDP loses as expected, I suspect they will easily win this riding so might be a good place for someone with NDP leadership ambitions who is not part of the caucus to run.

I think you are the one promoting the idea that Rachel Notley will step down if the NDP loses the next election.  I'm not sure what you base this on.  According to the polls at present, the NDP will most likely receive its second highest amount of seats and votes in the upcoming Alberta election.  If the NDP wins around 30 seats I think she would be in a very strong position to remain as leader and fight a rematch with Jason Kenney (assuming Donald Trump hasn't caused a nuclear holocaust by then.)

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Transportation Minister and longtime NDP MLA Brian Mason is retiring from politics at the 2019 election. I believe that Mason is the longest-currently-serving MLA, having represented Edmonton-Highlands-Norwood since a 2000 by-election. His political career will have spanned nearly 30 years at the next election, as he was first elected to Edmonton city council in 1989. He was NDP leader between 2004 and 2014, and has been lauded across the aisle as one of the most hardworking, capable, and passionate MLAs in Alberta (even winning praise from arch-conservatives like MLA Derek Fildebrandt and Calgary Sun columnist Rick Bell).

It will be interesting to see who NDP gets as I think this might attract a strong candidate including even someone with future leadership ambitions.  It is a very safe NDP riding so even if the NDP loses as expected, I suspect they will easily win this riding so might be a good place for someone with NDP leadership ambitions who is not part of the caucus to run.

I think you are the one promoting the idea that Rachel Notley will step down if the NDP loses the next election.  I'm not sure what you base this on.  According to the polls at present, the NDP will most likely receive its second highest amount of seats and votes in the upcoming Alberta election.  If the NDP wins around 30 seats I think she would be in a very strong position to remain as leader and fight a rematch with Jason Kenney (assuming Donald Trump hasn't caused a nuclear holocaust by then.)

Perhaps, but I don't know of many cases when a party went from government to opposition and their leader stayed on.  The only few that come to mind are Joe Clark but he lost a subsequent leadership race, John Turner (who never actually won an election), and Dave Barrett.  Could be wrong but I think it has been a long time since someone lost an election and then returned to power later so while you might be right, my guess is unless a minority government she will probably step down if they lose.  And even if she stays on, still could for future leadership to run there since I suspect if she stays on but fails to come back in 2023, she will step down.

Allan Blakeney also stayed on for the 1986 election after losing in 1981 in Saskatchewan. As did Woodrow Lloyd  who was defeated in 1964.  Of course, these both go back a ways.  The NDP has given multiple opportunities to leaders who lost an election but who were never Premier Gary Doer, (though technically he was Premier for a few weeks, he never accepted the title) Andrea Horwath....

The Rachel Notley situation is unique because it was such a 'bonus' for the NDP to win the election, I'd find it hard to believe all that many New Democrats in Alberta would force her out if the NDP lost in 2019.  Is there a logical successor to her?

Given that Brian Mason in one article, for instance, admitted that it's harder to be in government than in opposition, I can imagine Notley would relish the opportunity of the tables being turned against Jason Kenney (though, of course, she'd prefer to beat him in 2019.)

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With a name like "Freedom Conservative", I expect them to corner the Proud Boys demo.

The 'Pros' and the "New Boys (or Nu Boys)" were mentioned in an episode of WKRP in Cincinnati.  In my opinion, this is one of the best scenes ever in a television show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhbqIJZ8wCM

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What differences in demographics and/or ideology lead Calgary and Edmonton to vote so differently?

A lot more people dependent on the oil industry in Calgary I imagine.

Also, Edmonton is the capital, so it has a lot of civil servants.

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Alberta Party leader, Stephen Mandel, and several other Alberta Party candidates may have filed their nomination papers too late with Elections Alberta and may be disqualified from running.

This is the situation at the moment (disqualified from running) however, Mandel is appealing claiming the information he was given was unclear as it didn't specify what the starting date was (they had four months after that date to file) and that given the severity of the penalty, they deserve the benefit of the doubt.

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https://twitter.com/kieranleavitt/status/1108032331917332480

Will the students still be in university?

The NDP probably should have released a budget first, although I can understand not passing one, as that would 'bind the next government.'

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ThinkHQInc poll
https://twitter.com/CTVMarkVillani/status/1108342170505887745


The NDP has done better with ThinkHQ polls than with Mainstreet Research polls, so, I don't know what to make of that.

However, it does seem possible the NDP could end up with a (slightly) higher share of the vote than they received in 2015.  Of course, were that to happen, they'd almost certainly still be defeated.

The main difference between this survey and the recent Ipsos survey is Edmonton.  The Ipsos survey had the NDP ahead 44-43%.  I believe that was for just the city of Edmonton.  This survey has the NDP ahead 52-34% for the entire Edmonton metropolitan area.  The NDP won all the Edmonton suburbs in 2015, but mostly by much tighter margins than the ridings in the city of Edmonton.  The only suburban Edmonton ridings where the NDP dominated in 2015 were the older suburbs of Sherwood Park and St. Albert (even though Sherwood Park is technically a 'hamlet' and not a city.)

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Ultimate banter outcome: fluke NDP re-election despite trailing significantly in the pv due to massive, useless UCP majorities in the countryside.

Not likely, Calgary and Edmonton Metropolitan Areas are roughly 2/3 of the ridings.  Only about 1/4 of the ridings are rural.  (The remainder are the smaller cities: Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, Red Deer, Grande Prairie and Fort McMurray.)  However, as a bit of confusion, one of the ridings including the name Medicine Hat, and one including the name Grande Prairie are largely rural.  Not sure about Fort McMurray or one of the Airdrie ridings (Calgary suburb) or one of the St Albert ridings (Edmonton suburb.)

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And...it's 50.7% UCP (-1.6 from Jan), 37.8 NDP (+9.3 from Jan), nobody else above 5%.

https://www.mainstreetresearch.ca/ndp-gain-nine-points-since-january-but-ucp-lead/

Pretty nothingburger for a "shocker", unless you subscribed to the conventional wisdom that the NDP was due for a total pummelling because, 2015 aside, anything north of 30% for them in Alta is "unnatural".

The topline numbers are pretty much the same as the ThinkHQ poll, but the polls are quite different.

ThinkHQ Edmonton (CMA)
UCP: 34%
NDP: 52%

Mainstreet Edmonton
UCP: 39%
NDP: 38%

ThinkHQ Calgary (CMA)
UCP: 54
NDP: 33

Mainstreet Calgary
UCP: 45
NDP: 36

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By 'progressive' standards outside of Alberta, from what (admittedly) little I know about Nenshi, he's pretty conservative.

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By 'progressive' standards outside of Alberta, from what (admittedly) little I know about Nenshi, he's pretty conservative.

He’s moderately conservative fiscally, but strongly socially progressive

Yes, that's what I was mostly thinking of.  However, he's also spoken strongly in favor of the pipelines (obviously not a big surprise for the mayor of Calgary, however, it doesn't win 'progressive' credentials outside of Alberta) and he was a big proponent of the Olympic bid.

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In 1996 the BC NDP lost the popular vote to the BC Liberals 41-38 butbthey won in seats 39-33

The Saskatchewan P.Cs also lost the popular vote in 1986.

The biggest gap that I'm aware of is the recent New Brunswick election, though it resulted in a minority.  38.1-31.4% in favor of the Liberals but the P.Cs won the seat count 22-21.

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So the final election results are:

NDP: 44
UCP: 42
AP: 1

What are the 44 NDP ridings?

I think you'd have to start with the 20 city of Edmonton ridings and the two Edmonton 'inner' suburbs of St. Albert and Sherwood Park.  That's half way there.  What are the rest?

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So the final election results are:

NDP: 44
UCP: 42
AP: 1

What are the 44 NDP ridings?

I think you'd have to start with the 20 city of Edmonton ridings and the two Edmonton 'inner' suburbs of St. Albert and Sherwood Park.  That's half way there.  What are the rest?

Who gets the other 13%?

That's not the percent of vote, 87 is the number of seats in the Alberta legislature.

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The AP's vote share went the opposite direction I expected it to go in this campaign. I wonder how much of it is people who would otherwise be UCPers jumping ship.

From the news reports, the election campaign was extremely negative.  Sometimes that leads to polarization and third parties falling back, other times that leads to a 'pox on both your houses' (of the two main parties) and an increase in third party support.

Of course, that doesn't answer your question and I doubt this is something you didn't already know.

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Our internal polls do not show the Liberals winning a seat BTW. The NDP are winning Mountain View, perhaps their only pickup of the night.

The only other potential pickup I think is Grande Prairie.

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Our internal polls do not show the Liberals winning a seat BTW. The NDP are winning Mountain View, perhaps their only pickup of the night.

Will you make an overall prediction of the seat count?

This is mine:
UCP: 56
NDP: 30
Alb: 1

Of course, all I've really done is apply the result of the 1975 B.C election to this, more or less.

1975
S.C: 35
NDP: 18
Liberal: 1
P.C: 1

(The P.C was Dr Scott Wallace from Oak Bay, the Liberal I believe was Gordon Gibson from North Vancouver-Seymour.)

NDP predictions:
Edmonton CMA: 20 of 27 ridings
Calgary CMA: 8 of 30 ridings
rest of province: 2 of 30 ridings.

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Our internal polls do not show the Liberals winning a seat BTW. The NDP are winning Mountain View, perhaps their only pickup of the night.

Will you make an overall prediction of the seat count?

This is mine:
UCP: 56
NDP: 30
Alb: 1

Of course, all I've really done is apply the result of the 1975 B.C election to this, more or less.

1975
S.C: 35
NDP: 18
Liberal: 1
P.C: 1

(The P.C was Dr Scott Wallace from Oak Bay, the Liberal I believe was Gordon Gibson from North Vancouver-Seymour.)

NDP predictions:
Edmonton CMA: 20 of 27 ridings
Calgary CMA: 8 of 30 ridings
rest of province: 2 of 30 ridings.

According to election-atlas.ca, Gibson was from North Vancouver-Capilano.

Sorry.  Thanks for the correction.

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A wider vote differential than many forecast (at this point, about 52-34)--but for the NDP to still manage 25 seats or so on that margin isn't quite a *blowout* blowout, I reckon...

I'm not sure if the popular vote totals right now are reliable given counting is still incomplete. It does look like my expectations were about right, this is a bit similar to Ontario 2018 imo.

United Conservatives are now up to 55% of the vote.  Obviously remains to be seen how this changes with the ballots that won't be counted tonight, but the NDP are lucky to have so far won 24 or so seats with a popular vote of 55-32%.

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Every riding has at least 2 polls still outstanding (4 have 3 polls.)   I think it's safe to say these 2 polls per riding are the ballots that won't be counted tonight.  By my math the total votes counted so far are 1,661,840.  There are around 223,000 votes to be counted.  For the polling firms to be close to accurate, of these 223,000 votes, about 185,000 have to be for the NDP and about 35,000 for the UCP.


These are the closest ridings, all of them have 2 polls outstanding.
NDP numbers are the first column, UCP are the second column.

1.Calgary-Currie,  8,270, 8,662
2.Calgary-Falconridge, 5,853-6,016
3.Calgary-Varsity, 7,113-7,601
4.Edmonton South 9,108-8,523
5.Edmonton South West, 6,974-7,742
6.Edmonton-West Henday, 6,873-6,760
7.Banff-Kananakis, 8,273-8,945
8.Lethbridge West, 10,296-9,919
9.Sherwood Park, 9,849-10,763

These are the last four ridings still to report final totals tonight
1.Calgary-Peigan
2.Drumheller-Stettler
3.Fort McMurray-Wood Buffalo
4.Red Deer South

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Not sure what happened in Calgary-Peigan.  It's now up to having just two polls outstanding, but this one additional poll added 3,949 votes.  If this is not a mistake, it brings the total votes counted to 1,665,789 (all by my math)

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I don't think it was a 'shy conservative' vote so much as the turnout being quite different from the pool of all voters.  About 1.9 million Albertans voted in this election, which is about 70% of the 2.7 million registered voters.  The 2015 election, with about 1.5 million votes, had a 57% registered voter turnout and that had been the highest turnout in Alberta for a number of elections.

It seems reasonable to conclude that virtually all of these additional 400,000 voters voted United Conservative and that many of the 800,000 registered voters who didn't vote were younger or from more marginal communities.  From a quick look at the riding results, it seems that turnout in Edmonton considerably lagged turnout in the rest of the province (especially in the areas of Edmonton most favorable to the NDP.)

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I don't think it was a 'shy conservative' vote so much as the turnout being quite different from the pool of all voters.  About 1.9 million Albertans voted in this election, which is about 70% of the 2.7 million registered voters.  The 2015 election, with about 1.5 million votes, had a 57% registered voter turnout and that had been the highest turnout in Alberta for a number of elections.

It seems reasonable to conclude that virtually all of these additional 400,000 voters voted United Conservative and that many of the 800,000 registered voters who didn't vote were younger or from more marginal communities.  From a quick look at the riding results, it seems that turnout in Edmonton considerably lagged turnout in the rest of the province (especially in the areas of Edmonton most favorable to the NDP.)

Perhaps a lot of the new conservative votes were ones in 2015 who were sick of the PCs and unsure of Wildrose so just stayed home or could be a lot of conservatives just assumed Alberta would always vote Conservative so didn't bother showing up and the NDP election poured cold water on that idea so they showed up.  if you look at federal numbers, I don't think the UCP vote total is too far off what the federal Tories usually get.

1.Provincial turnout is usually lower than federal turnout.

2.Not likely as about 200,000 more people voted in 2015 than in 2012 and turnout increased from 54% of registered voters to 57%.  I believe this provincial election will have the highest 'registered voter' turnout ever and either the highest or the second highest turnout of all eligible voters for a provincial election.

As far as I'm concerned, by far the simplest explanation is that there was a surge in turnout with nearly all of these new (provincial) voters voting for the UCP.  Maybe it's too simple.