2024 Alberta NDP leadership election

[adma]

Though I'm also thinking of a shifted-left version of Ontario's provincial "left-Liberals" and their cynicism t/w Bonnie Crombie.  Not to mention the electoral trajectory of Glen Murray.  That is, as long as the Libs remain actually or latently viable *at other levels of government*, a Nenshi bid will raise suspicions of the fairweather--the fear that he'll jump ship and do a Murray or Rae or Dosanjih at some opportune future federal election...

[adma]

Though the way to avoid that as a standing risk is to do better in general; to try to turn what can be a vicious cycle into a virtuous one. Then maybe you get some of the more social democratically compatible Liberals think sometimes about leaping the other way.

It's interesting how few have, though, even in the West where one might *expect* them to--Mulcair's an exception that proves the rule; and even there, the exceptional nature of Quebec politics makes his case look a little "inexact"...

[adma]

It's interesting to see in Western Canada a polarization at the provincial levels now.
- BC (while polling is saying otherwise) has always been NDP vs Anti-NDP party (SoCred, BCLibs, United) The greens have always "been there" a goo 10%+ but never been a factor in seats, spoiler yes.
- Alberta was basically a one-party province but is very UCP vs NDP now. There really wasn't a clear anti-UCP choice till 2015, except in the 80s when the NDP then the LIBs took turns winning most of Edmonton. The anti-UCP voter has found a home with the NDP for the most part
- SASK has basically been NDP vs SP for decades, no sign that will change
- MAN is still basically NDP vs PC, where the LIBs used to bump up in seats when the NDP were out of office.

I think most of this started to happen post-1950's

When it comes to BC, it was actually most purely binary in the Bill Bennett years (the combined non-binary opposition adding up to less than 6% in both '79 and '83)--and the most non-binary things got was '91 when BC Libs first overtook the ruling Socreds.  Since then it's been binary *seatwise* but there's been a lot more ballot-box oxygen for Greens and other dissident forces.

In Alberta, I'd claim the Libs were very much the 90s clear-opposition-choice equivalent to the NDP today, and in a broader way than just "Edmonton"--particularly after the NDP was wiped off the map in the '93 Klein vs Decore race.

Sask: of course, the Sask Party's only been around since the late 90s.  Before that, you had the Libs until the mid-late 70s, then the Tories until the 90s, and then a brief interval w/the Lib parking-spot over the disgraced Tories until the Sask Party was set up.

Manitoba: technically, the NDP *was* in office (but in disgrace) when Carstairsmania struck in '88.  Everything thereafter was one continual cycle of back-to-binary "correction" except for the Selinger-twilight blip (so again, it's not so much when the NDP is out of office, than when voters seek to punish the NDP in power)

[adma]

Keep in mind that the BC Liberals (aka BC United) are a relatively recent major party that only really came to life in 1990s - and for many years it truly was a coalition of federal Liberals and federal Tories united to beat the NDP. But in recent years the Liberal wing of the provincial party has really faded away and at the same time the federal Liberals have moved to the left (compared to the Chretien/Martin years) - so it makes sense that a federal Liberal in BC would now feel totally alienated by BC United - and the fact that they have shed the BC Liberal name compounds that problem

Yet ironically, the polling success of the BC Cons *could* wind up salvaging BC United anyway--note: I said "salvaging", i.e. surviving as the eternal too-rich-for-NDP-too-educated-for-Con rump.  So, "Liberalizing" even in the absence of the label...