Alberta election 2023

[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

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.

It's a pro for me the furry world order awaits

[Njall]

We have some more new polling! Janet Brown has a new poll for the CBC that still has the UCP ahead provincewide and in Calgary, but by narrower margins than her last poll. She now has the UCP up by 8 points (52-44) provincewide, compared to 11 points in her last poll, and has the UCP up by 3 points (49-46) in Calgary, compared to 12 points in her last poll. It's worth mentioning that the CBC columnist notes that the poll has some weird cross tab results, namely having the UCP and NDP tied amongst female voters and having the UCP leading widely amongst 18-24 year olds, both of which fly right in the face of conventional wisdom.

Also, ThinkHQ has released a poll specifically of Calgary. They have the NDP leading by 6 points in Calgary (49-43), with large NDP leads in the Northeast and Northwest, but slight UCP leads in the Southeast and Southwest. They also break down the results by neighbourhood type, showing the NDP and UCP tied in both new suburbs and older established communities, while the NDP leads 60-35 in the inner city.

[brucejoel99]

Also, ThinkHQ has released a poll specifically of Calgary. They have the NDP leading by 3 points in Calgary (49-46), with large NDP leads in the Northeast and Northwest, but slight UCP leads in the Southeast and Southwest. They also break down the results by neighbourhood type, showing the NDP and UCP tied in both new suburbs and older established communities, while the NDP leads 60-35 in the inner city.

The ThinkHQ Calgary poll is a 6-point NDP lead of 49-43, not a 3-point lead of 49-46.

[Njall]

Also, ThinkHQ has released a poll specifically of Calgary. They have the NDP leading by 3 points in Calgary (49-46), with large NDP leads in the Northeast and Northwest, but slight UCP leads in the Southeast and Southwest. They also break down the results by neighbourhood type, showing the NDP and UCP tied in both new suburbs and older established communities, while the NDP leads 60-35 in the inner city.

The ThinkHQ Calgary poll is a 6-point NDP lead of 49-43, not a 3-point lead of 49-46.

Whoops, corrected that.

Also, today's Mainstreet tracker is 48.4% UCP to 46.3% NDP.

[Harlow]

CEO of Mainstreet polling:

https://twitter.com/quito_maggi/status/1661918302212423680?s=20

[brucejoel99]

CEO of Mainstreet polling:

https://twitter.com/quito_maggi/status/1661918302212423680

His basis for thinking so:

https://twitter.com/quito_maggi/status/1661834055313248258
& his pinned tweet is presently still:

https://twitter.com/quito_maggi/status/1661141181395505152

[adma]

Undecideds breaking for Notley in '23 = undecideds breaking for Redford in '12?

[brucejoel99]

Undecideds breaking for Notley in '23 = undecideds breaking for Redford in '12?

From your lips to God's ears, inshallah

[brucejoel99]

https://twitter.com/SyntheticusAlt/status/1662232593776136192https://twitter.com/RachelNotley/status/1662251066275004421
This election got me like fr:

[politicallefty]

I know Alberta is a conservative province, but the thought of Danielle Smith winning a mandate for herself is rather terrifying.

How many ridings do the NDP likely need to win outside of Edmonton and Calgary? It seems like the main ones are in Lethbridge and Red Deer. Medicine Hat seems to be very strangely split.

[Estrella]

I decided to do a riding-by-riding prediction... or a not all that informed guess, really. Don't blame me if it doesn't add up. Anyway, instead of guessing the popular vote and estimating the seats based on that, I tried to put every seat into one of six groups: seats that I think will be won by UCP with 50-ish, 60-ish and 70-ish percent, and ditto for NDP. I did it based on these assumptions:

– A 5-ish point gain for NDP in rural Alberta, mostly from AP while UCP stays put or gains a little from small far-right parties
– A 5-10 point gain for NDP in and around Edmonton, mostly from AP and a little from UCP
– A 10-15 point gain for NDP in Calgary, mostly from AP but also 5-ish points from UCP

Of course, the problem with Calgary is that there are wildly different opinions on who the swing voters end up flocking to. This left me with some half dozen tossups, which I decided to allocated in a way that would give the most infuriating/entertaining result: a one-seat UCP majority. Then I added up the votes, subtracted a few percent that will probably go for third parties and ended up with this:

UCP 51% [▼4] 44 seats [▼19]
NDP 46% [▲12] 43 seats [▲19]
Others 3% [▼8]

The six categories are the ones mentioned above. If NDP does better, the next seats to fall will probably be Calgary-Foothills, Calgary-North West, Calgary-Peigan, Strathcona-Sherwood Park and Fort Saskatchewan-Vegreville. I don't think the two Red Deer seats or the five southern Calgary seats will go NDP unless they win in a landslide.

Pale orange is NDP gains, pale blue are the five seats mentioned above.

[brucejoel99]

I know Alberta is a conservative province, but the thought of Danielle Smith winning a mandate for herself is rather terrifying.

How many ridings do the NDP likely need to win outside of Edmonton and Calgary? It seems like the main ones are in Lethbridge and Red Deer. Medicine Hat seems to be very strangely split.

20 Edmonton proper ridings + St. Albert, Sherwood Park, & Morinville-St. Albert + Lethbridge (x2) + Banff-Kananaskis + ≥18 Calgary ridings + mayybe Lesser Slave Lake (but unlikely). A RD seat or Cyp-MH would be seats in the 50s; tall order.

[MaxQue]

https://twitter.com/SyntheticusAlt/status/1662232593776136192https://twitter.com/RachelNotley/status/1662251066275004421
This election got me like fr:

Bryan Breguet is a hack who left the CBC because their ethics code wouldn't let him become a Poilievre simp.

[Continential]

https://twitter.com/SyntheticusAlt/status/1662232593776136192https://twitter.com/RachelNotley/status/1662251066275004421
This election got me like fr:

Bryan Breguet is a hack who left the CBC because their ethics code wouldn't let him become a Poilievre simp.

Since when did he work for the CBC? There is one CBC article from 2019 with his name on the article.

[Njall]

I know Alberta is a conservative province, but the thought of Danielle Smith winning a mandate for herself is rather terrifying.

How many ridings do the NDP likely need to win outside of Edmonton and Calgary? It seems like the main ones are in Lethbridge and Red Deer. Medicine Hat seems to be very strangely split.

20 Edmonton proper ridings + St. Albert, Sherwood Park, & Morinville-St. Albert + Lethbridge (x2) + Banff-Kananaskis + ≥18 Calgary ridings + mayybe Lesser Slave Lake (but unlikely). A RD seat or Cyp-MH would be seats in the 50s; tall order.

Basically this. I’m more bullish on Lesser Slave Lake than the average prognosticator - it’s a riding with a small population, so it’s more open to retail politics, and it’s over 50% indigenous by population.

I would also add that the NDP is in contention for other seats in the “Edmonton donut” (Strathcona-Sherwood Park, Spruce Grove-Stony Plain, and Fort Saskatchewan-Vegreville). Any of those that they win reduces their dependency on Calgary or the small cities.

[Hatman 🍁]

Berguet is a terrible human being, and I'd prefer not to see his tweets in this thread if that can be helped. Thanks.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Are there less First Nations in rural northern alberta compared to Sask and Manitoba?

[Njall]

Are there less First Nations in rural northern alberta compared to Sask and Manitoba?

Yes, although I’d probably phrase it as that there are more non-indigenous people in northern Alberta than Sask or Manitoba. The oil and gas industry has brought a lot of people north, but even historically, the land in northern Alberta, especially the northwest, has been much more suitable for farming and ranching than in the other prairie provinces. Remember that both Fort McMurray and Grande Prairie have populations of around 70,000 just in the cities themselves.

Lesser Slave Lake is the closest equivalent demographically to what Sask and Manitoba have in their far northern ridings. Because it has First Nations communities and is very sparsely populated, it’s allowed to have a population deviation of up to -50% from the provincial average, so it has about 22-25K residents, around 50-55% of whom are indigenous. It contains several First Nations reserves as well as four (I think) Métis Settlements (which are a unique thing in Alberta and aren’t recognized federally, but resulted from a decision many decades ago for the province to basically establish reserves for Métis people - it didn’t really end up working but there are still eight Métis settlements in AB with about 5,000 combined residents).

[adma]

Berguet is a terrible human being, and I'd prefer not to see his tweets in this thread if that can be helped. Thanks.

Yeah, if that "Poilievre simp" thing is to be taken at its word, the overwrought pretensions-to-authority element to that '00-10's craze for election projectioning *does* have an element that plays into today's common right-of-centre shenanigans (i.e. not that this pertains specifically to Breguet, but setting oneself up for an "inevitable" win; then when it doesn't happen, making claims that the "scientifically impossible" result was "rigged")

[jaichind]

https://twitter.com/338Canada/status/1662826107949703170

[adma]

The remarkable thing here is: only *3%* for "other"?  Boy, Danielle Smith has nuclear-binaried the race...

[Benjamin Frank]

The remarkable thing here is: only *3%* for "other"?  Boy, Danielle Smith has nuclear-binaried the race...

It was probably bound to happen anyway, the main third parties, the Alberta Party and the Liberal Party are running just 19 and 13 candidates, so they presumably have zero presence in the race.

[Njall]

https://twitter.com/338Canada/status/1662826107949703170

A couple other interesting data points from that poll:

When analyzing the responses by 2021 federal vote, the Alberta NDP unsurprisingly has the votes of about 95% of federal NDP and Liberal voters, but they're also getting the support of 26% of federal Conservative voters.

They also asked about respondents' vote preferences if Smith wasn't UCP leader. The UCP-NDP result moves from 49-48 to 55-38 (and the Alberta Party vote share increases from 1% to 6%).

[Хahar 🤔]

The remarkable thing here is: only *3%* for "other"?  Boy, Danielle Smith has nuclear-binaried the race...

It was probably bound to happen anyway, the main third parties, the Alberta Party and the Liberal Party are running just 19 and 13 candidates, so they presumably have zero presence in the race.

It may be true that centrist parties would be a larger presence if someone else were premier and voters felt more comfortable with the potential that their votes might be wasted, but to the extent that Danielle Smith being premier has led to extreme two-party polarization I think the effect is less on the center and more on the right. With a different leader, you'd probably have fringe right-wing candidates polling in double digits in many rural ridings. Smith's strategy has eliminated that rightward flank, which will probably not do much to win more seats.

[Njall]

Mainstreet's final daily tracker is 49.8% UCP to 47.8% NDP.

Even if they lose tomorrow, the NDP are going to get their highest vote share ever, even more than in 2015.