Alberta election 2023

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And let's not forget how in '95, Notley also won the urban Red Deer seats--even if it were vs a disunited right, the notion of her being viable there *at all* means a lot.

Remember, too, that there might be a pool of '15 "disunited right" voters that might be *more* NDP-amenable now than then, simply because they remained residually rather than militantly "NDP-skeptical" going into the '15 election...

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And let's not forget how in '95, Notley also won the urban Red Deer seats--even if it were vs a disunited right, the notion of her being viable there *at all* means a lot.

Remember, too, that there might be a pool of '15 "disunited right" voters that might be *more* NDP-amenable now than then, simply because they remained residually rather than militantly "NDP-skeptical" going into the '15 election...

I think this point will be more relevant in Calgary than in Red Deer though (which is a trade-off the NDP would be happy to make). The NDP's vote share declined in both Red Deer seats in 2019 despite the collapse of the Liberals (who had done pretty well in RD in 2015), because Wildrose and PC voters almost entirely coalesced around the UCP, and even Liberals seem to have gone that way. Calgary is different, in 2019 the NDP saw some positive swings due to the consolidation of Calgary Liberals into the NDP banner, and even some PCs (it just wasn't enough, as most PC voters went UCP). With Danielle Smith as UCP leader, there's a good chance that the NDP picks up a bigger chunk of formerly "PC-uber-alles" Calgarians.

In other words, I think the NDP's path to victory is less about trying to emulate 2015 (which is basically impossible, those were exceptional circumstances), and more about going after former suburban Calgary PCs who aren't too happy about the Wildrose-ification of the right.

I absolutely agree on the Calgary front--*that's* the true "next frontier"--however, if it's not just about broadening the tent but optimizing it, not pushing a Red Deer completely out of the picture is a part of that.  Or anyplace where *some* form of urbanity prevails.  (And ditto that strategy for the NDP in Saskatchewan--that is, not *totally* terminally writing off the Weyburn-type places.)

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338Canada has the NDP virtually tied with the UCP in seat count, yet Red Deer South still has 81% probability of going UCP. So yes, there's an outside chance of flipping it and it wouldn't be wise for the NDP to just concede Red Deer, but it really is an outside chance.

Yet I know from following 538 on the US elections that 81% is still "likely" rather than "safe".  So I'd never write off outside chances, particularly w/a contentious leader like Danielle Smith...

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338Canada has the NDP virtually tied with the UCP in seat count, yet Red Deer South still has 81% probability of going UCP. So yes, there's an outside chance of flipping it and it wouldn't be wise for the NDP to just concede Red Deer, but it really is an outside chance.

Yet I know from following 538 on the US elections that 81% is still "likely" rather than "safe".  So I'd never write off outside chances, particularly w/a contentious leader like Danielle Smith...

Both Red Deer ridings were won in landslides by the UCP in 2019, so it does seem kind of ridiculous to think the NDP could win there in 2023, but the best evidence that it might be possible is that according to Daveberta in the Red Deer South NDP nomination, which featured 3 credible candidates, Barb Miller the NDP MLA from 2015-2019 and a union official, Kyle Johnston a union official, and the winner, Michelle Baer, the Red Deer city solicitor, over 1,000 people voted in the nomination meeting (which is roughly 1/4 of the total who voted NDP in the riding in the 2019 election.)

I don't know what turnout was like in Red Deer North, which also featured a contested nomination between the winner Jaelene Tweedle, a parent school activist who narrowly lost in both 2017 and 2021 for a position on the at large Red Deer school board, and Craig Curtis a retired Red Deer city manager (the top administrative position) who ran for the Red Deer city council in 2021. Interestingly, he received more votes than Tweedle did, but, unlike Tweedle, came nowhere near to winning. Clearly many more people in Red Deer voted for city council than for school board.

Needless to say, at this point it would have seemed more ridiculous going into 2015 than it is going into 2023--plus, when there *is* a wave for an underdog party, the swing's often more pronounced in its underdog seats.  And besides, if winning really *is* beyond the pale this time, a battle for 2023 could just as well serve as a foundation-laying proxy battle for 2027 (or as a proving/testing ground for battles at other levels of government--obviously likelier municipal than federal).

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Another thing about places like Oklahoma is that much like Utah, the voters can have an Alberta-esque tendency of saving their progressive urge for the municipal sphere--and even there, it can sometimes be a matter of "shades of Republican" rather than outright red/blue divides...

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New Zealand and Australia they win in city proper, but not sure win in central parts but definitely in upscale areas unlike in Canada or US.

Well, there, or in the core of London, it's more akin to Quadra/Quilchena-type areas being federal and provincial Liberal as opposed to NDP.  Remember how in the UK and Aus/NZ, the "conservative" parties are still fundamentally big-tent in an anti-socialist-hordes way--or if those upscale city-proper parts are to shift away, it's likelier to forces like Lib Dem in the UK or the "teals" in Australia...

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I think like seeing in UK, even for those on right, if you push things too far they can go over to other side.  Its not like US where you can go as far right as you want and still win a large chunk of the population.

Smith and Truss are each a very particular type of ideologue with a base of and mandate from only party insiders and activists. American right-wing cranks at least have a wider base of primary voters from either open primaries or closed primaries with much lower barriers of entry before they're hoisted on a broader electorate.

If Paul Ryan had ever run for President, or taken over the helm after a Romney 2012 victory under strange circumstances, I'm sure we'd see something more similar happening here.

Actually, Ryan or even Truss (who, given her history, might be less ideologue than "pushed by ideologues") are more akin to Poilievre, who has just as much of a "party insiders and activists" base...

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One other thing to consider is how Smith's leadership might reawaken a "classic PC voter"--that is, one that's been blown off UCP by Smith's leadership but not to the point of committing to Notley.  It's not like they have a clear "third way" option beyond the eternally-also-ran Alberta Party; however, their "not Danielle's UCP" vote could wind up tipping a few seats to NDP anyway, 2015-style, and in a way that might even suggest that such voters could "live with it" whether they actually support Notley or not...

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It's hard to see the NDP expanding its base federally as long as the Federal Liberals are there and are the far more enduring brand. If anything, urban NDP ridings federally tend to be trending Liberal and the Northern ridings in Manitoba and Ontaro held by the NDP at the Federal level tend to be trending Liberal or becoming three way races. The remaining NDP base in the Kootenays, in the North West and on Northern Vancouver Island in British Columbia tend to be competitive with the Conservatives.

Are a lot of these really, clearly "trending Liberal", though?  It might even be argued that past federal NDP support (esp. before the Audrey/Alexa 90s drought) was *overrated*, and Lib support *underrated*--that is, the firewall was always there, and the NDP always had that UK Liberal/Lib Dem stigma of being an awkward third leg of a party with a knack for prevailing in weird 3-way circumstances or making left-field advances in byelections.  Like in Toronto, Davenport's now the most Lib-NDP supermarginal riding in the city; but pre-Y2K, it was nuclear ethno-Liberal under Charles Caccia--and Parkdale-High Park, once more of a Lib/Tory swinger, is now likewise Lib-NDP marginal (more generically, the collapse of the PCs and the attendant "Red Tory" base has enhanced such Lib/NDP-race urban impressions).  *Montreal*, of all places, seems to be a place where the NDP's trended promisingly upward even w/o the crutch of Jack-mania--though yes, the Liberal brand in Montreal is notoriously hard to budge (one thing that helps the NDP in Montreal is that as it's chased the CAQ electorate, the Bloc's no longer the "urban left-proxy" option it once was).  And when it comes to Northern Ontario, while much of it is still *held* by the Liberals, it isn't exactly *trending* in that direction--if anything, the trends are more in the *Conservative* direction, and particularly in non-incumbent circumstances more at Liberal than NDP expense (Algoma-Manitoulin, once the political home of Mike Pearson, is now NDP w/Libs a third-party force).

"Trending" is not the same as "digging in" (i.e. "give up, NDP; you've never won, you never will").  Justin's leadership *re-validated* the Liberal option in '15 after a dark decade; but you can't say it snowballed into a trend, and most of the incremental NDP support shed post-2015 tokenly related to loss of incumbent advantage (particularly in post-Orange Crush Quebec).

Returning to the subject matter: it's not that Fort McMurray *couldn't* be NDP-viable, but any such potential in '95 was kneecapped by its being Brian Jean's hometown.  Thus the "anti-PC" impulse had a viable native-son provincial-leader alternative, and the need to swing with the Notleymania flow was deemed redundant...

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Regarding the three Greater Vancouver ridings held by the NDP, Jagmeet Singh's riding isn't totally safe NDP. I haven't looked at the riding redistribution and New Westminster is certainly fertile ground for the NDP, union working class, but if it weren't for Peter Julian the Liberals would likely be much more competitive.  Bonita Zarrillo just won in 2021 but it was also competitive.

Yet to refer to any of this as "trending" glosses over how a lot of relative party support can depend upon spot circumstances of candidate or leadership.  That is, I wouldn't refer to anything here as "trending" so much as it's something that's been awakened in the Justin era, but isn't necessarily eternal--and this Greater Van vulnerability to the Liberals would have been, a generation or two ago, a vulnerability to the PC/Reform/Alliance/CPC continuum.

Neither of these seats have *ever* been, in and of themselves, precisely "safe NDP".  Tommy Douglas was once defeated in this territory.  And Svend Robinson survived the 90s because he was Svend Robinson; in his absence, his seat would likelier have flipped to Lib or Reform in '93, and stayed there through 2000.

However, *once again* trying to plug back into the discussion here...if a Notley victory isn't necessarily fatal to the federal Libs/Dippers (i.e. not necessarily a "Griesbach-killer"), it's in the same way that, in BC, John Horgan to some degree broke the curse that, in the past, has led voters to turn its back on the federal NDP once its provincial sister is in governing power.  (The '15 federal election came as Alberta voters started to have morning-after regrets about electing the Notley Dippers--but somehow, I can picture a Notley return to power being more Horgan-like than Barrett/Harcourt/Clark/Dosanjih-like.) 

Of course, Alberta's had its own kind of federal "trending" over the years--back in the 80s when Ed Broadbent was topping the polls, I suppose the federal NDP would have used a "Saskatchewan strategy" and looked to rural as well as urban seats as targetable (indeed, the NDP came within a point of winning the 1986 Pembina byelection--basically, Edmonton's N and E rural/exurban collar).  But today, any such strategy would be much more urban-focussed--and more promisingly so than in the optimistic 80s.  (Remember: the predecessor seat to Edmonton-Strathcona saw the PCs triumph over the NDP's Halyna Freeland--Chrystia's mom--by 8 points in '88.)

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Ross Harvey won in Edmonton East for the NDP in 1988.

Which was their first-ever-federal-seat big breakthrough.  But his seat was Griesbach's forerunner, not Strathcona's.  (And Griesbach's elusiveness until '21 illuminates the dilemma--the present-day NDP appealing more to Strathcona's college/cultural/hipster class than to Griesbach's working class.)

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Regarding the three Greater Vancouver ridings held by the NDP, Jagmeet Singh's riding isn't totally safe NDP. I haven't looked at the riding redistribution and New Westminster is certainly fertile ground for the NDP, union working class, but if it weren't for Peter Julian the Liberals would likely be much more competitive.  Bonita Zarrillo just won in 2021 but it was also competitive.

There also seems to be a GTA-ization of voting patterns in Greater Vancouver. 

To the limited degree that the Liberals have been "awakened".  However, short of an "Audreying", I doubt the federal NDP in Greater Vancouver will ever be reduced to single-digit/low-teens also-ran shares the way they are in most of the outer GTA.

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I always thought Canada's Greens were more centrist/right learning.  sometimes referred to as Conservatives with Bikes, or Environmentalists Conservatives, but this compass has them the furthest left on social and fiscal issues?  Is that unique to Alberta's Green Party?

No. There were more Conservatives who ride bicycles in the 1990s and early 2000s, but federally especially since Elizabeth May, they don't really exist any more, and not really provincially either.

In the race to replace Elizabeth May, there was one candidate who roughly fit the description - Andrew West, who received 1.47% of the vote (352 votes.)


The leader of the Green Party prior to Elizabeth May, Jim Harris, was more of an example of a Conservative who rides a bicycle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Harris_(politician)

Andrew Weaver in British Columbia was kind of all over the map politically, and is easily the second most succesful Green Party leader in Canada but his successor Sonia Furstenau is the now dominant left wing Green.

The "Tories with composters" sensibility is one that, like Red Toryism in general, tended to migrate to the Liberal-default camp this century--it's a reason why Fredericton's elected federal Green Jenica Atwin jumped to the Liberals, or why GPO leader Mike Schreiner was entertained as a new OLP leader.  And there's still a vibe of the Greens being a "respectable" left-default in places which couldn't stomach voting for the NDP, like in various provincial BC ridings focussed upon Whistler.  Sort of occupying that "radical middle" or "not-left-not-right-but-forward" wouldbe big-tent safe space.

Though when it comes to a more recent form of dancing w/the right spectrum, federal Green supporters have tended to be second to PPC supporters in the Covid/vaccine-skepticism camp.  An anchor for the "conspirituality axis", IOW.

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God, I'm really hating this election. I hate the use of "American-style" anything in the context of Canadian politics because its usually a huge oversimplification used to advance a political agenda. But this really is an American-style election. Very polarized between two parties with no signs of a break in the deadlock, with partisans mainly resorting to attacks to get their base angry enough to vote.

Well, Alberta was settled by Americans.

And especially w/this current Covid/Nazi business, it does seem front-loaded in the Danielle Smith end, which may explain the "American-style" impression.

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It's pretty staggering just how much ground the NDP has to make up from 2019. Polling averages suggest a 20%-ish positive swing for the NDP, and even with that swing, the NDP's hopes are on a knife's edge. Even with Danielle Smith doing her level best to help the NDP over the finish line, I'd still rather put my money on the UCP.

Keep in mind that swings aren't uniform--and they'll probably be less marked in the Edmonton-area seats the NDP already holds.

Plus, who knows how many Lukaszuk-esque potential "Prentice/Notley" swing voters there are out there, willing to (under the present circumstance) prioritize sanity over ideology.

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These people are unironically repurposing the Solidarność logo. I am going to be the Joker.

Well, that's Artur Pawlowski's leadership for you.  Basically, still pathologically "fighting the Communists" in his native Poland.  If it were anyone *but* Pawlowski leading the party, they wouldn't resort to this stunt...

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So, how many piddly little right-wing parties are “seriously contesting” this election? Wiki shows this new Solidarity party, there’s the AB Independence Party, and the Wildrose Loyalty Coalition. Enough of them and NDP might stand a chance.

Either that, or (as in Ontario last year) the sheer accumulation winds up benefiting the ruling right-wing party by making it look middle-of-the-road sane-and-sensible by comparison.

Much as in certain UK byelections where the right-wing fringers have way outnumbered those on the left, I wonder if this is a byproduct of a lookit-me have-your-say individualism that afflicts that side of the spectrum--almost like having a name on the ballot and a "position" works not unlike a Tinder account: the vain hopes of nutters, and sects of nutters, of having the electorate swipe right on them...

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This feels like it's close to 2015 numbers, no?

Actually, if one sees the '15 race as the NDP vs the combined PC/Wildrose right, it *reverses* those numbers (that is, the NDP got just under 41%, and PC/Wildrose got 52%)

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Sounds like Take Back Alberta is prepared to go the full Arizona.

https://pressprogress.ca/take-back-alberta-leaders-are-training-scrutineers-to-infiltrate-campaigns-and-act-as-security-on-voting-day/?fbclid=IwAR07S27p-GeitV5xsmc5JOXMMBdgYKrAN-6ErwceHcoZ-WvGEmZNZkDBYvg

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Tonight's debate will be crucial.

Notley is more personally popular (really, less disliked, neither of them are particularly popular)

At this point, the "not particularly popular-ness" of Notley has *everything* to do with the kind of party she leads versus the kind of province Alberta is.

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Tonight's debate will be crucial.

Notley is more personally popular (really, less disliked, neither of them are particularly popular)

At this point, the "not particularly popular-ness" of Notley has *everything* to do with the kind of party she leads versus the kind of province Alberta is.

Yes, and "the kind of party she leads" might be her greatest weakness in this election. Although the AB NDP is running on a platform and message acceptable to centre-right suburbanites, who hold the balance of power in Alberta, many of the party's activists and some of the candidates are too left-wing for the median Albertan, to say nothing of the federal NDP which is quite unpopular with most Albertans. The NDP wants this election to be Notley vs Smith, the UCP wants it to be Conservative vs NDP

Though in Notley's case, her personal popularity to some extent transcends the innate "unpopularity" of her party.

Maybe a closer case in point is that of Bob Rae in Ontario in 1995, whose perceived gravitas continued to be an electoral saving-the-furniture salvage-job plus for an NDP party brand that had become toxic--but one cannot say that the residual good will t/w Rae was "party-transcending" in the way Notley's is, particularly as his government's woes tended to accrue to him regardless and indeed likely foretold his own ultimate jump to the Liberals.  (Plus, while the NDP brand didn't have a prior record of governance in Ontario, it wasn't necessarily as "alien" as in pre-Rachel Alberta.)

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I suspect the biggest "sell" for Smith in the debate is that she permed her hair for the occasion.

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At one time there was speculation that the NDP could win the popular vote and lose the election due to "wasted votes" in Edmonton. Now I think that the reverse would be more likely. I could see the UCP win the popular vote by as much as 3 or 4 points and have the NDP win due to lots of wasted UCP votes in rural Alberta. Similarly in Manitoba, a tied popular vote almost invariably means an NDP win because the PCs tend to waste so many votes in rural Manitoba.

This makes sense. A lot of that Notleymania vote in Edmonton that the party won in 2015 is not coming back, meaning the city isn't going to be the NDP vote sink to counter the UCP vote sink in the rurals.

Though it might depend on how one defines "Edmonton"--that is, if it's not a matter of the inner-Edmonton NDP ridings staying put, so much as it's the outer Sherwood Pk and Spruce Grove zones sticking to some extent to their "rest of Alberta" guns...

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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)

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