Alberta Votes Day 20: Notes From Week 3

On the Debate

Reaction from yours truly, Hatrock, Santos, Tougas, and Daveberta.


On Going Neg

1. A former Liberal MLA offers the PCs free advice on how to go neg, envisioning grainy and unflattering pictures of Smith with an ominous voice over warning "Danielle Smith wants to bring American-style health care to Alberta".

2. The master of going neg digs up some old Danielle Smith quotes on abortion and private Health Care.

3. The PC campaign complains about the floor crossers they lost over two years ago and Lyle Oberg.


On the Challenges of Going Neg

Danielle Smith reminds everyone she's pro-choice and pro-gay marriage. Which should remind us why the PCs have had a difficult time painting her as a right wing bogeyman.


On Advertising

Daveberta digs up one of the worst election ads I have ever seen:


And also this kind of cool one:

However, an ad exec once told me that if someone is branding themselves as "not your father's car", it's because they have reams of focus group data saying people see them as "your father's car".


Sing a Song for Glen

The Alberta Party has released a campaign song:



It's no "Ted Morton is the Man", but it's infinitely less annoying than "Sing a Song for Jim".

Speaking of "The Man", he has once again broken new ground, becoming the first candidate to ever post a topless photo of himself on his website bio:

The Alberta Party Hits the Airwaves

So we've got the PCs with 67 MLAs. The Liberals with 8. The Wildrosers with 4. The NDP with 2. And Raj Sherman doing his own thing.

And now, the Alberta Party joins the big leagues with their first MLA - former Liberal Dave Taylor. Opposition parties are quickly becoming Alberta's largest industry, after oil and beef.

So what does this mean? Well, the Alberta Party recently launched a leadership race and it now seems a given that Taylor will be their next leader. Taylor quit the ALP after losing to David Swann so I certainly can't imagine his ego withstanding life as a backbencher in a one-seat party. And given Taylor's gift of the gab and relatively high profile, it's hard to see how the Alberta Party wouldn't want him as their leader.

With a one-man caucus at the moment, it's unlikely the Alberta Party will be immediately recognized as an official party in the legislature - the unofficial rule seems to be "it takes two". However, a viable Alberta Party is certainly in the PCs' best interest, as it carves up the ALP's vote, so I wouldn't at all be surprised to see Stelmach's gang doing all their can to give the AP added legitimacy and resources.

This Week in Alberta: Polling Numbers

A round up of recent news stories from Alberta:


1. The Wildrose Alliance have had their first semi-public internal party dust up, over the Little Bow nomination. While this certainly isn't good news by any means, it does show that a Wildrose nomination is now worth fighting over. The airing of internal party dirty laundry on the Internet is really just a coming of age ritual for political parties.


2. Justin Archer pens a guest post over at Daveberta on an Alberta Liberal's perspective of the Alberta Party. By and large, I tend to agree with Justin. Personally, I think the best bet would have been to blow up the ALP after the last election and start fresh - a new name, new members, an outsider in charge. If done correctly, the new party could very well have capitalized on a lot of the anti-Stelmach feelings Danielle Smith has instead lassoed. I'm a Liberal but that means I'm also a pragmatist, so I'm by no means one of these "we've lost as Liberals for 80 years and dammit, I'm ready to lose as Liberals for another 80" people.

But because I'm a pragmatist, I just don't see the Alberta Party being able to suck up enough oxygen to survive, so long as the ALP lives. It's always great to have more options, and I'm sure they'll appeal to a lot of former Green voters, but the party is basically advocating Liberal policies, and I'm skeptical this movement will accomplish much more than wounding the ALP (more so in the form of lost volunteers than lost votes).


3. An Environics poll is out, with the Liberals down slightly and the Wildrose up slightly from May:

PC 34%
WRA 32%
ALP 19%
NDP 13%

Most notably, the poll shows the Wildrose on the rise in Edmonton which is probably the one consolation the Liberals can take from these numbers - after all, a split right wing vote in Calgary and Edmonton means they'll pick up seats so long as they get their act together.

AlbertaVote has done up a seat projection which shows the PCs with a slim majority (45 seats), the Alliance a strong second (32 seats), and the ALP (5 seats) and NDP (3 seats) taking just a handful of seats.

Although I enjoy a good seat projection as much as the next statistical/political nerd, I'd be really cautious about extrapolating out these poll results into seats. And not just because we're only talking about 200-300 decided voters in each region. The big problem is the emergence of the Wildrose Alliance is such a wild card that you can't expect vote patterns to shift normally.

But hey, a little unpredictability in Alberta politics is a refreshing change.

This Week in Alberta - The BIG Merger

We all had a good chuckle back when the Wildrose Party and Alberta Alliance merged together; "Unite the Irrelevant" would have been an appropriate headline.

But that was then, and just two years later they've already begun carving Danielle Smith's face into the rocky mountains to commemorate her 30 year reign as Premier. So I guess we shouldn't be too dismissive of the merger between Renew Alberta and the Alberta Party - but it's sure hard not to be.

On one side, you have the Alberta Party, which has been around in various fringe separatist forms since the mid-80s, and who collected a whopping 0.46% of the vote last election...in the one riding they ran in. So they've got a base of 51 votes to work off of. But, hey, if they can double that every election, they'll be poised for power in 2068.

And their merger partner? Renew Alberta. Which isn't a party.

So it hardly seems like this is worth talking about, but there are a few reasons to not dismiss this outright:

1. I have a lot of time for the people involved in the Renew movement. They're bright and they're committed.

2. The "Alberta Party" name is a good one to have. Yes, yes, I know it's simplistic, but often politics is simplistic.

3. Alberta politics are all topsy turvy now. There's a mood for change - Danielle Smith has been the benefit of that so far, but that could change.

So I'm intrigued. I'm still on the fence over whether or not I wish them well. On the one hand, I've always felt a new party might be the best way for progressives to gain power in Alberta. After the last election, my dream scenario was an "Alberta Party" fusing together from the ALP, Green Party, disgruntled PCs, and left-wing reformists. Get someone like Dave Bronconnier to lead it, and it could have been them rather than the Wildrosers bearing down on the PCs right now.

But the problem is, the new Alberta Party is going to be fishing from the same pool as the ALP. So even if they do somehow manage to become competitive by 2012 (and that's certainly a long shot), they'd be draining votes from the Liberals - the end result of that would be a PC or Wildrose government.