The Alberta election

[bob vernon]

Jimbo shoulda gone to the electorate earlier, or maybe not taken the job at all. Every move Danielle Smith has made in the past year is turning out to be the wrong one.

http://www.threehundredeight.com/p/canada.html

[Glacier]

Unbelievable, the PCs are in 3rd place, and the NDP is in first! No party anywhere in the Western world has been in power as long as the PCs, but even they can't go on forever. Of course, we've seen this before... just a couple years ago.

http://1abvote.ca/poll-pcs-in-3rd-as-wi ... -to-surge/

[GordonH]

^^^ I don't trust polls, those asked can say one thing but actually do another. Just to give the other Party's a false sense of doing well/hope, hmm.... last BC election comes to mind.
Polls said one thing, actually election said something totally different.

[bob vernon]

The polls for the BC provincial election were not as wrong as people remember. The NDP started the campaign with a 15% lead, but refused to use attack ads against Christy. The Liberals used almost nothing but attack ads and the gap narrowed continuously through the campaign. In the final week of the campaign, the Liberals got a big infusion of cash and flooded the airways with attack ads, tipping the election to them. The polls were accurate for almost all of the campaign showing a steady closing of the gap.

Expect another flood of fear-mongering attack ads in Alberta if it looks like the NDP might actually win, or even hold the balance of power in a minority situation, which is very possible.

[alfred2]

ndp in bc were never going to win with the leader they had .

[LoneWolf_53]

The polls for the BC provincial election were not as wrong as people remember. The NDP started the campaign with a 15% lead, but refused to use attack ads against Christy. The Liberals used almost nothing but attack ads and the gap narrowed continuously through the campaign. In the final week of the campaign, the Liberals got a big infusion of cash and flooded the airways with attack ads, tipping the election to them. The polls were accurate for almost all of the campaign showing a steady closing of the gap.

Expect another flood of fear-mongering attack ads in Alberta if it looks like the NDP might actually win, or even hold the balance of power in a minority situation, which is very possible.

You seem to have neglected to mention that Adrian Dix's flip flop on his Kinder Morgan position had a huge impact on the numbers since he alienated a lot of union folks, who most likely would have voted for the NDP had he not done that.

Adrian did far more to ensure a Liberal victory than any attack ad the Liberals purchased.

[GordonH]

Just to refresh some peoples memories http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-c ... -1.1411026
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/pol ... e11935336/

[Ub2]

I can't ever see a 'dipper government being elected in Alberta, they would surely erode into have-not status, you only have to look at the provinces in the past that had NDP governments for any length of time, not one successful.

I wouldn't think Albertans would be that stupid to vote for them, but then again there has been a lot of migration from eastern Canada, and the only way these polls would indicate a strong 'dipper preference would be if the sampling was heavy in the urban Edmonton area - but they are just polls, and as said by the late 'Dief the chief, "polls are for dogs".

[HP]

I'd have to go back and find the source, but if you can trust me a pollster recently said (like, within the last month so I'll see if I can hunt it down) that polls are getting harder to conduct because the only people who tend to answer them are either (a) partisans or (b) have an axe to grind on an issue.

I have a feeling that what you're seeing is people punishing the provincial cons (and the federal cons, for that matter) through the polls. The rubber hits the road in the ballot box and I'm not sure that it's in Alberta's fabric to actually elect an NDP government.

The assessment at http://www.threehundredeight.com/ is interesting. Looks like the NDP is riding strong support for their leader versus the other leaders.

[logicalview]

The polls for the BC provincial election were not as wrong as people remember. The NDP started the campaign with a 15% lead, but refused to use attack ads against Christy. The Liberals used almost nothing but attack ads and the gap narrowed continuously through the campaign. In the final week of the campaign, the Liberals got a big infusion of cash and flooded the airways with attack ads, tipping the election to them. The polls were accurate for almost all of the campaign showing a steady closing of the gap.
.

LOL - losers blame "attack ads" for why they failed. Reality is your NDP party is just awful, and basically unelectable.

[bob vernon]

The key promise of the campaign:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/elections/albert ... -1.3042437

http://www.threehundredeight.com/p/canada.html

[bob vernon]

From the Calgary Sun April 23:

"NDP government would be more leftist than campaign suggests:
More spending, higher taxes and lots of lefty “experts,” economists and academics making public policy. If the NDP win the provincial election on May 5, that’s what Albertans can expect: Government that is even bigger than the Prentice Tories have in mind, personal taxes that rise faster ($1.1 billion faster in the coming year, alone) and activists such as the Parkland and Pembina Institutes and the David Suzuki Foundation setting economic and energy policy."

Deep, unbiased, and thoughtful analysis of the campaign.

[goalie]

Not only that but *bleep* will run around Alberta attacking the children everywhere. Think of the Children!

[bob vernon]

I've heard that if the NDP wins in Alberta that they plan to send the province's top high school graduates over to Russia to learn communism. And they'll make drug use mandatory in high schools.

[alfred2]

i hope ndp wins, then all the friends who love the social system they will leave bc to enjoy better welfare rates.