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Alberta Politics

Nenshi's column on 'loaning' his vote this election to the NDP.


I wonder if provincial politics is next for him.
If he felt that strongly that the issues at stake were so significant for the future of the province, then he should have run himself. The NDP could have benefited from having him on the ticket in Calgary. As it is, so many Calgary ridings seem to be razor-close tonight. His presence in the NDP campaign could have made a difference.
 
I suspect in the end, the Alberta NDP’s ties to the Federal NDP (and thus Trudeau as he’s propped up by their coalition) sank their ship imo. Seemed like the no 1 argument I heard from those who are small c voters who were not impressed by the UCP and even more disliked Smith, but still couldn’t bring themselves to vote NDP.

Which is sad, because the ANDP and federal NDP are two very different parties politically that I don’t believe align on much, nor do I really think an ANDP gov’t would really have any influence from the federal party. Notley in the past wasn’t afraid to push back against them.

But alas, she never really addressed that point (to my knowledge), which I think just reinforced those beliefs for a lot of folks. The dislike for Trudeau runs extremely deep in this province.
 
Congratulations to all those who were elected today regardless of the party you ran for.

And thank you to all those who were not elected today regardless of the party you ran for.

Whether you were elected or not, it is important to remember that democracy doesn’t depend on those who ran and got elected, it depends on those who are prepared to run and not get elected.

I wish you all well and hope that those of you who were elected either to sit in government or to sit in opposition remember that large portions of the population did not vote for you and it is your responsibility to represent all Albertans in your ridings and across the province regardless of who they voted for.

Good luck to all of you and to all of us.
 
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A fascinating tidbit from the election: the UCP captured 52% of the vote and won 56% of the seats - may be the closest Canada has to seats won corresponding to votes received.

Edit: I reversed the numbers so that's now fixed
 
UCP popular vote was down a bit over 2% provincially and 4% in Calgary. What made the difference for the NDP is the lack of any other real party in the centre or left, consolidating most of that vote. This is what you get in a two party race.
 
Pretty bad turnout. And its those people I have little regard for when they complain later.
There are approximately 2.8 million eligible voters in Alberta and the UCP received 927,000 votes which is 33% of eligible voters and 52.6% of votes actually cast. The NDP received 776,000 votes which is 28% of eligible voters (16% less than the UCP) and 44% of votes actually cast. On a pure percentage of the vote basis, 52.6% would result in 46 seats and 44% would result in 38 (with the other 3.4% given to "others" in the form of 3 seats) which is not that far off the actual results of 49 UCP and 38 NDP.

At a 61% overall turnout, it's also not a "pretty bad turnout". It's nowhere near Singapore's typical mid-90% but it's quite a bit better than Luxembourg. It's on a par with Canada nationally and with US presidential elections https://www.pewresearch.org/short-r...es-still-trails-that-of-many-other-countries/
It's harder to find comparable provincial or state statistics than national ones.

The interesting thing for me is whether the NDP can continue to consolidate "the centre" and not embrace the far left the way the UCP has embraced the far right. I thought they ran a reasonably competent campaign with one exception - they had a strong economic platform (even with their nominal hike to business taxes) and I don't think they were nearly strong enough in presenting it. It was as if they simply ceded that ground to the UCP (ground that the UCP certainly didn't earn or deserve) rather than aggressively present their own plan...
 

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