Quote:
Originally Posted by moon
The Wildrose got 35% of the vote and showed a lot of strength in the South/Rural ridings, meanwhile for the umpteenth election in a row the left wing parties got a combined 20% of the vote concentrated in a few ridings with little indication of branching out to new voters/areas and you think that the left is the group that the PC's have to look out for?
If anything with Redford and some of the new PC MLA's they are going to occupy the left side of the voting in the Province and it will be a much more moderate Wildrose that attracts the right/center voters that were dumb enough/scared enough to stick with the PC's.
I understand that people want to believe that their view of voting will eventually become the norm but I fail to see anything that indicates a left of center party is going to be a threat to the PC's that already seem to be there now with the leadership they have.
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If there's no credible alternative on the left then the PC's absorb that vote which can be highly mobilized in the event of a far-right threat which is what happened. That's my point.
I think the 35% for Wildrose is a high watermark for a couple of reasons. First, Wildrose caught lightning in a bottle with both the corruption scandal and the narrative of "change." Once the sentiment that "change is necessary" in a political base starts to take hold it is extremely difficult to counter. Which is basically what happened to the PCs earlier in the campaign. It's like fighting against the tide coming in. An electorate gradually accepts that it's time for a new party, a new group of people because the old one is stagnant. After 40 years, it was due for the PCs.
I think that a good 10 points of that 35% is related to the need for change at the cost of change. However a good 10 points in the opposite direction swung against them due to concerns of the party's ideology.
For that I think the brand is tainted now and will require not just soul searching in the party but a coring out of many of the factors that brought people into the party in the first place to be able to compete with the broad swath of moderate, generally unassociated/undecided voters. Because don't fool yourself, amidst the polling trends leading up to election day this was as strong of a repudiation of a party and it's ideas as I've ever witnessed from a group of voters that not only woke up but reversed against the change narrative with days and hours left.
What will happen with that coring out? Will the party lose its base, mobilization and momentum? Who knows. I do think there is a chance for teh wildrose to present themselves as a moderate conservative party that can credibly govern for the betterment of Albertans. I would use these four years to reign in significantly the wingnuts (kick them out) and build a plank that was a credible alternative to government. Basically, they need to emulate the federal conservative strategy and then lie in wait and hope that the PCs shoot themselves in the foot. How this will rest with their vocal, unwieldy and influential base remains to be seen if the party can transition to one of happenstance populism to one that can govern.