Alberta Politics & Government Thread 3.0

[Johnny Makarov]

Originally Posted by Wormius

Ah yeah, trying to GoFundMe a trip to Australia.

Shut up!!! seriously? lol

[Aegypticus]

Voted NDP yesterday in Calgary-Hays. I’m trying to emphasize to people I know how absolutely quick and painless early voting was. In and out in like 4 minutes.

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by Cappy

The people claiming that we need to end this divisiveness are always the people leading the divide.

They want to unify - under their banner.

Correct they are ####s

[belsarius]

Originally Posted by Cappy

The people claiming that we need to end this divisiveness are always the people leading the divide.

They want to unify - under their banner.

The side that wants equal treatment for LGTBQ, the side that wants to ensure social supports exist for all citizens, the side that follows the science to prevent a catastrophe happening during covid, the side that wants to keep out racists/bigots/facists.

Yeah the left is totally the divisive side.

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by Johnny Makarov

Shut up!!! seriously? lol

I will preface it with, if it weren’t for the fact that the Morgans were such asses, it would be a reasonable thing to crowdsource given the background.

[Johnny Makarov]

Originally Posted by Wormius

I will preface it with, if it weren’t for the fact that the Morgans were such asses, it would be a reasonable thing to crowdsource given the background.

Found it.

https://forum.calgarypuck.com/showthread.php?t=159293

[Lubicon]

Originally Posted by Torture

Record turnout with 161k advance votes today. 23% of 2019's advance vote total.

Originally Posted by direwolf

Hopefully that means lots of younger people voting. If anything is gonna help push the NDP over the top, it'll be the 18-35 crowd.

In and out in about 5 minutes yesterday as well. Electronic scanned ballot, super simple - is this the way it will be on election day too or will they still hand count?

Steady stream of people but not busy, Elections Alberta had the polling station well staffed and running smoothly. Saw one person who would qualify as under 35, and I live in a younger suburban community.

[fotze2]

I forgot about that. Her name used to be Jane Greydanus and was running for something, so I made a thread about her ridiculous last name (below), then she found it and started posting.

https://forum.calgarypuck.com/showth...ight=greydanus

[Yamer]

Originally Posted by Lubicon

In and out in about 5 minutes yesterday as well. Electronic scanned ballot, super simple - is this the way it will be on election day too or will they still hand count?

Steady stream of people but not busy, Elections Alberta had the polling station well staffed and running smoothly. Saw one person who would qualify as under 35, and I live in a younger suburban community.

The officials at my polling station said it would be electronic balloting for advance voting only.

[Reggie Dunlop]

Election Day will use paper ballots and hand-counted.

[MRCboicgy]

Also, check out good old bobblehead telling her that her social positions in 2007 were regressive back then https://forum.calgarypuck.com/showpo...87&postcount=6


They can't promote even halfway decent economic policy anymore, so they have to push the fear-based social issues.
Who wants to bet that these days she's calling anyone who supports LGBTQ folks a 'groomer'

[kermitology]

I feel like we’re missing some context from that thread after all of fotze’s original posts were deleted. There’s clearly something that fotze said or did that was hilarious, but I am not seeing it. His posts were all deleted back when he had someone stalking him or something like that.

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

So today’s Mainstreet tracker has some very slight narrowing that doesn’t look significant, at least not to me. UCP lead down slightly to UCP+5.3.

https://twitter.com/MainStResearch/s...28945416323079

Again, consistent with a small but steady UCP lead provincially, and any variance from yesterday is likely noise. To me the trend in this poll LOOKS reasonably clear.


Here’s the weird part though: Quito Maggi(you know, the fellow who runs Mainstreet) today tweeted that he has “seen enough” and expects the NDP to win. Link to the Twitter thread is here:

https://twitter.com/quito_maggi/stat...41181395505152

In the thread he suggests there is regional and riding level data under the hood (not available yet, at least without a subscription—which I’m not about to pay for) that supports this prediction. I guess he is saying that the NDP vote is going to be more efficient than the UCP’s and the UCP will be running up huge margins in rural ridings and being mostly wiped out in Calgary and Edmonton?

I think it’s worth pausing on how strange this hypothesis is. In effect, he’s saying the NDP will form government without a popular vote majority. I’ve always viewed that as only being possible the other way. I remain skeptical to be honest, but that’s the thing about the future: you never know how it will go until it’s the past.

[fotze2]

Originally Posted by kermitology

I feel like we’re missing some context from that thread after all of fotze’s original posts were deleted. There’s clearly something that fotze said or did that was hilarious, but I am not seeing it. His posts were all deleted back when he had someone stalking him or something like that.

I think it was just a thread about the last name I saw on an election sign, probably an anus joke of some sort.

[Torture]

Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan

So today’s Mainstreet tracker has some very slight narrowing that doesn’t look significant, at least not to me. UCP lead down slightly to UCP+5.3.

https://twitter.com/MainStResearch/s...28945416323079

Again, consistent with a small but steady UCP lead provincially, and any variance from yesterday is likely noise. To me the trend in this poll LOOKS reasonably clear.


Here’s the weird part though: Quito Maggi(you know, the fellow who runs Mainstreet) today tweeted that he has “seen enough” and expects the NDP to win. Link to the Twitter thread is here:

https://twitter.com/quito_maggi/stat...41181395505152

In the thread he suggests there is regional and riding level data under the hood (not available yet, at least without a subscription—which I’m not about to pay for) that supports this prediction. I guess he is saying that the NDP vote is going to be more efficient than the UCP’s and the UCP will be running up huge margins in rural ridings and being mostly wiped out in Calgary and Edmonton?

I think it’s worth pausing on how strange this hypothesis is. In effect, he’s saying the NDP will form government without a popular vote majority. I’ve always viewed that as only being possible the other way. I remain skeptical to be honest, but that’s the thing about the future: you never know how it will go until it’s the past.

TIL that Quitto Maggi has blocked me. Probably something about Bill Smith., lol.

Very strange that Main Street is calling it for the NDP, meanwhile all the other major polling firms are leaning to UCP. I don't generally put a lot of trust in Main Street (see Bill Smith) but it definitely lines up more with what I observe in my own bubble. *shrug*

Usually large voter counts aren't good for the incumbent so it will be interesting to follow those advance poll numbers which continue to be high. Frankly don't see a lot of "motivated" UCP vote aside from far right TBA-types.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan

So today’s Mainstreet tracker has some very slight narrowing that doesn’t look significant, at least not to me. UCP lead down slightly to UCP+5.3.

https://twitter.com/MainStResearch/s...28945416323079

Again, consistent with a small but steady UCP lead provincially, and any variance from yesterday is likely noise. To me the trend in this poll LOOKS reasonably clear.


Here’s the weird part though: Quito Maggi(you know, the fellow who runs Mainstreet) today tweeted that he has “seen enough” and expects the NDP to win. Link to the Twitter thread is here:

https://twitter.com/quito_maggi/stat...41181395505152

In the thread he suggests there is regional and riding level data under the hood (not available yet, at least without a subscription—which I’m not about to pay for) that supports this prediction. I guess he is saying that the NDP vote is going to be more efficient than the UCP’s and the UCP will be running up huge margins in rural ridings and being mostly wiped out in Calgary and Edmonton?

I think it’s worth pausing on how strange this hypothesis is. In effect, he’s saying the NDP will form government without a popular vote majority. I’ve always viewed that as only being possible the other way. I remain skeptical to be honest, but that’s the thing about the future: you never know how it will go until it’s the past.

First off, that might be the Jim Cramer kiss of death!

Second, his % is decided voters. So undecided could break NDP in Calgary.

Third, he must be seeing every riding in Calgary clearly going NDP, or he couldn't make a statement with confidence like that.

[Torture]

Coming from Danielle Smith's Executive Director.....the Calgary Herald is left wing media now? I guess when you're on the far right extremes everything is left of you...

https://twitter.com/user/status/1661471062583017472

Also, advanced vote update....wow:

https://twitter.com/user/status/1661469971875262464

[powderjunkie]

Originally Posted by chedder

I have to agree with a previous post saying the NDP has done a pretty poor job getting their message out telling Albertans they are the sensible choice who will be good for business and for people. They have also been really soft on showing how much of a clown show the UCP is.

I dont think they've done enough to sway the undecideds, and that's really unfortunate.

I kinda get this complaint, but IMO you are really asking for the impossible.

There is a chicken/egg problem here...there isn't too much you can do to sway already engaged voters. Unengaged voters are simply really difficult to reach, by their very nature...details are probably much less effective than a simple narrative around trust/leadership. And details are nearly impossible in a 30 second TV/radio spot, which is basically the only hope to reach the unengaged.

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

First off, that might be the Jim Cramer kiss of death!

Second, his % is decided voters. So undecided could break NDP in Calgary.

Third, he must be seeing every riding in Calgary clearly going NDP, or he couldn't make a statement with confidence like that.

Agreed—and he’s said his prediction is based on crosstabs and riding level data, so that’s basically what he is projecting. He’s also saying that riding level polls will be released in the coming days, so I guess we’ll see. .

One other thing to note is that an election with high voter turnout can throw off the model electorate that pollsters use to weight their data, which is typically based on the last election. As an example, voter turnout was very low among people under 45 in 2015, so if it’s much higher than the pollsters predict it can throw their topline numbers off in one or another direction.

We saw that in 2016 when pollsters assumed rural voters would turn out in similar numbers to 2012, but turnout in those areas was way higher than predicted. I think we all remember how that turned out.

Right now turnout is apparently high, but we don’t know which voters are coming out and which ones are waiting until election day. Even if we did it’s dangerous to conclude too much from EV data, as there is inevitably some “cannibalizatioh” of election day voters there. But the conventional wisdom is high turnout is bad for incumbents.

[woob]

Those are some big advanced voting numbers. I'll be advance voting this week as we're away next.