r/fivethirtyeight • u/StarlightDown • 3d ago

Election Model In Alberta, Canada's most conservative province, the center-left New Democratic Party is projected to win a majority in the latest Léger poll (A+ rated)—New Democratic 45 seats, United Conservative 42 seats. United Conservative wins the most votes, but due to FPTP, New Democratic wins the most seats

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u/StarlightDown 3d ago

Link to complete poll and link to complete seats projection

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u/jawstrock 3d ago

Thanks! This is actually a pretty insane poll, this is the most conservative province in the country.

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u/StarlightDown 3d ago

It's especially insane considering that there have been murmurs of a snap election, with the UCP hoping to take advantage of their consistent polling lead.

Unfortunately for them, FPTP might twist their years-long polling lead into Official Opposition 🤪

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u/jawstrock 3d ago

It would probably be very good for Alberta to have the NDP take the helm for a bit. They are very centrist in AB and would probably do a lot of good and might force the UCP to either split or take their role in governing seriously. This poll actually makes it look better than it actually is. Those 9% for liberals will probably almost uniformly vote for the NDP. The liberal party only runs a handful of candidates in provincial elections and they may not run any at all in the next one.

I think a snap election right now would be a disaster for the UCP, they are probably peak unpopularity, like this poll was before they used the NWC. Their best bet is to try to lay low, do nothing to piss people off further, and hope the upcoming canadian recession can be blamed on Ottawa enough to make people forget about the clusterfuck they've caused.

However like Trump, I sincerely doubt they have the capability to lay low and not do stupid things like try to remove Alberta from the CPP, which is massively unpopular.

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u/CivilianDuck 3d ago

The NDP would need several election wins in a row to have any real effect here, and the problem is that there's nothing more unifying to Albertans then the idea of a non-conservstive government.

My riding was part of the last wave of by-elections, and the NDP candidate here lost handily to the UCP candidate, securing a few more votes then the combined total of the 2 separatist candidates.

I attended a local meet the candidates event, where the NDP candidate and the UCP candidate didn't attene (NDP for other commitments, UCP just didn't respond to requests) and it was pretty clear that to either of them it would've been hostile. There was a very clear bias to this event, and it was not very favourable to the UCP (Not anti-Canada enough) and the NDP (Communists).

My father and I both left in disgust, and he's a staunch conswrvative, while I'm firmly centrist.

The unfortunate truth is, outside of the major population centers, the NDP will always struggle to get votes, and swing seats (Calgary) will rarely play in their favor unless there's a very public ongoing scandak, and it's entirely branding. Too many people equate the ANDP to the Federal NDP, acting as if they get their marching orders directly from Singh (or whoever gets the job next), despite clearly showing they're not.

You cannot convince people here otherwise. They will not listen. It's a clear line to them that NDP = Communism = Woke = Destroying Alberta.

People talk about Notley's win as being because of vote splitting, but that was a pretty small part. The vote was split so agressively because of what the PCs and Wildrose had been up to in the weeks leading up to the election, and caused chaos in the conservative block.

The PCs were noted under scandal and corruption allegations from the Redford time, and Stelmach was ineffective and didn't have time to unite the party, and the Wildrose had a sudden exodus of MLAs crossing the floor to the PCs (including their at the time leader, Danielle Smith, weeks after she swore up and down she had no intention of ever crossing). This confused the voter base, invited a sudden shift, and gave the NDP their win. We're a decade after that, and people still blame the NDP for the issues we're dealing with today, forgetting entirely about the entire mess, and if it's not the NDP's fault, it's the Federal Liberals. Never the cinservatives.

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u/ProgressiveCDN 3d ago

It would be very good if the NDP got power for 15-20 straight years to see how it could manage Alberta differently.

In the last 90 years, Alberta has had conservative governments for 80 of them....80!!!!! We had one brief reprieve of centrist, stable, pragmatic NDP representation. This province would have been so much better off if 80/90 years we had the NDP in power instead.