Jan. 04, 2012 - Issue #846: Year in review
Political Interference
A different political picture
A resurgence of Conservative support starts off 2012
At the beginning of 2011, Alberta's governing Conservatives, under then-premier Ed Stelmach, were in serious trouble, and the opposition parties were working hard to take advantage of the situation.
The Conservatives and the Wildrose Party were in a virtual dead heat in the polls. The Tories had lost two MLAs to the Wildrose Party in the preceding 12 months, and had just kicked Raj Sherman out of caucus for his role in exposing Alberta's emergency room crisis. The party was pummelled by a series of damaging reports about the impact of the bituminous sands operations on Alberta's water, and the complete failure of the government to monitor and enforce the oil industry.
The Liberals bled members to the new Alberta Party, and pressure increased on leader David Swann to resign and make way for a leadership race which might inject some life into the party.
The Alberta Party was optimistic after travelling the province and had just held its first policy convention which resulted in the release of the party's first policy document, and in the appointment of Sue Huff as interim leader until a leadership race could be held.
Twelve months later, the political picture in Alberta looks very different. Three of Alberta's five parties have a different leader than they started the year with, and Dave Taylor's decision to join the Alberta Party means that all five are currently represented in the Alberta Legislature.
The Conservatives have rebounded significantly since electing Alison Redford as their leader, and once again sit comfortably and alone at the top of public opinion polls in the province. Despite a few stumbles early on in her tenure as Premier, Redford currently has a personal approval rate of around 59 percent—significantly ahead of Wildrose leader Danielle Smith's approval rate of 40 percent. The Conservative Party as a whole is still less popular than its leader, but even those numbers are climbing as members of the party's old guard announce that they will not be seeking re-election this spring.
The Wildrose Party is heading in entirely the opposite direction. Redford's success has hurt them in the polls, and the hardcore attack ads released just days after Redford lost her mother did more damage to their own popularity than to the government's. The Wildrose is working hard to paint the Conservatives as a radical-left party, but Albertans see through that, and it's doing even more damage to Smith and her party in the polls. The Wildrose is having a difficult time finding a communications strategy that will stick, and the party is running out of time before an imminent election this spring.
Interesting things are also happening on the other side of the political spectrum. The Liberal leadership race failed to generate any of the momentum the party had hoped for, and new leader Raj Sherman is struggling simply to keep the party alive. New candidates for the Liberal party are hard to find for the next provincial election, a number of long-standing MLAs will not be running again, and the party lost one more of its members to the government benches. It is clearly a party on life-support, and the only question that seems to remain is whether the flat-line moment will come before or after the next election.
Likewise the Alberta Party, despite having elected a capable, articulate, and decently-profiled leader, is having trouble registering as anything more than a blip in provincial polls. The party leader, Hinton Mayor Glenn Taylor, already has a full-time job and has had difficulty spending the amount of time at the Alberta legislature and in front of the media that Danielle Smith and the other leaders do. The party leadership insists that organizing locally in key constituencies is going well, but a quick scan of the province makes it difficult to identify a constituency where the Alberta Party candidate could actually pull through with an upset victory. Alberta is difficult terrain for opposition parties at the best of times, and it is much more so for new parties. It will be very difficult for the Alberta Party to remain alive if it does not elect anyone to the legislature in the next election.
Alberta's New Democrats seem to be in a very different position. It's the only party that will go into the next election with the same leader that took them into the last provincial election. The NDP is the only party that has neither lost nor gained caucus members over the course of the year. The polls show that the NDP has clearly been the beneficiary of the slow demise of the Liberal Party in the province, and is also still benefitting from the national surge of interest in New Democrats that resulted from Jack Layton's death. The NDs consistently poll ahead of the Liberals and, in a few key areas in Edmonton, is actually polling ahead of both the Conservatives and the Wildrose. The party has had an easier time finding electable high-profile candidates than either the Liberals or the Alberta Party, and appear poised to actually increase the size of the party's caucus in the upcoming election.
Had an election been called in Alberta 12 months ago we likely would have ended up with either a Wildrose government, or a Conservative minority with a Wildrose opposition, and no other party would have elected any more than one or two MLAs. As we start 2012, that outlook has changed. We will be heading into an election within the next five months, and that election is likely to result in a comfortable Conservative majority, with a small Wildrose caucus as the official opposition, and a handful of New Democrats as the third party. Neither the Liberals nor the Alberta Party seem likely to elect anyone to the next legislature, but could pull one through depending on which current Liberal MLAs decide to run again and for which party.
In the end, 2012 will be a year which sees Alberta's political map change significantly. It will be difficult for the Wildrose Party to survive anything other than a win or a Conservative minority. Their members and donors like being close to power, and a Conservative majority would see many of them head back to the Tories, leaving Wildrose as little more than a fringe party on the right. On the other side of the spectrum, if the Liberals and Alberta Party fail to make significant gains in this election, they too will disappear from Alberta's political map, leaving the New Democrats as the only credible alternative left of the Tories. In other words, if Alberta politics continues on its current trajectory, by the end of 2012 we will be down to two political parties in the province: one on the centre-right and one on the centre-left.
Of course, largely anything can happen over the next twelve months. One thing, however, is for certain: 2012 promises to be another year of change and excitement in Alberta politics. V
Ricardo Acuña is the executive director of the Parkland Institute, a non-partisan, public policy research institute housed at the University of Alberta.
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