2012-04-24 Matt Gurney: If strategic voting killed the Wildrose, others should take note

In the abstract, there’s nothing shocking about the Alberta PCs doing well. They’ve been doing well since 1971. But it is certainly shocking that outside a few PC hopefuls, few would have seen this coming based on the last few weeks. The polls have been consistent, showing a strong Wildrose lead. But the popular vote totals coming in on Tuesday evening showed that the polls generally had the levels of support for the Wildrose and PCs flipped. What exactly happened here will take some time to sort out. Already questions are being asked about the polling firms who seem to have completely blown it, and the seat-count prediction formulas that feed on those polls. Those are questions worth asking, but it will only offer a partial explanation. Some attention will have to be paid to the campaign itself.

Was it the so-called “bozo eruptions” that collapsed the Wildrose’s momentum? It’s certainly possible that the string of embarrassing incidents over the last few weeks, where Danielle Smith was forced to react to uncomfortable social conservative comments by Wildrose candidates, made some people nervous about voting for a party that would be essentially composed of unknowns (not that that stopped the Orange Crush from sweeping Quebec not even a year ago, but hey, could be).

But many are already speculating that, faced with the prospect of a Wildrose government, Liberal and NDP supporters chose to vote strategically for the PCs. In 2008, the Liberals and NDP accounted for 35% of the popular vote in Alberta. This time, the early numbers suggest they secured somewhere less than 20%. That 15% may have been enough to give the PCs the boost they needed to stay alive and fight off the Wildrose.

At this point, it’s as good a theory as any. And if strategic voting is indeed determined to be the cause, or at least a major contributing factor, to this election-day surprise, it will be interesting to see how other political parties across the country react.

Specifically, it will be interesting if an exodus of NDP and Liberal voters to the Alberta PCs might convince some federal Liberal and NDP strategists to consider the possibility of some form of co-operation against the Harper Tories. The situations are hardly directly comparable — in Alberta it seems as though strategic voting may have saved a long-running government, which would not be the goal of any strategic voters in the next federal election. But we’ve heard a lot about the the different cultures between Liberals and Dippers these last few years. Are they any more different than the Alberta opposition parties are from the PCs?

If Alberta Liberals and Dippers can hold their nose and vote for Alberta’s PC dynasty to stave off something even more unpalatable, there’s no reason that the federal opposition parties couldn’t consider, maybe in just some ridings, trying to find a way to threaten the Tory stranglehold on Canada’s Western provinces and its new strength in the Greater Toronto Area. Alberta might not be the right place to try that out federally, but the conversation could start there. Even if they can’t find the right ridings to road test a co-operative agreement in, it could be worth a shot somewhere in the country, especially in ridings where the NDP (which generally has little reason to do the Liberals any favours) are weak.

It’s hard to look forward that far. And it may be that strategic voting played little role in tonight’s surprise. But if it did, it might help those in the parties already speaking, quietly, of co-operation. If so, the real consequences of tonight may not be fully appreciated for another three years.

National Post
mgurney@nationalpost.com