Election 2023!

 

The Day After

Just like in 2019 I thought I'd share my thoughts and analysis of the latest Alberta election. I would have loved to share my predictions for it in advance but given my job I try to refrain from public comments during the actual election (however my last guess before the polls came in was only 1 seat off!).

Best-on-Best?

Before I get too far into politics we're going to take a digression into hockey...you may have heard that just this month Canada won the IIHF World Hockey Championship. On the other hand there's a pretty good chance you didn't hear that and an even better chance you didn't watch any of the games. The reason is that this tournament is not well timed and many of the best players in the world are in the middle of the NHL playoffs. For that reason many of the best hockey players in the world don't compete (for example Connor McDavid was not playing for Canada) and therefore hockey fans don't pay as much attention to it as the teams are not what they refer to as 'Best-on-Best'.

The reason I bring this up is that I have been thinking of the Alberta election in a similar light. For example, when the UCP won the 2019 election I didn't feel that was the best showing by left leaning parties. There was a fair amount of vote splitting with the Alberta Party picking up almost 10% of the vote and therefore the UCP was absolutely destined to win that election. Likewise in 2015 the NDP had a breakthrough victory but the right leaning parties weren't competing together and really competed as two separate teams (imagine Team Canada had to be Team Ontario and Team Rest of Canada). Those elections are what they are but in both cases it didn't feel totally fair or to use the hockey term it didn't feel like a contest of 'Best-on-Best'.

Best-on-Best!

This election however could not be more different! I think the narrative that most media outlets missed in this election is how incredibly well both Rachel Notley and Danielle Smith did at consolidating their votes. I only went as far back as 1986 so maybe it has happened before but for at least the last ~40 years we have never experienced this level of consolidation on both the left and the right side of the political spectrum at the same time. On the right side of the spectrum there were many registered parties: Alberta Advantage, Pro-Life, Reform, Solidarity, Buffalo, Independence, Wildrose, etc. That said, all of these parties combined for less than 1.5% of the vote and none of them individually achieved more than 0.7% of the vote. Basically, Danielle Smith managed to capture ~97% of the right leaning voters. On the left side of the spectrum there were also many parties and some parties that have historically done pretty well: Liberal, Alberta, Green, etc. but again these parties combined for about 1.5% of the vote meaning that Rachel Notley and the NDP captured ~96% of all the left leaning voters. Again for context, the Alberta Party alone was 9% in 2019, in 2015 the Wildrose Party was 24%, in 2012 there were 4 parties above 10%, in 2008 the leading parties were the PCs and Liberals but the NDP picked up 9% and the WRP picked up 7%. So this kind of two party race is unprecedented in Alberta and I think both parties and their leaders should be commended for their ability to consolidate that support and make this a true 'Best-on-Best' election.

Misleading Narratives

There's always lots of talk in elections about how the parties and candidates campaigned and how they might convince voters to move from one side of the spectrum to the other but I have always believed that this is way overdone. Very few people actually cross from one side of the political spectrum to the other so in a multi-party system it's much more important to consolidate votes from the other parties on your side of the spectrum than to try and convince someone from the other side to come over. It's also why much of the criticism of Danielle Smith as the leader of the UCP was misguided. Yes, she moved the party to the right from where Jason Kenney had it and yes that made progressive conservatives and centrists less likely to vote for her but the more important question is how many people is that? What's the electoral cost of losing those voters? It's not entirely possible to calculate but we can do a pretty good job estimating it by simply looking at how many people voted for right leaning parties in 2019 and how many voted that way in 2023.

In 2019 Jason Kenney's UCP won 54.9% of the popular vote and right leaning parties in total won 56.8%. In 2023 Danielle Smith's UCP won 52.6% and right leaning parties in total won 54.1%. So by my estimation the UCP's shift cost them 2.7% of voters near the political center but that was offset by gaining 0.4% from the other minor parties making her net change only 2.3% (all data from Elections Alberta's website).

Now you might be thinking that it's still a bad move. Giving up 2.7% to gain 0.4% sounds like a bad idea but that's because we're forgetting the more important narrative because almost no one is talking about it anymore: a year ago the United Conservative Party was not at all United! Jason Kenney managed to hold the party together for the 2019 election but his Covid policies caused a full on revolt that eventually forced him to resign. The UCP then had a very tight leadership contest that highlighted the near 50/50 split between the progressive and grassroot elements of the party. After the grassroots side of the party narrowly won that vote for Smith there was much talk about how the progressive side of the party would react and now we know: about 10% of them moved left (~50% of UCP voted for more progressive leadership candidates multiplied by 55% of Albertans who voted UCP last time then take the 2.7% that switched and divide it by 50% of 55% or 27.5% and you get ~10% of the progressive conservatives moving across the spectrum).

On the flipside what would have happened if the progressive side of the party had won? This is impossible to prove but my guess, based on Alberta's history, is that the cost would have been much higher. For me, you simply have to look at how well far right parties in Alberta have fared historically at pulling in support and you'll find much higher numbers than 2.7%. In 2004 for example the Alberta Alliance earned around 9% of the popular vote, in 2008 after merging with the Alliance the new Wildrose Party took 7% and then of course in 2012 and 2015 the Wildrose party earned>20% of the vote. Given how upset that side of the party was I think it's entirely conceivable that had Travis Toews won the leadership contest 50% of the grassroots side of the UCP may have migrated to a Wildrose or Independence type of party (i.e. ~13.5% of the popular vote) and Travis Toew's UCP would likely have won something like 43 or 44% of the popular vote. Given how inefficient the UCP vote is compared to the NDP's I strongly suspect that at that level the NDP would have won a majority government last night.

Final Thoughts

All told I think the two main storylines from this election should be: 

1. Smith and Notley both did absolutely everything they could to maximize their chances of winning. They are both being underrated in the current discourse. For example, had Notley run in 1993 instead of Laurence Decore and consolidated the entire Liberal/NDP vote she would have beaten Ralph Klein!

2. Smith being a little more right than the media was comfortable with was actually exactly what her party needed. This was an incredibly close race because the NDP gobbled up voters on the left and not because Danielle Smith pushed voters out of the UCP. With that surging NDP support the UCP simply could not afford to have a splinter right wing party split the vote and Smith was exactly the person for that job.

What's Next?

I find that when voters 'lend their votes' to other parties in an attempt to win it tends to be short lived (especially if your party doesn't win!). For that reason I suspect that by 2027 we'll see a return to a more normal pattern on the left (i.e. one party in the 35% range and another around 10%). In my view that will be exacerbated by the fact that I don't expect Rachel Notley to be the leader of the NDP by the time that comes around. Without her I suspect the NDP will have a hard time holding onto former Liberal and Alberta Party voters and that will create the splinter. 

On the right, barring more leadership controversies for the UCP I see a pretty steady path. If Smith can stay roughly where she's staked out on the right it will quell any upstart parties and with time I suspect you might see some warming of the progressive conservatives back and the UCP steadying at around 55% of the popular vote. Should that occur you would likely see 60+ UCP seats in 2027. However, the risk to the UCP in my opinion is if the party turns on it's leader due to perceived poor performance in this election or a controversy in the future it could upset things. The worst case scenario in my opinion would be for the party to elect a more progressive leader and while they would likely cruise to victory in 2027 in that case it would plant the seeds for a new upstart right wing party and vote splitting into 2031. In either case though I suspect we're in for at least 8 years of UCP governments.