{"id":31193,"date":"2015-05-01T03:00:38","date_gmt":"2015-05-01T07:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=31193"},"modified":"2015-04-30T07:47:35","modified_gmt":"2015-04-30T11:47:35","slug":"does-anyone-really-know-whats-happening-in-alberta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/05\/01\/does-anyone-really-know-whats-happening-in-alberta\/","title":{"rendered":"Does anyone really know what’s happening in Alberta?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The last provincial election in Alberta exposed the polling organizations’ flaws for all to see, and the self-destruction of the Wildrose party, followed almost immediately by the PC budget fiasco mean that nobody seems to have a clue what the voters will end up doing next week. Colby Cosh<\/a> is right there with his finger on the political pulse, and even he’s not sure what to expect when the votes are counted:<\/p>\n

Nobody trusts the polls. They are mostly being conducted by unfamiliar firms with no record of Alberta tea-leaf reading. But the signal that the New Democratic Party is close to a sweep in Edmonton is so strong that it cannot be ignored. Three different firms who polled the city on or about April 23 have the NDP at 56 per cent, 61 per cent and 54 per cent among decided voters.<\/p>\n

There are many undecideds, and they may scooch toward the PCs. But\u2009…\u200954 per cent? 61 per cent? That is a lot of mileage to make up, even if the polls are badly out of whack. NDP Leader Rachel Notley was widely seen \u2014 right across the partisan spectrum \u2014 to have won the April 23 TV debate. Thomas Lukaszuk\u2019s northwest Edmonton PC seat ought to be one of the safest in the city. When he endorsed the NDP\u2019s corporate tax hike on April 21, contradicting his own party\u2019s platform, it was a hint that internal Tory polls must look almost as bad as the published ones.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Notley will be the emerging star of the campaign even if she takes third place. During the TV debate she benefited from a tart exchange in which Premier Jim Prentice, trying to emphasize that Notley would raise provincial corporate tax rates by 20 per cent, quipped: \u201cI know math is difficult.\u201d He was trying to crack wise about the NDP making accounting mistakes in the original release of its budget plan. But the joke came off as \u201cmansplaining,\u201d which, for future readers, was a borderline capital crime in 2015.<\/p>\n

Notley was also ready with a counter to Prentice\u2019s actual debating point, insisting that the NDP\u2019s fast correction of its error was an example of transparency and accountability. She also got off the best joke of the night: after Prentice mixed it up a little with Wildrose Leader Brian Jean, she told the premier: \u201cThat\u2019s not the way to talk to a donor!\u201d This was a cheeky reminder that Jean\u2019s Fort McMurray-based company had donated $10,000 to Prentice\u2019s 2014 leadership campaign.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The last provincial election in Alberta exposed the polling organizations’ flaws for all to see, and the self-destruction of the Wildrose party, followed almost immediately by the PC budget fiasco mean that nobody seems to have a clue what the voters will end up doing next week. Colby Cosh is right there with his finger […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,53],"tags":[542,861,188,798,664],"class_list":["post-31193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-politics","tag-alberta","tag-edmonton","tag-electionwatch","tag-ndp","tag-wildrosealliance"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-877","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31193"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31194,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31193\/revisions\/31194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}