Alberta: Notley's Favoured

Frightful Honesty

Rachel Notley and the NDP are favourites to win the Alberta election.

I don’t think they are in any way strong favourites to win or anything, and this firmly isn’t Ontario 2022 where I was unwilling to change my mind for months on the idea, but for months I’ve said that even if the NDP held a lead in my seat projection I expect the UCP to win when the rubber meets the road. Now? I don’t know if I can say that anymore, and in my gut I would rather be Notley than Danielle Smith.

It’s not just Abacus’ Saturday poll showing a dominant NDP lead, nor is it the fact that Mainstreet’s data has a sizable lead in the Calgary CMA, but also a tweet sent from David Parker, the head of the party-within-the-UCP known as Take Back Alberta and a leading acolyte of Smith (she attended his March wedding). Parker’s tweet is obvious nonsense, accusing David Coletto and Abacus Data of attempting to influence the campaign with fake data in a lobbying effort to become the NDP’s official pollster. The fact that Coletto had a sizable UCP lead last month and had an 8 point CPC lead federally earlier this year seems to have escaped Parker’s memory, but expecting basic recall from someone whose handpicked Premier is fucked seems too much to ask.

And it’s got me to the point where I can’t say that Danielle Smith is still favoured.

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The case for the UCP winning this election still is two part – one, the data we have to say the NDP is leading right now in seats is two pollsters, both of which have glaring issues in one region (Mainstreet’s Edmonton tab is way too UCP friendly, Abacus’ regional tab too NDP friendly), and two that there’s still two weeks, and this is Alberta. I get that ties go to the right in Alberta, and I get that this is a bold call from someone who has historically leaned to the left and could be being blind here. There’s a reason I’ve been so cautious to believe in Notley and the NDP. But at this point, I remember what I said before the midterms down south.

Before 2022, I kept having the 2017 UK election in my head, an election where the data very much didn’t point to a landslide but there was a blithe belief despite the late campaign tightening and the right’s generally terrible campaign that the right would win anyways, in part because the right beat their polls the time before. I tweeted the week before the midterms that it was sticking in my head, and it ended up being the right comparison for what ended up happening. Here, there’s a version of the same thing.

If this were anywhere but Alberta, I’d have no qualms saying that the Hitler comments would end this campaign, because Smith is running a classic campaign that loses. Out of ideas, flipflopping on everything she’s ever said, having to try and reinvent herself on the fly, and being a markedly bad fit for the voters she needs to try and win over. In any other place, I’d say she was fucked not just because of the scandal, but because of how messy and chaotic everything around her is.

Senior Ministers from the moderate/not crazy wing of the party, including leadership rival and Finance Minister Travis Toews, are not recontesting this election, and the campaign so far has been unable to get off its feet. None of this suggests a government doing well and none of this suggests a campaign that can get its feet back. In a 28 day campaign where two weeks have already been lost to wildfires both real and political, she’s running out of time to right this.

Could the debate swing it back? Sure, but she gets flustered at any follow up question and keeps trying to answer any question about past statements with some form of “I’m not here to talk about the past,” which might work when you don’t let reporters follow up but which won’t work when it’s Rachel Notley on stage with you and you don’t have control anymore. More to the point, the NDP campaign has been good so far, mostly because it’s been what they need it to be. They rolled out a suite of proposals on Friday designed to solve health care staffing issues, but there’s been no exorbitant tax or spend commitments so far, a nod to the fact that they need the votes of people who bore the brunt of the 2015 tax increase. Them committing not to raise those taxes back is a useful bit of retail politics.

Could Smith still win? Of course, and I’m in no way suggesting it’s impossible or even somehow unlikely that I end up having Smith ahead when the rubber meets the road the night before the election. But that’s not where we are right now, and if this site is to be worth anything, it has to be an honest reflection of where my head is at any given time. For reasons passing understanding a lot of people care what I have to say, and that entitles you, if nothing else, to clarity about what I think. And right now, I’d rather be Notley.

The NDP have internalized what they have to do to win this election and are campaigning in a way that is consistent with meeting the voters where they are and not where they want them to be. This effort is obviously aided by getting to run against someone who is in contention for the worst electoral performer in modern Canadian history, and that’s the other thing making me think this is now Notley’s to lose. Danielle Smith doesn’t deserve the benefit of the electoral doubt, even if the right in Alberta does.

For those who think I’m elated to be writing this, I’m not, actually – believing Smith was inevitable was actually much easier for me, given my past and my personal politics. Believing Smith would win and then being wrong would be bittersweet, and much more sweet than bitter. Going the other way and being wrong, however? Absolutely fucking terrifying to consider, but I chose to do this to myself, so let’s do this properly.

Nothing about where we are and where this campaign has gone suggests anything other than Premier Rachel Notley. The idea that the crack political movement that lost the 2012 election and fails to understand that the vaccinated majority of the province doesn’t view the unvaxxed or the reluctantly vaxxed as mistreated is suddenly going to tap into how to win socially liberal, vaccinated Calgary and suburban Edmonton strains credulity. And even if the UCP massively beat their polls in rural Alberta like usual, I’ve already built in a big polling error to keep regional seats staying UCP.

Smith has the time to fix this but I don’t think she has the capacity or the credibility. Maybe she does, or maybe Alberta’s default conservatism is enough in spite of her. But right now that’s not the likeliest outcome, and a Notley government is. And I cannot believe Smith has blown this so that is true.