Thread by @tim4hire

(🧵) Because the one thing tweeps have too much of tdoay, here is my own post-mortem on the #AbElection2023.

TL;dr: The @albertaNDP had a nigh-impossible path to victory. Ms Smith will have a hard time remaining Premier for a full term and the @Alberta_UCP could fragment.

1/21

When @ABDanielleSmith became leader and Premier, I believed she would not have time to turn around the party. In hindsight, the evidence that my call was wrong was readily apparent in the parties' fundraising totals.

2/21

Donations, which had all but vanished under @jkenney's leadership, took off under Ms Smith, and the UCP was once again competitive with, and even beating, the NDP on fundraising. This showed the depth of UCP support.

3/21

There is a very strong base of conservative supporters in Alberta. While many kept their wallets in their pockets under Mr Kenney, they returned to the fold under Ms Smith. This created a strong advantage for the UCP in many ridings.

4/21

To win, the NDP needed to flip a lot of ridings where there was a strong base of conservative support. To their credit, the NDP managed to do so in a significant number of places, including winning half of Calgary's ridings.

5/21

But to win the magic 45 seats (which would allow a majority even with the Speaker coming from the governing side), an additional seven ridings had to be flipped. There are only six ridings across Alberta where the UCP won by fewer than 1,000 votes.

6/21

Of those six ridings, there are only two where the Alberta Party (or Liberal) votes, had they all gone to the NDP, would have been enough to flip those seats to orange. Even if these losses can be attributed to vote splitting, this wouldn't have changed the overall result.

7/21

Perhaps a "perfect" NDP election campaign could have flipped those ridings where the UCP won by fewer than 1,000 votes. And maybe they could have also won Morinville-St. Albert, where the margin was 1,594 votes. But campaigns are almost never perfect.

8/21

An easy campaign mistake may have been to try to re-fight the 2012 and/or 2015 election campaigns. It is very tempting to do this, but at least in this case it did not work. Ms Smith's history is damning, but its relevance to the 2023 campaign appears to have been limited.

9/21

People knew Ms Smith's history. So the fact that she said or did whackadoodle things was not a surprise. Hence, the stories about her likely did not hurt her that much. People knew the devil they were voting for.

10/21

Another factor is that in 2012 and 2015, voters alarmed by "lakes of fire", etc., had another conservative option for their support. In 2023, those voters had the option of holding their nose and voting UCP or abandoning any conservative party altogether.

11/21

Despite this, the NDP grew its vote. From 604,518 votes in 2015 to 619,921 in 2019, the party jumped to 776,188 votes in 2023. The UCP, by contrast, saw its vote fall from 1,040,563 in 2019 to 926,918 in 2023.

12/21

The NDP now have to focus on consolidating their gains: building strong constituency associations, ensuring their databases are accurate and otherwise turning the flipped ridings into places where they are strong.

13/21

Ms Smith leads a party with a fairly slim majority. She will have to balance the expectations of TBA and her dominant rural caucus with the need to prevent more Calgary and other potentially at-risk ridings going orange. This will be hard to do.

14/21

Mr Kenney discovered that realities, like having to manage the COVID-19 pandemic, often required measures that were not popular among the more extreme base in his party. Ultimately, he lost that part of the UCP and, as a result, his job.

15/21

I have a hard time believing that Ms Smith can balance these competing demands better than Mr Kenney did. And so I will not be surprised if the knives come out for her well before the end of the term.

16/21

Unlike for Mr Kenney, though, is that it only takes a few MLAs to jeopardize the government's hold on power. Ms Smith can't afford to alienate any part of her caucus; any small revolt threatens her ability to stay on as leader and premier.

17/21

What remains to be seen is whether the UCP avoids losing more of its progressive conservative ("red tory") supporters and retreats into a hard right wild rose base. Should that happen, a NDP dynasty could arise.

18/21

In the meantime, I expect the UCP will be limited in its political agenda. The need to maintain caucus unity and the resulting internal politicking will make it harder to get the consensus needed to advance measures, especially bold ones.

19/21

So, this will hopefully prevent major, ideologically-based policies from being introduced. Instead, the government may be one that stumbles rather than leads, responding to events with mediocrity rather than a bold vision.

20/21

In other words, buckle up, Alberta. Shit is going to be interesting for the next few years within the Legislature, but perhaps not so much anywhere else.

21/21