Getting it wrong in Alberta

'Unless  something astonishing happens," I wrote in my last column, "the Wildrose party will form the next government of Alberta." With the benefit of hindsight, I can only say, how right I was. Something astonishing did happen, with precisely the consequence I implied: Wildrose will not form the next government of Alberta. Rather, Alberta will be governed by yet another massive Progressive Conservative majority. I don’t mean to gloat, but I feel some bragging rights are in order.

Alas, my editor and I agreed the column had to be pulled, as everything else in it was based on the opposite premise. Still, you can't argue the results weren't astonishing. No poll since the start of the election gave the Conservatives more than 36 per cent of the vote; the average over the last week of the campaign was 33 per cent. On election night, they got 44 per cent. Nine out of the last 10 polls had Wildrose leading the Tories, by margins of between six and ten points. A 10th, taken Sunday night, had them up by two. In the event, they finished 10 points back.

Inevitably, this raises searing, troubling questions. Why did I allow myself to be misled by the evidence of two dozen polls over four weeks? Why could I not have foreseen what absolutely no one else foresaw?

It's conceivable, I suppose, that all the polls, every single one of them, were wrong, on an unprecedented scale. But the greater likelihood is that they were simply out of date: They correctly reported public opinion at the time they were taken, but missed the shift that took place over the last three days, as that Sunday night poll suggested. The mistake was not in believing the polls, but in not allowing for that possibility. So, lesson learned: When politicos say "there's still a lot of undecided out there, this thing's not over yet," they are not always blowing smoke.

Why that happened is interesting to speculate about -- though you'd think after this experience people would be wary of hasty inferences. It's plausible to think, as many have said, that it was due to the infamous "bozo eruptions" late in the campaign by candidates from Wildrose's theo-con wing. This may have persuaded undecided voters, in particular, to break in favour of the incumbent Tories (a booming economy probably helped). Whether or not it was taken as evidence of a generalized intolerance in Wildrose, it may well have suggested the party, barely four years after its formation, was not yet ready to govern. Certainly it would have reminded voters of the thinness of the talent behind the party leader, Danielle Smith.

I still think she was right not to drop them overboard, beyond making clear that they did not speak for the party -- even if it did cost her the election. One of the foundational principles of Wildrose, and to my eyes the most attractive, is the independence it allows individual members to vote as their conscience or their constituents dictate. They appear to take it very seriously, and it would be sad to see the party become yet another tightly controlled, top-down leadership cult. As I said in my last column, "Canadian democracy can survive the odd nutjob pastor. It cannot long survive the suppression of divergent opinions, however daft, or the subjugation of every member of the legislature to the leader's dictates." Rather than issue muzzles all round, one hopes over time they will simply attract and nominate candidates with a more considered view of the world.

To some extent, Wildrose is the victim of inflated expectations. Had it not been so widely expected to win, the buzz today would be over the "breakthrough" it had just made, from seven per cent of the popular vote in 2008 to 34.3 per cent this time. The Tories, for their part, while they escaped defeat, turned in their worst popular-vote performance since 1967.

Indeed, while the Tory victory -- their 12th straight -- may look like more of the same, it in fact signals a radical realignment in Alberta politics. The Tory right wing, roughly half its old base, has decamped for Wildrose, en masse. In its place the party has more or less absorbed the Liberal party: Its vote collapsed from 26 per cent in 2008 to less than 10 per cent. Where before the Conservatives were a coalition of right and centre, they are today a coalition of centre and left. It is possible, as that reality sinks in, the party will experience more erosion on the right, depending in part on how Wildrose performs.

Will the Tories be chastised by this experience? We'll see. They have had some close calls before, only to return to their arrogant, free-spending ways. To give them their due, on perhaps the biggest economic challenge facing the province, how to market the oilsands to the world in the face of concerns about global warming, the Conservative position (we believe the science, even if we're doing precious little about it) is more likely to meet with success than Wildrose's more openly disdainful stance would have been.

But who can say? I am no longer in the business of making predictions, but hope to find honest work again in the finger-pointing, backbiting and recriminations business.

Andrew Coyne is a national

columnist for Postmedia News.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition April 26, 2012 A15