According to various pundits and reporters, there were no surprises in last week’s Progressive Conservative leadership election. That’s not entirely true.
Yes, the overall results from the first ballot did closely match a poll done prior to the vote. However, when you take a closer look at the breakdown, there were several outcomes that will keep campaign strategists and spinners working late into the night.
Here are a few of the surprises I noticed:
• Total numbers – The total number of first ballot votes cast was down by about 38,000 from the 2006 PC leadership race. Was it due to farmers being busy harvesting, as PC party brass say, or is it a rejection of the party itself? Until the final numbers come in after the second ballot on Oct. 1, it’s anyone’s guess.
• Poor turnout locally – In Foothills-Rocky View, only 901 PC party members voted. In Airdrie-Chestermere, that number drops to 653. In Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills, only 644 people took part. If you’re a future candidate running against the PC party, you should be smiling.
• Our region (kind of) supports Mar – Mirroring results from across Alberta, local PC party members are open to the idea of Gary Mar as premier. He was the first choice of Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills, edging Ted Morton by 101 votes. In Morton’s home riding, Mar finished just 34 votes back. In Airdrie-Chestermere Mar lost to Rick Orman by 11 votes.
• Morton’s collapse – The Foothills-Rocky View MLA may want to think about leaving politics. You don’t need to be a professor of political science to see that Morton has lost his edge. After claiming 25,614 first ballot votes in 2006. He managed just 6,962 this year. He won only three ridings by a combined 141 votes. Moving to another riding prior to the next provincial election may not even help. He was most popular in Highwood, edging Mar by 71, but that riding will be contested by Wildrose leader Danielle Smith.
• Gary Mar’s support: The front-running candidate to become Alberta’s next premier has much wider support than first thought. He swept Edmonton, edged Alison Redford in Calgary with 12 of 24 polls, and clobbered Doug Horner in the rest of Alberta.
However, with such wide support, Mar should have won the leadership on the first ballot. The fact that he took just 40.8 per cent points to the fact that he won 20 of the ridings by less than 100 votes. He won Drumheller-Stettler by nine, Banff-Cochrane by three, Drayton Valley-Calmar by just one. Redford and Horner may accurately claim that Mar’s support is a mile wide and an inch deep.
Predictions in politics are suicide. Election results, like polls, are just a snapshot of opinion at any given time, and given the exceedingly small sample size provided by the first ballot, anything can happen.
However, one thing seems certain - Gary Mar is the man to beat.
Given Redford and Horner’s divergent views on the record of the past provincial government, it is unlikely either will pick up support from each other’s camps.
In order for Horner to win, Mar and Redford have to take each other out with a divisive health-care debate and pray the Stelmach machine can put him over the top.
In order for Redford to win, thousands of new people much join the PC party before Oct. 1.
As long as the race remains uneventful, and second ballot turnout remains low, Gary Mar will be the next premier of Alberta.
Then the real race begins.
