Alberta’s Bloggers Surprised By Election Results
March 4th, 2008Here’s what Alberta’s bloggers are saying about yesterday’s election results:
Seventy-three seats? Seventy-three seats?!? Way to vote for the change you kept telling the pollsters you wanted, Alberta! Maybe if more than 40% of you got off your asses and actually cast a ballot, you could have had some change. I suspect the next four years will prove out the canard that people get the governments they deserve.
Arrogance? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, baby!
Dear Alberta,
Seriously?
Yours Truly,
Calgary Grit
Albertans are not sheep. They’re very independent thinkers and they’re not going to throw their vote to another party just for the hell of it. Albertans are calculating and inherently conservative creatures who are resistant to change. But that does not make them stupid or ignorant. They voted for Stelmach because Taft and Mason didn’t make a good enough argument to vote for change.
All the people I know and who are “in the know” about these things were mostly thinking 55-60 seats and some were at the 65 level but we all admitted we did not know for sure. We were all surprised.
Some of these so called “experts” may have predicted as many as 60 seats for Ed Stelmach’s Progressive Conservatives, but I heard no one predict more than 70 would be their headcount for the next four years. That is a staggering endorsement for the status quo when ALL of the build-up to the election revolved around “change”.
Well its over and I am sure there are an awful lot of surprised people tonight. Not because the Conservatives won another majority but at the size of it. A landslide in an election where for the most part everyone (including me) was feeling the PC’s would get a majority of around 50 seats. At this time (around 11PM) Ed has reduced his opposition to just 10 seats. Simply put its incredible.
My first reaction is to cry in my bountiful beer. I only increased my Calgary-Fort Green vote from 5.7% in 2004 to 5.9% in 2008. And I came in last. Although I have exceeded my own success criteria, it still feels a little shallow.
I’m not too thrilled about this, and went though my customary “I’m moving out of this goddam province” sore-loser hissy-fit after the results started to roll in, but now that the dust has settled I am surprisingly sanguine. In fact, out of the elections observations I’m going to highlight below, only one is decisively negative. I’ll get that one out of the way first.
