As Alberta hurtles towards the May 5 election and an unknown result, organized efforts are underway to try and ensure the mix of winning parties is more diverse when the ballots are counted.
The group Change Alberta is explicitly pursuing what they consider to be progressive candidates, offering recommendations for strategic voters who are similarly inclined.
“This is a chance for progressives, if they unite, to form the government of Alberta,” said Alvin Finkel, a professor emeritus of history with Athabasca University and one of the founders of Change Alberta.
Right now, Change Alberta is recommending NDP candidates Marie Renaud, who is running in the St. Albert riding, and Trevor Horne, the Spruce Grove-St. Albert NDP candidate, as the most “winnable” progressive candidates in both St. Albert-based ridings.
Finkel said Change Alberta recommendations are established by looking at a few factors.
Those include driving through the communities to check on lawn signs, researching the nominating meetings, checking candidates’ online presence and also looking at popular polling analysis website ThreeHundredEight.com, which uses a statistical model to break down polls.
Finkel said research showed, for instance, that the St. Albert NDP nomination meeting had 50 people at it and was held before the writ was dropped, while the Liberal meeting was held the day before the nominating deadline, had only a dozen or so people and that it was suggested to support Renaud instead.
“She’s been leading since the beginning,” Finkel said.
Change Alberta isn’t trying to predict who will win, Finkel said. They don’t analyze the Wildrose or Progressive Conservative efforts.
The group is also not out to change the minds of voters who are committed to a particular party, but instead trying to offer advice to those who might wish to vote strategically.
While the NDP dominates the Change Alberta recommendations this election, in 2012 he said it was more evenly split between the Liberals and the NDP. For the May 5 election, there is only a smattering of “winnable” Liberal candidates recommended and the Alberta Party only has leader Greg Clark on the Change Alberta list.
Another group, 1 Alberta Vote, is taking a bit of a different tack when it comes to recommending a “consensus” candidate.
Rather than having recommendations posted already, organizer Brian Singh said the group plans to email out recommendations on May 1 to those who take the survey.
“We are running a complete experiment,” he said, noting the group is using Google surveys to help determine who the consensus candidates are.
Unlike Change Alberta, the 1 Alberta Vote field could include Wildrose candidates in some ridings.
“We want more diverse and more accountable government,” Singh said.
Duane Bratt, a political science professor at Mount Royal, isn’t sure organized strategic voting will be effective.
“The organized strategic voting, I’m not so sure that that works as opposed to individuals making up individual decisions that collectively add up to a shift,” Bratt said.
There has been individual strategic voting that’s been effective in recent Alberta history, he said.
“It worked in 2012 if you’re Alison Redford,” he said. “In 2012 it was progressive voters fearing the Wildrose hoards, the barbarians at the gates, and they mobilized around the PCs.”
Bratt also pointed out that not everyone strategically votes, though there are some who might.
“You may have ridings where they say I am voting for the person best able to defeat the PCs, if there’s anger there,” Bratt said.
Groups like Change Alberta, 1 Alberta Vote and 1CalgaryVote have come up after attempts to get parties to co-operate – an effort which has largely failed outside of some multi-party endorsements of single candidates. This is the grassroots answer.
As for claims from Change Alberta that the platforms of the parties they consider progressive – Liberals, NDP, Green and the Alberta Party – are interchangeable, Bratt said that depends on the candidate at the time.
“I think they’re seeing things they want to see,” Bratt said.
