The NDP turned blue(ish) to woo conservative voters. It didn't deliver a victory
CBC
The NDP made a bet last year. They saw a narrow road to victory by persuading progressive conservatives voters to go orange for one election.
Rachel Notley's party would turn blue(ish) speaking to them during the campaign. The logo. The policies. The debate attire.
That goat path to triumph, hedged on disenchantment with the United Conservatives' turn to the right, never materialized. On Monday, Danielle Smith's party won another majority government.
Sunil Shah, an electrical engineer and lifelong conservative voter in Calgary, was torn between the NDP and UCP until election day — when he marked the ballot for his local UCP candidate.
"I wanted that tax cut," he said, a nod to the UCP's first campaign announcement.
A single-issue voter on economic issues, Shah mentioned he was nervous about the NDP's proposed corporate tax increase too.
Despite all the work to bleed the conservative vote, the UCP's share of popular support was down only 2.3 per cent compared to 2019's results.
Smith and the UCP lost supporters to the NDP, but a negligible amount. Most of the 11.3-point popular vote increase for Notley's crew came from the Alberta Party, whose result dropped by more than eight per cent.
The NDP bet on those light-blue centrists, while the UCP suspected those waffling former PC voters were bluffing. So what happened to them?
"One of the most pronounced things that we saw was that these reluctant voters just stayed home," said Janet Brown, the head of Janet Brown Opinion Research.
This election had 62.4 per cent turnout, down from 67.5 per cent in 2019 (still higher than most provinces).
She added her data indicates undecideds and those former PC voters broke the same way as decided voters on election night. The UCP got 52.6 per cent of the popular vote. The NDP got 44 per cent.
"The NDP successfully brought the left and the centre-left together, but Danielle Smith was able to hang onto enough of the right and the centre-right to win."
The NDP led Alberta polls almost exclusively for two years. Brown's polling showed a recovery in support for the UCP during April (prior to the campaign) and a further rebound after the debate in mid May.
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