No sooner does an election writ get dropped than a poll is dropped as well. Political polls are the gas given off in a campaign-warmed environment. But they do serve a purpose: sniff around them and they tell you which way the wind is blowing.
And for the first time in the memory of most Albertans, the wind is swirling.
The Sun chain of newspapers has already declared for Wildrose Party Leader Danielle Smith. Their recent poll, commissioned through Forum Research, puts Wildrose in majority government position. (A grain of salt: Smith’s husband is a Sun News Network executive.)
Everybody else seems to be calling the race a dead heat, citing the differences in approval for parties and policies of Conservative Premier Alison Redford and Smith to be more or less within the polls’ margins of error.
Even so, a race this close represents a seismic shift in Alberta politics. When was the last time that you recall an Alberta election too close to call? Probably, you never have; many readers are too young to remember Harry Strom, the Social Credit Party premier who lost to Peter Lougheed.
Another reason you may not remember a close race in this province is because you came here from elsewhere in the last decade or so.
Some 800,000 Albertans came here from somewhere else in the last decade. That represents one big, healthy dose of new labour, knowledge, enthusiasm — and political memory. Believe it or not, a whole lot of Alberta voters today have never voted for the Alberta Tories, perhaps because they’ve never voted in this province at all.
It also illustrates the fundamental divide in political vision of the leaders of the two front-running parties.
Early on, it’s the incumbent who’s talking about change, and the challenger who’s saying things should remain as they’ve always been, just with a different label.
Are we the same Alberta that stood with the Tories through 40 years of cuts and booms, more cuts, another boom, and now a crash with another boom on the horizon? In good times or bad, to win a local Tory nomination race was pretty well tantamount to winning a seat as an MLA.
Wildrose Leader Smith seems to think so. She’s saying the Tories have left their conservative values behind, especially with the selection of Redford as leader.
Redford, who has a lot of political memory to guide her, says we’ve changed. In a lot of ways, we have.
We’re no longer rural in makeup or attitude. We’re no longer the smaller sibling at the national table; we’re a driver of Canada’s economic engine. We’re no longer talking to a federal government that doesn’t understand us; our prime minister is an Albertan and his federal power base is in the West. We’re not the only Western province with big economic upside; Saskatchewan and B.C. both are on the cusp of some serious industrial growth.
Alberta has a larger national outlook now; a third of our labour force grew up outside the province. Just at the point where our national voice is finally being heard, there are new voices at our own tables at home.
Are we no longer the “conservative” Alberta that we used to see in the mirror? Answering that is a good part of what this election is about.
Has our outlook changed, is the future not going to be a repeat of the past? Ironically, if you agree with that, you’ll find yourself staying with the Tories.
Do you think that now is no time to abandon the values that got us where we are and that good solid conservatism will see us through the future? If you agree with that, you’ll likely vote for a change in government.
Or not. Radical as it sounds in Alberta, this looks too close to call.
Greg Neiman is an Advocate editor.