Alberta Fight Night

9:25 PM EDT: Sun News is calling the potential defenstration of the Tories “regime change”. ‘Nuff said.

CBC coverage starts in five minutes online here, and in half an hour on Newsworld.

10:02 PM: Polls closed. Rock and roll!

10:39 PM: Starting to look like Redford may have succeeded in scaring the left in Alberta to vote for her.

If she wins the ridings she’s now leading in, she may have a majority government. A slim majority, but a majority all the same.

10:55 PM: Maybe it won’t be such a slim majority? PCs seem to be pulling away — 10% lead in popular vote, upper 50s seat-count out of an 87-seat legislature.

11:00 PM: PCs have an 11-point spread in popular vote now, leading or elected in 61 of 87 seats.

Okay, I’m thinking now that a bunch of people looked at their local candidates for Wildrose and said, “Yeah, not so much.”

As this may be a pretty solid — thumping? — majority for Redford.

11:07 PM: Reminder to certain media personalities — don’t dance on the other fellow’s grave till you’re sure he’s dead.

11:14 PM: CBC calls it — PC majority government.

Joe Clark Progressive Conservativism lives!

11:24 PM: There was a Liberal/NDP strategic vote, yes, but Wildrose also lost 5-10% in the last week.

Something went on in that last week. Very interesting.

Midnight: Final analysis of the night: in the last week, about 5% of the electorate went from the Liberals and NDP to the PCs, and about 5% of the electorate went from Wildrose to the PCs.

There you get a 10-point swing to the PCs, and a thumping majority for Redford.

Smith has four years to whip her forces into shape and take another run at it.

8 AM, next morning: Interesting reading in the SDA thread about last night.

There are some meaty comments from Jay Currie and Gord Tulk, who back going full libertarian.

Currie:

Shit happens.

The WRP economic message was clear and sound.

The fear was generated using the minor notes of the socon side of the party. And, not terribly surprisingly, it turns out that there is not a huge audience for that message.

WRP got hit with the Progressives’ traditional fear tactics. In a few years they will do better.

At the same time, the fact is that there are a lot of latte sippers in Alberta. Progressives in the most unthinking sense of that term. The attempt to paint the WRP as uncool, barbarians succeeded simply because these sorts of people are so easily frightened.

A bad day for the conservative world; but also a teaching moment as our PC friends would say.

Time to go full on libertarian. It’s all about choice. Individual choice.

Tulk:

It was the fundamentalist – social conservative stances of just a handful of candidates that sunk the Wildrose as it was the case for Stock Day’s Canadian Alliance party and for Stephen Harper with the newly created Conservative Party.

What followed for the CPC was a purge of much of the socons and certainly they have never been a significant force in policy development.

That must now happen within the Wildrose. It has been helpful in this regard that virtually every single socon candidate was defeated. And it was even more helpful that many (two dozen?) libertarian candidates in Calgary went down to defeat as a result as well. These libertarians and their support teams will be looking to prevent it from happening a second time. …

The Wildrose finished with 9% fewer votes. The Liberals lost 4% to the PCs. That is not much of a margin to make up and with 18 MLAs the fight to get the message out will be far easier.

Shit happens.