No evaluation of the spring 2012 Alberta election makes sense without factoring in the psychology of expectations vs performance. The rise of a once disunited party with zero seats that now has more than one-third of the popular vote and official Opposition status should be seen as remarkable. That the Wildrose Party “underperformed” in the spring election is purely a function of failing to live up to its – in retrospect, bizarre – No. 1 ranking in the polling during the campaign.

But if the party and leader Danielle Smith can perform reasonably well from here on, Wildrose is a government-in-waiting. A mere six-percentage-point shift in the popular vote from the Progressive Conservatives – who received 44% to the Wildrose’s 34% in the April vote – would vault Wildrose into first place in the next election.

Why did Wildrose “lose”? Smith’s last week of campaigning was certainly marred by repeated gaffes, and two of her candidates expressed distinctly non-politically correct social ideas. The election result, says one political scientist, shows that Alberta is “not going wack-a-doodle.” But that’s trite; it implies that more than a third of the electorate in Canada’s fourth-largest province are insane. And, going by Smith’s actual policies, it would assign to the lunatic fringe any politician who means it when she says she wants to balance the budget. Saying the same while not meaning it – now, that’s mainstream.

Another analyst, referring to the pile-on of attacks against Smith, describes the election result as “the bitter triumph of the fearful and the fear-mongering.” A bit harsh, perhaps, but it gets at the heart of the matter. Albertans have it good. And that breeds complacency and risk aversion.

Albertans are also afraid of budget cuts. The province has the highest per capita spending of any province. Thousands of businesses depend on government spending, and a large subset of those profit from the regulatory burden, such as the $2-billion carbon capture and storage project.

Smith’s calls for austerity are already being vindicated. Premier Alison Redford’s $1 billion in campaign promises and her tendency to spend her way out of trouble have made the PCs highly vulnerable to a drop in crude oil prices. The drop began within weeks of the election, with benchmark West Texas intermediate trading below US$80 a barrel by late June. The game of Guess The Next Deficit has already begun, with Smith predicting a shift of up to $5 billion into the red from the forecast $886-million fiscal 2013 deficit.

Although critics seemed to see the election result as the Wildrose’s high-water mark, a two-election takeover is more common by historical standards. An analysis of Canadian elections over the past 100 years by Smith’s campaign director, political scientist Tom Flanagan, found that in more than 40 cases of one party supplanting another, only three involved a one-election takeover. The last time Alberta switched parties, from Social Credit to the PCs in 1971, it had required two elections.

More of George’s articles can be read at www.drjandmrk.com.

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