Wired Cola

Texas sometimes elects Democrats and Massachusetts sometimes elects Republicans. Why have Canadian parties never recentered themselves as effectively around the preferences of the electorate?

Even though Alberta leans broadly rightward, why don't the Liberals (or some other centre-left entity) coalesce around policies that have a hope of splitting off a critical mass of Conservative voters?

It's not just Alberta. Our own BC has not voted positively for the NDP since 1972. The later Harcourt-started victories came against a divided and disorganized centre right. Once the Liberal party successfully became Socred 2.0, that was it for the NDP.

I think low turnouts in Alberta reflect a contented electorate that has better things to do than to add a few votes to the PC dogpile. The Liberals and NDP were clearly incapable of inspiring anything like activity, concern, or even interest in this ballot. And the PCs got an outright majority of the popular vote.

Quick roundup: Colby Cosh, as usual, has a good summary and a great comments thread on the subject of the election.

Terry Glavin uses the occasion to cryptically assert that some sort of IRV/rep-by-pop system is the solution to Alberta's non-problem, and even more obliquely questions the Alberta Advantage.

Terry: hundreds of thousands of Canadians probably aren't wrong. And if anyone tries to blow smoke towards you that Alberta's prosperity was an inevitable result of its natural bounty, I would point out that Saskatchewan has the second-largest oil reserves in Canada, and diamonds, too.

And yet it is not Alberta.