Fear factor won election for tired Tories

Fear trumped anger. That pretty much sums up the results of Monday’s not-so historic Alberta election. It also explains how so many pollsters got the outcome of the election so wrong.

Alberta voters were more frightened of the upstart Wildrose than they were angry at the 41-year-old Tory dynasty.

Marc Henry, president of Thinkhq Public Affairs, a polling and consulting firm, said he believes the polls, including his, were correct during the majority of the campaign. But only one polling firm — Forum — did any polling on the last weekend of the campaign and they showed that the 10- to 13-point lead the Wildrose party enjoyed over the Progressive Conservatives during the course of much of the campaign had evaporated by Sunday.

As they say, a week is an eternity in politics. In this case, a weekend was.

While Henry says some of the PC majority win can be attributed to the strategic voting of Liberals and NDP in a concerted effort to keep the Wildrose out, he thinks this had much more to do with Wildrose voters switching teams at the last minute.

After all, while the popular vote for the Alberta Liberals dropped from 26 per cent in 2008 to 10 per cent Monday, they had consistently only polled anywhere from the single digits to a maximum of about 12 per cent after the writ was dropped.

“Some Albertans stepped up to the polling station with their Wildrose shirt on and then they said: ‘Nah, I don’t think so.’ They just changed their mind in the last two days.”

Henry says in order for the change to be so precipitous and fast, the bleeding had to come from the Wildrose to the Tories.

“What turns around a 10-point gap between the two front runners is when five per cent or more of Wildrose voters decided to switch to the Tories.”

So, what does Henry think caused the final-hour shift?

Two words — Hunsperger and Leech. It may sound like a rare disease — and for the Wildrose, it was a rapidly growing malignant tumour — but we all now know Allan Hunsperger’s year-old blog that condemned homosexuals to a “lake of fire” for eternity and Ron Leech’s two taped interviews stating that he thought he was the best person to represent the multiethnic riding of CalgaryGreenway because he is “white,” erupted on April 15 and never stopped dogging Danielle Smith.

“That killed them,” explains Henry. “While fiscal conservatism has broad appeal, social conservatism in Alberta does not. It is a lightning rod.”

Henry notes that Wildrose polling numbers started to soften in the last week and the trend continued up until the last day.

As Alberta’s first elected woman premier, Alison Redford explained Tuesday what she was hearing at the doors of Albertans “was that this was not the discussion that Albertans wanted to be known for.”

She’s right. Those comments do not reflect Alberta at all, but play into the bigoted stereotype many in the rest of the country hold against this province, perhaps because more than anywhere else, Albertans believe strongly in freedom of expression.

Allowing for freedom of expression — including offensive speech — is essential and a cornerstone of any democracy. But for those seeking democratic approval from voters, bigoted comments are rightly a political death sentence.

Smith was clearly not hard enough on the Hunsperger-Leech cancer and it metastasized quickly.

So, all of those conservatives who were flirting with hitching up with Wildrose — mostly because they were fed up with the culture of entitlement, arrogance, bullying and even corruption in the Tory party — they just couldn’t get past the distasteful comments.

But, heaven help the Tories if they believe that this election was a positive endorsement of their policies and record, because what won the election for them in the last days was dread, not love. That lovin’ feelin’ is gone. Redford’s personal approval rating hovers at around 40 per cent, says Henry.

“It will be interesting to see if the PCS realize how close they came to the edge of the cliff,” says Henry. Do they realize that Hunsperger and Leech threw them a lifeline, and then hauled them back to safe ground?

It sure doesn’t sound like it. Redford thinks it’s her plan to bring in a National Energy Strategy and 140 unbudgeted family care clinics, which doctors are not on side with, that won her this vote.

As for Smith, she indicated Monday night that she did get the message from voters and that it was “self-inflicted wounds” that had much to do with the Wildrose dream of forming government wilting.

On Tuesday, she acknowledged that her party has some “soul searching” to do and must change its policies that repelled many voters.

“You can’t run a government if you don’t get sanction from the people,” said Smith, adding that their plan to dismantle the human rights commission and bring in conscience rights will likely be discarded.

She also said their position on climate change needs to be improved, as well as discarding the firewall ideas that were popular one decade ago. Alas, it appears Smith knows she and her party must change if they are ever to win government in Alberta.

Redford clearly believes she did everything right. That’s good news for the Wildrose.