Pundits and Alberta Voters Don’t Mix

When an entire nation is informed over and over that one of its provinces is on the verge of a political revolution, and when it is the nation’s upper class of political pundits that are saying so, well, one can’t help but think that one of the nation’s provinces is on the verge of a political revolution. So it was prior to 8pm (MDT) on Monday, April 23.

Then: 8:01. The first results of the Alberta 2012 election start trickling in: a narrow lead for incumbent Alison Redford’s Progressive Conservatives, a lead which will surely disappear within minutes. The minutes pass; the lead widens. By midnight, it’s all over: Premier Redford, despite all odds, despite nearly every professional pundit in the country predicting otherwise, has kept her job. Not only that, she grabbed Danielle Smith’s Wildrose Party by the collar and shoved it firmly into a regional rump of an opposition.

How did this happen? Less than twenty-four hours ago, Canadian’s from coast to coast were assured, via the national media, that Alberta was about to end one political dynasty and begin another. No one, including probably Redford herself, had dared dream that the Wildrose upstart’s would be denied the fruits of victory. Yet here we are, post-election, and the Alberta political landscape, while having indeed changed, is looking nothing like what the pundits envisioned.

One can’t really blame it all on the pundits; they’re just regular people, after all. They eat, sleep, and defecate just like the rest of us, so why should they not be allowed to be completely and utterly wrong one in a while? There is going to be a lot of crow being consumed in the pages of the press over the next few days, and I suppose it would be best not to rub their faces in it too much.

Yet, in a way, the pundits shouldn’t be surprised by the result. If there’s one thing folks in Alberta can’t stand it is the feeling of being preached to by the central Canadian press. True, in this case, homegrown publications such as the Calgary Herald and the Edmonton Journal echoed the victorious Wildrose predictions of the Globe and Mail and the National Post. But the sense that Canada’s “Eastern Establishment”, for lack of a better title, was somehow dictating to Albertans how their vote should go was palpable. Not for the first time, the pundits got caught up in their own rhetoric and interpretations of Alberta’s political history and how they felt the vote should play out. The people of Alberta were left with two choices: follow the mainstream media’s advice and vote for Wildrose, because that was the party that was obviously going to win, or vote for what they, the people of Alberta, thought best for their own province.

Ultimately, the voters of Alberta decided they knew better than the pundits about what was best for their province.

Perhaps the pundits got lazy and relied too much on what the polls were telling them; perhaps they were talking to too many Wildrose supporters, rather than spending time trying to determine the intentions of the more-numerous voters who remained undecided right up to election day. Whatever the reason, the tea-leaf readers got it wrong, not for the first time, but on a scale rarely witnessed in Canadian politics. The Alberta 2012 election should thus be a reminder to everyone that the only thing pundits really have to offer is their opinions, which are then usually made to fit into whatever narrative they think the average voter wants to hear. In this case, the narrative was built around what they wanted to hear, and on April 23, the people of Alberta took a look at that narrative and firmly rejected it. For the pundits, it’s back to the drawing board.