Calgary Federal Politics

[MalcolmTucker]

Non voters: This is, to my mind, the real untapped opportunity for a breakthrough in Canadian politics. In Calgary Centre and beyond, the most common affiliation among eligible voters is “nonvoter.” My campaign resonated most powerfully among Calgarians who saw real value in backing a candidate and a party unconnected to the entrenched political divisions in parliament today. In Calgary Centre, 10,201 voters out of an electorate of 94,000 chose the new member of Parliament. If any campaign had been able to fully engage the majority who didn’t vote at all, it could have won in a landslide.

There is little research to show that non-voters break in a different proportion to voters. The benefit to individual campaigns from increased turnout comes when one campaign is able to increase its turnout, and the others not so much. In a hard by-election like this one I would bet the only candidate of the big four that didn't do a full court press was the NDP.

One has to believe that if one campaign figures out a new widget for motivating less engaged voters, others will find the solution as well.

Reaching out to the less engaged is not a solution in and of itself. Doing it when others are not works.

[Rusty van Reddick]

suburbia, I live at 1 Calgary Centre and saw Brian spending hours and hours calling the 1CC voters to confirm their residence in Centre. Brian's an honurable person who gave over his life for weeks to this effort but the Liberals' refusal to participate made it irrelevant.

[artvandelay]

Nice to see one our our local MPs making a positive impression in the House. Calgary Centre North MP Michelle Rempel was voted "Rising Star" by her fellow parliamentarians. Via MacLeans:

http://www2.macleans.ca/2012/11/21/p...l-rising-star/

I wonder how the by-election would've turned out had the CPC picked a similarly engaging candidate for Centre. Would they have been able to maintain over 50%? Probably.

Originally Posted by Rusty van Reddick

Oh, shut up. It's because of bullshit comments like this that I unfriended you on facebook.

Oh SNAP!

[suburbia]

Originally Posted by Rusty van Reddick

That wasn't a poll and was never represented as a poll. Look up "poll."

The Libs lies and their use of faked data to try to instill voting panic and to invoke "vote split" is the story here.

Oh common Rusty. Fact of the matter is, not once were the greens even close to getting past third place. The reality of what happens when there is a moderately strong third place candidate that is philosophically closer to the second place candidate as opposed to the first place one is pretty simply science.

Anyway, no use arguing this one as the views have been presented and are now recorded for eternity on the Internet.

[suburbia]

Originally Posted by Rusty van Reddick

suburbia, I live at 1 Calgary Centre and saw Brian spending hours and hours calling the 1CC voters to confirm their residence in Centre. Brian's an honurable person who gave over his life for weeks to this effort but the Liberals' refusal to participate made it irrelevant.

It is difficult to discuss here. Not all the Libs are the same, and fact of the matter is, Locke I believe felt he was like within 5% of the win, so could do it without compromising. The Greens, at the time well back in the pack, had everything to gain.

Anyway, 20-20 hind-sight. There still may be opportunities in the future, and I think the learnings from this race are pretty darn clear. Don't give up hope just when everyone has just registered and the light bulbs have (finally) gone on.

[Radley77]

Originally Posted by artvandelay

Nice to see one our our local MPs making a positive impression in the House. Calgary Centre North MP Michelle Rempel was voted "Rising Star" by her fellow parliamentarians.

I definitely think Michelle would have polled over 50%. Though I think it is a mistake for the Conservatives to not have ministers of environment (or secretaries) that do not have backgrounds in natural sciences.

[fusili]

Originally Posted by Rusty van Reddick

The Libs committed election fraud with their fake ROI poll as far as I'm concerned. How the actual results of GPC 26 and NDP 4 magically predicted to be GPC 17 and NDP 14 on the otherwise "valid" ROI poll (which was, again as if by magic, correct about the CPC and LPC numbers- actual 37/33, predicted 37/32) was possible is- impossible, actually.

This is how everything is wrong. Absolutely NONE of the numbers add up from the ROI poll.

When looking at "decided/leaning" voters, the poll reports 106 conservatives, 91 liberals, 49 greens, 35 NDP (out of 401 total respondents). The 6 people voting for independents wasn't listed, but can be determined by simple math. That leaves 112 undecided voters.

However, when reporting the percentage of "Progressive voters" (non conservatives), the number of Liberal supporters magically increases to 118 respondents (40%), while the greens stay at 49 (17%) and the NDP rises to 41 (14%). The number of undecideds has magically decreased to 82. I think I know where those 20 voters went.

The other funny thing is that the ROI poll reports that for ALL respondents (401) the percentage of certain voters is 67%, uncertain is 32%. But elsewhere the report states that only 16% are undecided.

Just too many things that don't add up.

[RyLucky]

Chill, Winston.

Chill, Winston, everybody.

I think the reason turn-out was so low, in addition to the fact that it was a byelection, was because the CPC candidate ran a frankly awful campaign: not showing to debates, butting heads with the mayor, and mentioning porn when she did come to a debate. That's plenty enough to keep most would-be CPC voters home.
I also think Harvey Locke and Chris Turner are strong candidates, but Calgary voters were luke-warm at best to their parties. Vote-splitting, schmote-schpitting. This was one of the closest races in ages and it could have gone any of 3 ways had things played out differently (ie, had Alberta-hate from Trudeau and McGuinty not got air, had psuedo-polls not scared folks into strategic voting, blah blah blah, etc). I think the message that Calgary is openminded and is not to be taken for granted has been received.

Tories: Give Calgary some love. I'm talking about infrastructure. Also, we like our CBC, our immigration, our right to choice, our gay marriage. Don't f*ck with our mayor. We like most of the other stuff CPC stands for, but tread lightly. I'll be the first to admit that I even kind of like Harper. He's a populist! It's people like Joan Crockatt that I can't stand.

LPC: Everytime you mention oilsands, we are listening, and it scares people when you talk about more regulations or taxation on resources. Sure, regulation and taxation on oil might be a good thing. We know it. But, when the lecture comes from Ontario and Quebec it feels like you are antagonizing us and that you truly do not understand Alberta. Gain some national perspective, tell us who your leader is, and be remember that when you talk about resources, Albertans see it as you talking about us.

GPC: If your party platform wasn't so all over the place, you could win ANYWHERE. Even in Calgary. Chris Turner did historically well NOT because of his party, NOT because a potential evolution of Calgary's view point, but BECAUSE he speaks to the practicalities of building a green economy and showed his reasoning. The green party should adapt policies more in line with public transit and development. Build the entire platform around public transit. Honestly! Otherwise just mimic the CPC or LPC. Emphasize cost-benefit.

There, now all the parties know how to earn my vote. Except NDP. Oh well.

[MalcolmTucker]

For the federal government to seriously invest in infrastructure is a massive expense. Matching the Alberta in municipal transfers only works out to close to $15 billion a year once you extend it nation wide. That isn't counting any cost sharing on provincial highways, hospitals, universities, schools, etc. Sure the federal governemnt should do more, the question is at the expense of what they currently do.

[Bigtime]

Originally Posted by RyLucky

Chill, Winston.

Chill, Winston, everybody.

Just wanted to let you know I got this reference.

"Shotguns? You mean like guns that fire shot?"

[fusili]

Originally Posted by Bigtime

Just wanted to let you know I got this reference.

"Shotguns? You mean like guns that fire shot?"

"You don't look like your average Horti-fu&king-culturalist"

My favorite quote from that movie: "Is this some kind of white c%nt's joke, that black c%unts don't? Because I'm not laughing Nikolas."

[fusili]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

For the federal government to seriously invest in infrastructure is a massive expense. Matching the Alberta in municipal transfers only works out to close to $15 billion a year once you extend it nation wide. That isn't counting any cost sharing on provincial highways, hospitals, universities, schools, etc. Sure the federal governemnt should do more, the question is at the expense of what they currently do.

Fighter Jets.

[fusili]

Ok, so not directly related to Calgary, but one huge issue I take with the Federal Government is this "refocus" of scientific research to "demand driven," i.e. market-driven research. This is such a flawed idea, mostly because the Conservatives have no idea how scientific research actually works.

I will give an example from microbiology (my father is a microbiologist, so I have a better understanding of that field) where general research, that was in no way "demand driven", led to massive breakthroughs for the entire field and created massive business opportunities.

This was the study of Thermus Aquaticus, a bacteria that lives in Geysers. Funding this research had no obvious market benefit at first. However, when studying the bacteria, it became obvious that not only could it survive in high temperatures, but so could the proteins it used for DNA replication (the proteins that replicate DNA are polymerases- this specific protein is called Thermus Aquaticus Polymerase, or TAQ polymerase for short). The study allowed the protein to be isolated from the bacteria in 1976.

Why this is important is that geneticists knew they could easily split any DNA strand by heating it up, but they were never able to replicate it easily at this stage, because the polymerase proteins would denature and would only work for one replication, so you had to add new proteins for each replication. This made DNA replication incredibly time consuming and tedious. But with TAQ polymerase, you could heat up and cool down a DNA strand in solution of nucleic acids multiple times without the proteins denaturing. The process is called Polymerase Chain Reaction, or PCR, and allows you to multiply a single DNA strand about multiple times a minute in a simple machine (it is an exponential process, because the DNA strands double each time). PCR is probably the most common method of DNA replication used not only in microbiology labs, but in large Pharmaceutical companies who need to replicate DNA. This is the process we use to identify hereditary diseases, DNA analysis in criminal forensics and many, many other processes.

All of this because a government funded basic science research.

/End Rant

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by fusili

Fighter Jets.

$15 billion a year. F35s are $25 billion over 30 years. and by switching to something else we wouldn't save all that money.

[Radley77]

Originally Posted by lubicon

Describes me except for the very last part.

I suppose I should have mentioned that my definition of "socially aware" is from a contemporary viewpoint, Wildrose supporters have a more traditional view of the world as shown in the survey below:

http://www.lethbridgecollege.ca/abou...pinion-studies

Here are just some scores for comparison sakes:
Very Religious: 2.5
Wildrose: 3.3
Federal Conservative: 3.5
Somewhat Religious: 3.6
Average Calgarian: 3.9
Federal Green: 4.0
Federal Liberal: 4.2
Non-Religious: 4.3

The other point is that the survey also indicates that Calgarians are trending to be more progressive.

[simster3]

Does anyone know if it is possible to find detailed, poll by poll results from the byelection? An article in the Herald hints that their might be something available but provides no link and I can't find it on Election Canada's website. The article states the areas of the riding the voted for a certain candidate. I am interested to find out what my polling station voted.

[MalcolmTucker]

^ It takes a while, once the result is certified they should put the table up.

[Cage]

Originally Posted by simster3

Does anyone know if it is possible to find detailed, poll by poll results from the byelection?

Here is the web addy: http://www.elections.ca/content.aspx...t=index&lang=e

Note the last by-election where data is available is March 2012 Toronto-Danforth. The three Nov 26th By-elections do not have results.

However if you complete an access to information request, Elections Canada might be willing to give you a csv of the detailed election results.

Note whether you wait for the website update or do the access to information request. The detailed results do not list poll locations. You will have to build you own database to correlate the poll station to a local address. It might be preferrable to get the second CSV table that lists poll numbers along with their associated address.

[suburbia]

Excellent editorial piece in The Gauntlet regarding the recent Federal byelection in Calgary-Centre.

http://www.thegauntlet.ca/story/edit...calgary-centre

However, when the Green Party’s Turner was interviewed post-election, he mentioned that he understood the dangers of vote splitting but didn’t think it was wise to compromise so late in the game and that polling data is notoriously unreliable.


While the comment about polling data is valid, it should have been obvious that there was precious little chance of anyone beating a Conservative months ago, and an infinitesimally smaller chance of that person being from the Green Party. When it started to look as though the race would be close — close enough that the Liberals had a shot at beating Crockatt — someone, be that Green or NDP, should have made the call to unite the vote and do what was necessary. This is not Vancouver Island, Montreal-Papineau or Toronto-Danforth. It is Calgary-Centre, a city that has not elected a federal Liberal since Trudeaumania in 1968, and has only elected three MPs in Canadian history that were not ideologically conservative. Now that all three non-conservative parties have lost, one can only hope the message that was sent was loud enough to demand attention from the federal government. Perhaps future elections will not only be as interesting as this one, but will also produce significant results. 


It is undoubtedly important to vote one’s conscience, but when a political party holds the reigns of a city so tightly and so far beyond the point of complacency, pragmatism must prevail over ideology. 


[Rusty van Reddick]

Originally Posted by suburbia

Excellent editorial piece in The Gauntlet regarding the recent Federal byelection in Calgary-Centre.

http://www.thegauntlet.ca/story/edit...calgary-centre

What makes it "excellent," that its puerile, short-sighted points agree with yours? You have to scrape the bottom of the journalism barrel to find somebody who understands as little about what really happened in this election as you do?

Liberals ran a fabricated campaign of fear capped with a fabricated perfectly-time poll that destroyed the Greens' momentum. Libs were never going to win this and Chris absolutely could have.

And hey, are you "officematt" at the G&M?