Saturday, October 18, 2008

Calgary West 2008 Vote Count




As you can see from the above graphic the contest in Calgary West was not even close. The results are very similar to the 2006 results. Although the non-Conservative vote was split between four parties this time their totals did not exceed the Conservative vote. In the last two elections the Conservative vote exceeded the sum of all other parties by a wide margin.

The real story in these numbers is that about 4500 less people voted in 2008 than in 2006. It surprised me that the bulk of this drop off was in the incumbent (Conservative) vote. The second biggest loss of vote was for the NDP, losing 1500 votes from 2006. This was also a surprise since the NDP appear to be emerging as the second place party in Alberta.

There's no way around thinking that many conservative voters just stayed home. Also the Liberal pre-election claim that Greens and NDP voters were moving over to the Liberals does not seem to be seen in these numbers. In fact the Liberals bled 1100 votes and dropped their share.

There's really no good news here if you are an anyone but Anders voter. The four non-Conservative parties in Calgary West show no signs of coalescing into a viable challenger. Please recommend this post

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