Reuniting the Alberta Right

After last week's Alberta election, several of Alberta's political pundits expressed frustration that the splitting of the vote on the right may have allowed for the NDP success that we saw on election night. Danielle Smith, for instance, said:

Combined PC-WRP vote is 52%. NDP vote is 42%. #justsaying

— Danielle Smith (@ABDanielleSmith) May 6, 2015

She has a bit of a point - despite all the hype of the NDP surge during the campaign, they did still manage to get a strong majority government with less than half of the popular vote, and the combined popular vote of the two 'right-of-centre' parties could easily have beaten them.

Overall, the Wildrose Party ended up with far more seats than the PCs, even though they got 53,000 fewer votes (all this sounds like a set-up for a discussion on proportional voting systems, but I'll save that for later). Though the PC dynasty is ended for now, they certainly aren't lacking in a core voter base, and I wouldn't say they're definitely out of the game just yet.

But to those who are lamenting the splitting of the right side of the political spectrum, what's the most efficient way to reunite these two parties? If the right is to take control again, would it be easier to have the PC supporters move over to the Wildrose, or vice versa?

Let's check. I looked at the results for each riding from last week's election, and checked what the results would have been for each seat if a certain percentage of PC support moved to the Wildrose, or vice versa. First of all, let's see what happens if we increase the amount of PC voters who move over to the Wildrose: 

What this is telling us is that if 23.1% of PC supporters in each riding had instead voted Wildrose, there would have been enough to completely eliminate the PC presence in the legislature. If 35.8% of PC supporters had moved to the Wildrose, it would have been enough to take seats from the NDP and result in a majority of seats. A full reunification of the right would have resulted in 59 total seats, with 26 remaining for the NDP. In both cases, the seats won by the Liberal and Alberta Party MLAs were higher than the combined PC/Wildrose vote, so they're considered immune to this reunification effort.

On the other hand, it would have taken 30.3% of Wildrose supporters flocking back to the PCs in order to result in no Wildrose MLAs elected, and a 31.4% defection rate in order for the right to take control of a majority government.

Which one of these scenarios is most likely is a more nuanced question. Because of how poorly distributed the PC vote was between ridings, it's much easier for the Wildrose to absorb all of the PC seats (23.1% of PC support is only 95,393 voters across the province, for instance) than it is for the PC to absorb the Wildrose seats. If the goal is to reunite the right and regain control of the legislature, though, it may still be easier for the PCs to try to woo Wildrose voters - 31.4% of the Wildrose support is only 113,072 voters, and would have gotten the right back in power.

Overall, this means that a swing one way or another of about 100,000 right-leaning voters could have made all the difference in stopping the NDP from getting elected. Considering that this represents less than 8% of all voters from the last election, the possibility of a resurgence of the Alberta right is certainly not out of the question. The NDP has four years in power now to make good on their promises from the last election and retain their support, otherwise they may be in a bit of trouble during the next election.