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   National Post - Andrew Coyne | May 1, 2015   
      
      
   Andrew Coyne: We’ve seen this quite a bit lately in our politics.   
   People are fed up with being lied to, fed up with politicians taking them for   
   fools, fed up altogether with too-clever-by-half   
      
   Andrew Coyne: Jim Prentice undone when trust became key factor in Alberta   
   election   
      
      
   Even now, no one can quite believe it.  A half dozen polls in the last couple   
   of days all show the NDP leading in the Alberta election by an average margin   
   of 15 points.  The pollsters have taken to speaking outright of an NDP   
   majority.   
      
   And yet a majority of those polled — the same sample group that has the   
   Progressive Conservatives scraping 20 per cent support — still say they think   
   the PCs will somehow find a way to win again.   And not only them: the mayor of   
   Calgary, leading provincial columnists, everyone’s hedging their bets.  They   
   have, after all, been burned before.   As have we all.   
      
   Still, there is reason to think this election will prove different from the   
   last, when the Tories reversed a 10-point deficit in the campaign’s last   
   three   
   days.   Then, the PCs faced but one serious opponent, the right-wing Wildrose   
   Party; this time, their support has been eaten away at both ends.   
      
   Then, the Wildrose contributed mightily to voter misgivings with ill-timed   
   outbursts (see: “lake of fireâ€�) from errant candidates; no such   
   self-immolation   
   seems in the offing this time.  And then, the economy was strong, and the   
   appetite for ejecting incumbents in favour of an untested opposition weaker;   
   now, people may feel they have less to lose.   
      
   So while there is ample reason to be skeptical of predictions of an NDP   
   majority — the party’s support is heavily concentrated in Edmonton, where   
   a lot   
   of its vote will be “wastedâ€� racking up huge majorities rather than winning   
   seats elsewhere, while on past form many of its supporters among the 18-34   
   cohort will not show up to vote — it seems hard to believe it will not at   
   least   
   emerge with a plurality.  Though whether that means it will form a government   
   is another question: there may be many a slip ’twixt that cup and lip.   
      
   At the very least, then, if the polls are to be believed at all — I said if   
   â€”   
   this election will have proved to be a sharp, if not unprecedented rebuke to   
   the PCs.   While it’s possible to look at the results in simple left-right   
   terms — the left vote has united, while the right is divided — this   
   election   
   has turned out to be much more a referendum on PC rule than anything else.   
      
   Put simply, after 44 years a significant section of the electorate has decided   
   it really is “time for a change.â€�   
      
   Those centre-left voters who abandoned the Liberals to support Alison   
   Redford’s   
   Tories in 2012, in part to keep the Wildrose out, have this time decamped for   
   the NDP — to keep the Tories out.   
      
   At the same time, anti-PC voters who had parked their support with the Wildrose   
   appear to have taken a good look at the leaders in the televised debate, and   
   decided the Wildrose’s Brian Jean, less than a month into the job, was not   
   ready, when compared with the NDP’s assured and likeable Rachel Notley.   
      
        If this election is a referendum on the PCs, it is even more a referendum   
   on the leadership of Jim Prentice   
      
   In other words, a significant number of voters appear to have decided a) this   
   election is about getting rid of the PCs, and b) the NDP are the best vehicle   
   for achieving this.   That a substantial number of these have switched to the   
   NDP from the Wildrose tells you how broadly unideological this election has   
   been.   But it’s still a remarkable development, for a party that has usually   
   struggled to win more than a couple of seats in the legislature. For a critical   
   mass of voters, it is now viewed as the least scary option among the three.   
      
   If this election is a referendum on the PCs, it is even more a referendum on   
   the leadership of Jim Prentice.  For a time, after he became leader, it seemed   
   he could do no wrong — so much so, that he was able to induce the then leader   
   of the Wildrose, Danielle Smith, and eight of her colleagues to cross the floor   
   and throw in their lot with him.   
      
   But hubris precedes nemesis: the moment of Prentice’s maximum triumph may   
   very   
   well have marked him in the public’s mind as “too clever by half.â€�   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)