The Sheeple of Alberta Have Spoken

... and they said "baaaah".

So, voters in Calgary Glenmore sent Paul Hinman of the Wild Rose Party to the legislature.

Frankly, I wouldn't have voted for Hinman ... but then again, I didn't vote for "Special Ed" either. The Wildrose Party has yet to convince me that it's anything more than a provincial version of what we have in Ottawa - and their policies don't exactly encourage me either.

I continue to be disappointed with Alberta voter turnout. Yes, I know that byelections typically have much lower turnout than general elections do - but it's a sad statement when the byelection turnout was 40.5%, and the last provincial general election was 40.8%. To borrow from the wisdom of my grandfather - "If you don't get out and vote, the people you least want in power will win". Since the 1970s we've seen a steady decline in voter turnout, and a single party has consolidated its grip on power to the extent that they didn't think they needed to campaign at all in this byelection. (Yes, I saw a few Colley-Urqhart signs, but very few and residents I know who live in the riding all commented on the near-invisibility of the PC campaign).

The bright side of this vote - from my perspective was that Hinman's win was not a runaway victory - there's only 3% of the popular vote between Hinman and Avalon Roberts of the Liberals - a fairly small margin of victory for a province used to voting PC "because they've always voted that way".