Social Media, the Hidden Electorate and the Surprise 2012 Victory of PC Alberta

As voters headed to the polls for the provincial election April 23, 2012 in Alberta, Canada – a serene confidence reigned among political commentators. Most were convinced that the 41-year long reign of the Progressive Conservative Association (PC Alberta or Tories) was about to end. Because the Tories had angered their base by “moving left” in selecting small “l” liberal Alison Redford as new leader and hence premier, most agreed that many Tory voters would decamp to the four-year old upstart (and very conservative) Wildrose Party. This in fact did happen, a large wave of voters abandoning the Tories, leading to Wildrose increasing its vote by 380,000. Most agreed that this large wave would trigger a second smaller wave – fear of a Wildrose victory pushing traditional Liberal supporters to “vote strategically” and support the Tories. And in fact, Liberal support plummeted by 126,000 votes, an impressive number, but insufficient to counter the first, much bigger wave of Tories moving to Wildrose. Yet when the dust settled, the impossible had happened – the Tories were returned to office winning 61 seats and 44% of the vote.

What virtually all commentators had missed, was the invisible “third wave” – a wave of new voters rushing to the polls. Voter turnout had been a derisory 40.44% in 2008. In 2012, it jumped to nearly 57%, an astonishing increase of 340,000. Many of these new voters were young people, first time voters. And the vast majority of them strategically voted Tory – to stop what was perceived as the anti-choice, anti-gay, social conservative Wildrose. This youth wave was invisible to traditional pollsters, still trying to take the pulse of an electorate through calls to landlines, something most young people have never possessed. If invisible to pollsters, the wave was extremely visible to anyone on social media, where anger against Wildrose washed back and forth through individual twitter accounts and facebook pages all throughout the election campaign.

This paper will analyze this “third wave”, arguing that both it, and the two waves preceding it, are part of a series of transformations which, together, are in the process of qualitatively altering politics in Alberta. It is too early to say how stable these transformations will prove to be. What is certain is that surprise turns in the political landscape have become almost commonplace. Soon after the election, for instance, the newly re-elected Tories made a sudden “pivot” towards an “East-West” Canadian energy policy, a policy option thought closed permanently after the disaster of the 1980’s National Energy Program. What is also certain, is that to anticipate and understand future transformations, political analysts are going to have to develop tools to penetrate, analyze and understand the new digital world of social media.