(This is an updated version of my other blog Now looked alot like the old - Lougheed's 1971 victory just another dis-proportional result. Am having technical issues so just uploaded new version instead of trying to update the other one.) This month we mark the 50th anniversary of the election of Alberta's first Conservative government in 1971. As progressive, enlightened, urban and forward-thinking as it was compared to the previous Social Credit governments of Manning and Strom, Lougheed's success that year still owed more to the foibles of First Past The Post than to any great support by for the people of Alberta. Lougheed's victory that year was not as widely hailed or celebrated as might be thought. The province's electoral system operated in 1971, as it had been doing since 1959, to grant overwhelming dominance to a single party, the one with the most popularity even if it only support from a minority of the voters. The only difference in 1971 was that the leading party - the party that reaped such a windfall of seats without any democratic basis this time - was Progressive-Conservative. For a change, it was not the Bible-thumping rural-based Social Credit party, which had been getting that unfair windfall.
The leading party of Alberta had been getting just such a windfall of seats since 1956. That was when Alberta switched to First Past The Post from the previous more-balanced electoral system it had been using. From 1924 to 1955 Alberta had used a combination of PR in the cities and Instant-Runoff Voting outside the major cities.
The cities' PR system was Single Transferable Voting, a voter-driven candidate-based flexible system where transferable votes were used not party lists. This ensured that the representation elected in each city in each election reflected the votes cast in the cities. Reflecting the votes cast, mixed representation was elected each time candidates of two, three or even four parties were elected in a city. (The instant-runoff voting system used elsewhere did not produce results that varied much at all from the results that would have been produced under First Past The Post.)
After the change to First Past The Post was made in 1956, the MLAs elected in each city became much less balanced and fair than they had been under STV. In 1959 Social Credit candidates took all the Edmonton seats, although they took only a minority of the votes cast in the city.
The same un-democratic pattern happened in 1971.
In 1971, Lougheed's team won every seat in Edmonton, two-thirds of the seats in Calgary and three-quarters of the seats north of Red Deer. But this near-unanimity of representation was not reflective of the political reality, of how people actually voted. At no time did the P-C candidates have the support of every voter in Edmonton or Calgary. In fact in many of these districts, the P-C candidate did not have the support of even a majority of the voters in the district
The local P-C candidate received less than half the votes in Athabasca, Bonnyville, Grande Prairie, Lloydminster, Ponoka, Red Deer, Rocky Mountain House, Smoky River, St. Albert, St. Paul, Stony Plain, Three Hills, Vegreville and Whitecourt.
In Edmonton, the local P-C candidate did not receive a majority of the votes in Avonmore, Beverly, Highlands, Norood, Parkallen and Strathcona.
In Calgary, the local P-C candidate did not receive a majority of the votes in Buffalo, Currie, McKnight and North Hill.
(The local Social Credit candidates who took most of the other seats in some cases did not have majority of the local vote either. And Grant Notley himself did not have majority of the vote in Spirit River-Fairview, but took the sole NDP seat won in this election. The NDP with 1 percent of the vote overall deserved to win at least eight seats but owon just one.) Just as the Social Credit government had used its un-representative dis-proportional election sweeps as proof of its wide popularity, so now Lougheed and his party/team used the windfall of seat it had reaped to put it across that it was the choice of all Albertans. The election of Grant Notley in 1971 may be held up as proof of the way that Lougheed opened up politics from the stranglehold exerted by Manning;s Social Credit. But actually it proves how a widely-popular but thinly-spread party has an uphill battle under FPTP. Notley succeeded - barely and almost accidentally - to win one seat. This was in a rural district away from the spotlight of the media. While the tens of thousands of NDP voters in Edmonton - and in Calgary - won no seats and had no representation. And Lougheed with his much vaunted popular appeal did nothing to encourage this diversity of opinion in the Legislature.
In fact in 1975 the Lougheed team worked to take even the NDP's one seat away from Notley. Through luck, Notley retained his seat in 1975 - and in 1979, and he sat as the sole NDP MLA in the Legislature. Through him the multitude NDP supporters all across the province had at least one single MLA to represent them.
Finally in 1982 Edmonton succeeded despite FPTP to elect its first CCF or NDP MLA since 1952. This was Ray Martin. And all too soon Martin found himself the sole NDP MLA after Grant's untimely death in 1984.
Lee Richardson, author of the article "Lougheed The Arrival of Modern Alberta" (Alberta Views September 2021) presents the idea that Alberta was a homogeneous society during the Social Credit era He wrote "clearly this was not the monolithic, uniform electorate enjoyed by for decades by the previous administration." But only a scant 15 years earlier Alberta had parted with it partial-PR electoral system, under which several parties elected representation.
That alone should tip you off that: A. Alberta is not monolithic if it needs PR, and B. Alberta is not monolithic if it elects candidates of four different parties plus Independents to its Legislature C. the party in power was so irritated by the variety of opinion expressed and embodied by the elected representation that it parted with PR so that it would be able to dis-proportionally take a more-massive majority in the legislature. According to Richardson, Lougheed's election meant that the vitality and variety that was the new Alberta could flourish. Actually the reality is almost the exact opposite --at least partly! Richardson puts forward the idea that during the Social Credit era Alberta "was largely agrarian [and] homogeneous." He overlooks the fact that Premier Manning was elected in Edmonton, was in fact the most popular MLA in Edmonton and that in each election during the SC era half or more of the MLAs Calgary and Edmonton elected were Social Credit. In fact Alberta has never been homogeneous. Rarely has the leading party taken more than 60 percent of the votes. And that is true for each city as well. The way votes are cast is usually hidden by the lack of variety among those elected, but when Edmonton and Calgary used proportional representation (STV), each time each city elected a mixed bag of MLAs. In 1955 for example, Calgary elected MLAs of three different parties - Social Credit, Liberal and Conservative. In 1952 Edmonton elected MLAs of four parties - Social Credit, Liberal, Conservative and CCF. And in each election, both inside and outside the cities, there were a large number of votes cast for parties other than Social Credit. It was the electoral system we used that meant the non-SC vote would be mostly un-represented. Note that in 1963 when the SC government took all but three of the seats in the Legislature, the SC party received less than 55 percent of the vote. It should have won no more than 35 seats. SC candidates won 15 of the government's 60 seats with less than a majority of the votes in the district. In fact, for a certain portion of the SC era, Alberta had relatively balanced mixed multi-party legislatures, at least as compared to later. And this "later" includes the Conservative era. "Later" extends right to the present-day when we are still using the First Past The Post system that gives us very un-balanced legislatures and super-dominant governments that don't actually reflect how votes were cast. During most of the UFA era and the Social Credit era, that is, the period from 1924 to to 1955, Alberta partly used a proportional representation system. As partial as it was, the representation elected showed variety and balance at least as compared to later elections that used First Past The Post. During the use of PR, the Alberta government was more balanced than during the period after FPTP was re-imposed on Alberta elections.
After FPTP replaced PR-STV, the number of elected Opposition politicians, the variety of representatives in the Legislature, rarely reached the level that was common during the PR period. During the Lougheed era, the Conservatives dominated the seats of the Legislature, although seldom getting more than 60 percent of the votes overall. And the variety of opinion held by voters in Alberta had little chance of being properly represented in the Legislature. During the Lougheed era, the variety of voters in Alberta had little chance of getting diverse representation. Lougheed's P-Cs again and again took a larger number of seats than its popularity warranted. Other parties suffered under-representation. This disproves the myth that Lougheed opened up the political environment in the province, that he provided politics with a breath of fresh air. Or if that myth was true, the change was just enough to allow Conservatives to breath freely, for Conservatives to get out from under the SC crush, but Lougheed's taking of power in the province did little or nothing for supporters of any other parties. Richardson even has the gall to say that "the opposition found little to disagree with" during Lougheed's time as premier (p. 47). I doubt that the two NDP MLAs in the Legislature - Notley from 1971 and Ray Martin from 1982 - or the 85 other NDP candidates, the ones who were not elected under the dis-proportionate system of misrepresentation our elections use, would have said there was little to disagree with. If there seemed to be so few disagreements with the government, it was artificially created by the under-representation of other voices due to our electoral system, and corporate media's defence of the Conservative government and the capitalist system for which it stood - and stands. While the Lougheed government might have put more money into arts and culture than the previous SC government had done, later Conservative premiers reversed this a great deal. It is difficult to see how much support Alberta artists received from the likes of Getty or Klein! And the stranglehold the Conservative party had on the Legislature was such that artists, working people (and unemployed people) in the cities and the fields, political women, the young and the old, the sick and the lame, had few voices speaking for them in the Legislature. Lougheed may have done some good things for the province as a while (its embargo on coal mining on the Eastern Slopes was a classic example of a great policy it had), but the Alberta Legislature was just as white- and male-dominated under the P-Cs as it had ever been under the the later Social Credit premiers - after PR was cancelled. These stats demonstrate that reality: total Government Parties in the Legislature Labour/CCF/NDP seats vote p.c. MLAs p.c. of seats number votes MLAs p.c. seats p.c/seats PR (STV/AV) period UFA era UFA 1926 61 40% 43 72% 5 (UFA, Liberal, Cons,. Labour, Ind.) 8* 5 8 1930 63 39% 43 62 5 (UFA, Liberal, Cons,. Labour, Ind.) 8* 4 6 *Labour ran candidates for less than half the seats Social Credit era
Social Credit 1935 63 54% 56 89 3 (SC, Cons., Lib) 2 0 0 1940 57 43% 36 63 2 (SC, Unity League) 11 0 0 1944 60 52% 51 89 4 (SC, CCF, Unity League, Veterans) 25 2 3 1948 57 56% 51 89 4 (SC, CCF, Ind., Liberal) 19 2 3 1952 60 56% 53 85 4 (SC, Liberal, C/P-C, CCF) 14 1 2 1955 60 46% 37 61 7 (SC, Liberal, CCF, P-C/C, Ind., coalitions) 8 2 3 (Note: The CCF never ran candidates for all the seats.) FPTP single-member plurality period Social Credit era
Social Credit 1959 65 56% 61 94% 5 (SC, Liberal, CCF, Cons., Ind., Coalition ) 4 0 0 1963 63 55% 60 95 3 (SC, Liberal, Coalition) 9 0 0 1967 65 45% 55 85 4 (SC, Liberal, Cons. Ind.) 16 0 0 Conservative era
Progressive-Conservative 1971 75 46% 49 65% 3 (P-C, SC, NDP) 11 1 1 1975 75 63% 69 92 4 (P-C, SC, NDP, Ind.) 13 1 1 1979 79 57% 74 94 3 (P-C, SC, NDP) 16 1 1 1982 79 62% 75 95 3 (P-C, NDP, Ind.) 19 2 3 1986 83 51% 61 73 4 (P-C, NDP, Rep, Liberal) 29 16 19 1989 83 44% 59 71 3 (P-C, NDP, Liberal) 26 16 19 1993 83 44% 51 61 2 (P-C, Liberal) 11 0 0 1997 83 51% 63 76 3 (P-C, NDP, Liberal) 9 2 2 2001 83 62% 74 89 3 (P-C, NDP, Liberal) 8 2 2 2004 83 47% 62 75 4 (P-C, NDP, Liberal, Alliance) 10 4 4 2008 83 53% 72 87 3 (P-C, NDP, Liberal) 8 2 2 2012 87 44% 61 70 4 (P-C, NDP, Liberal, Wildrose) 10 4 4 NDP era NDP 2015 87 41% 54 62% 5 (P-C, NDP, Liberal, Alberta, Wildrose) 41 54 62 UCP era UCP 2019 87 55% 63 72% 2 (UCP, NDP) 33 24 28 * Independent candidates are considered one party. Independent-Liberal, Independent-SC, etc. are considered a form of Independent.
====================== As we see from this table, under FPTP the government party often took 75 percent or more of the seats in the Legislature, Thus the government party had a ratio of three to one over all the others put together. For all but 7 of the elections held since 1955, that is, in ten of the elections held since 1955, the government took at least 75 percent of the seats, Thus it had three seats to each seat held by an opposition politician. And note that in many of these elections the government had less than a majority of the votes. And we see that since the end of PR, the CCF and NDP have always been under-represented (with the exception of the 2015 election). (In part this was due to Labour and the CCF, and the NDP in 1963, not running a full slate. The party's vote share generally increased after it began to run a full slate in 1967.) So if the Legislature was predominantly SC from 1959 to 1971, that was not due to lack of voters voting against the government. And it was not due to the alleged monolithic, homogeneous nature of Alberta in that time. But instead it was due to a lack of democratic accountability in our election system.
And if Alberta voters voted for a variety of parties since 1971, and they did, the Legislature did not show this. The governing party in the Legislature from 1971 to 2015, the Progressive Conservative, only occasionally took even a majority of the votes cast. Mostly that party's overwhelming dominance in the Legislature was due to the lack of democratic accountability in our election system. And we see that opposition MLAs, on average, were more numerous before 1956 when even partial PR was in use, than it was after 1956, when disproportional FPTP began to be used to elect Alberta MLAs. ============================================= David King's Lesson of Lougheed The same kind of rose-coloured view of history is evident in a different article also on the Lougheed election in that issue of Alberta Views. "The Lesson of Lougheed - A Better Alberta is always possible" is written by David King, formerly a cabinet minister in Lougheed's government, 1979-1985.
He writes for example that the Lougheed government was "inclusive and expansive." I doubt if Grant Notley, the father of our last premier, would have used such positive descriptors of the government. Certainly in every election he ran - and won - in Spirit River-Fairview, he was opposed by a P-C candidate. So Lougheed's inclusive-ness definitely had a limit. David King's own career in the Legislature ended in 1986 when the diminutive NDP firebrand Pam Barrett took the seat away from him. Her victory was hailed as progress for Edmonton's working people, for giving voice to those otherwise ignored and disparaged by the Conservative government, by then led by golfer Premier Don Getty.
Getty's being named premier showed a right-ward turn of the Conservatives. The NDP retained its Edmonton seats in 1989 but then lost all its seats in 1993. In Edmonton they were replaced by Liberal MLAs, running for a party led by former Edmonton mayor Laurence Decore who promised even more cuts than the Conservative government was pursuing.
However, in 1993 at least a couple of the new Liberal MLAs in Edmonton (just as many MLAs of all stripes were elected elsewhere) were elected with less than a majority of votes in their districts. The Liberal candidate in Edmonton-Strathcona won his seat with only 39 percent of the vote.
The party affiliation of the MLAs elected in the 1971 and the 1993 elections, as in so many Alberta elections, had little to do with how votes were cast overall or in the specific districts themselves.
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For those who say Lougheed was fantastically popular, we need only look at the record to see the truth.
In 1971, Lougheed's Progressive-Conservatives received just 46 percent of the vote, less than half.
Lougheed led the Tories again to victory in 1975, 1979 and 1982, winning landslide majorities each time, but each time with vote tallies of only 57 to 63 percent of votes cast. More than a third voted for a different party. But in those elections the non-Conservative vote received just four to six seats, not the 26 or so that they deserved.
Our history (and our present situation) would have been different if we had had fair representation over the last 50 years, I believe.
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