Tory leadership race has no obvious winner
Posted Sep 15, 2011 7:54 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Thursday night is the final debate in the Alberta PC leadership race before party members make their picks Saturday.
If no one comes out with a clear majority, a second vote goes October 1st.
The race has been lacklustre, with none of the six hopefuls managing to capture the headlines.
Mount Royal University political scientist Keith Brownsey says he has no idea what to expect this weekend.
“It’s going to be quite a surprise,” says Brownsey. “We think we know who the front runners are, we think we know who’s at the back of the pack, but we can never be sure of this, especially in this type of race.”
Brownsey says a recent poll for The Calgary Herald showing Gary Mar as the favourite at 31 per cent, 11 points ahead of second-place Alison Redford, didn’t have a large enough sample-size to truly know the feelings of voters.
Brownsey says it will come down to a few things, like who sold the most memberships, which people come out to vote and the back-door deals made between candidates.
Brownsey says the best thing for the party will be to have a clear-cut winner on first balloting Saturday night.
University of Windsor political scientist Cheryl Collier says with recent polls showing no one holding enough support to win, we could see an underdog surprise.
“That sometimes can happen when people are split on the choice,” says Collier. “They really don’t want to go one way or the other and the third candidate becomes the obvious compromise.”
That’s exactly what happened in 2006, when Jim Dinning and Ted Morton went into voting leading in the polls, only to have Ed Stelmach come out victorious.
