CPC Landslide in an Almost Purely Party Vote

Conservative party candidate Lee Richardson is expected to win an absolute majority of the vote, according to a COMPAS riding poll (n=300) conducted for the National Post, Global Television, the Calgary Herald, and other CanWest newspapers. Liberal candidate Julia Turnbull is far behind with 29% of the decided vote compared to 53% for Richardson, as shown in table 1.

The actual intended vote is almost a pure party vote, as shown in table 2. Asked how they would vote in a hypothetical election involving candidates whom they didn’t know, 49% of respondents said that they would vote Conservative, 28% Liberal, and 14% NDP—virtually identical to the intended votes among the actual candidates.

The sense of partisanship in the riding is reflected in the following verbatims from respondents:

• I come from a PC family so that is pretty much it. I will always stick with the Conservatives.
  
• I have always voted Conservative and I always will.
  
• I have been voting Liberal all my life.
  
• I will always vote NDP
  

Richardson does slightly better than his party (53% vs. 49%). In general, some candidates outperform their parties while others earn less voter support than their party could normally expect. A combined Appendix for all 12 riding studies, containing COMPAS' proprietary electability-traction index scores for each significant candidate in every riding, is provided as a separate, stand-alone document.

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