Strom More Popular Than Stelmach

Here is another nail in Eddie Stelmach's coffin.

He is less popular than Harry Strom.

Stelmach polled at 32% in a new poll released Tuesday, likely the lowest ever for a Conservative leader in Alberta.

Even Harry Strom, Alberta’s last Social Credit premier, polled at 43%.

Strom led the Alberta Socreds in their swan dive as the lame duck Premier who would be defeated by Peter Lougheed's PC's.

The PC's had only seven seats, and the NDP had one, when they defeated the eternal party of Alberta.

Strom became Premier and Social Credit leader in 1968, succeeding Manning who had just led the Socreds to their ninth consecutive term majority government in 1967. However, this election proved ominous for the party. Despite winning 55 of the 65 seats in the legislature, it won less than 45% of the popular vote. It previously won with more than half the popular vote. More importantly, the once-moribund Progressive Conservatives, led by young lawyer Peter Lougheed, won seven seats, mostly in Calgary and Edmonton.

Today the Opposition Liberals have sixteen seats, the NDP have four and the right wing Alberta Alliance has one.

Whenever Stelmach calls the election, winter or spring, it will not be an anointment of a new King for Alberta. It will be a defeat for the Tired Old Tories, not the ultimate defeat, but like the one that Strom faced from the upstart Lougheed, it will be the penultimate defeat. A loss of seats and support. Which will then lead to a final defeat in the following election.

It is not how the opposition parties look now that will determine who comes out the winner, but how they are poised after the next election.



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