these analyses of the alberta election that are claiming that notley was done in by negative campaigning are completely off-base.

to begin with, she had little chance of getting more than 40%. the idea that the election was really in play is not a serious premise, so this idea that she didn't do what was necessary to convince people to vote for her is delusional. she had no chance of winning the election by running on the economy, because there simply weren't enough votes in play for her to do so, and because her own base doesn't care about such things. she was simply never going to convince a substantial number of conservatives to vote for her, no matter what she did, and no matter how bad the other candidate was.

i misread the data, granted. but, it doesn't really change the necessary tactic. as she could at best get a plurality (she had no chance at a majority), and the opposition was no longer split, she had to figure out how to do two things:

1) maximize her own turnout.
2) minimize her opponent's turnout.

"appeal to your opponent's base" was not an option, here.

the truth is that she failed at both tasks, but the approach she took to try to minimize her opponent's turnout was the correct one. if anything, she should have been more aggressive about it. the greater failure is that she governed in opposition to her own base, and that should cost her her party's leadership. i look forward to her being fired by her own people, and her replacement realigning itself with the federal and bc wings.

but, in politics, sometimes failure doesn't occur because you did something wrong.

sometimes, you fail because there's simply no path.

there's nothing she could have done differently; she had little chance, at all.