Code Politics: Alberta Election 2008

The Alberta Election was definitely a shock for many who predicted Ed Stelmach losing some seats to Kevin Taft's Liberals in Calgary. Stelmach's landslide victory will take some time to analyze before coming to any substantive conclusions in terms of the web 2.0 campaign, especially when only 41% of Alberta voters turned out to cast a vote. This was the lowest voter turnout of any province in the last 50 years.

Going into the final day of the Alberta election campaign the Liberals have out of all of the political parties used the YouTube platform the most effectively, with their messages predominantly reaching the most viewers. The Alberta NDP video "In Your Corner. On Your Side" was the most viewed YouTube video during the last week of the Alberta Election campaign, and this week saw an increase in views of all NDP videos for the first time in the campaign. In fact, all of the parties with the exception of the Alberta PCs have positive viewership trends via the YouTube platform.

A news video by Matt Solberg of Newswatch on a Medicine Hat Oil Company, Reece Energy, was the most viewed YouTube video during the third week of the four-week Alberta Election campaign. The Real Alberta PC activist group attack video “Ed Stelmach - Don't Worry Be Happy”, which had the most views last week, still remained high in vews this week.

Two weeks into the four-week Alberta Election campaign and the Real Alberta PC activist group had their attack video “Ed Stelmach - Don't Worry Be Happy” receive the most views last week. The numbers for all of the Alberta election videos are not very high, which suggests, like the recent Saskatchewan election, the prairies have not caught the web campaigning bug as of yet, especially when compared to the current activity in the United States primaries for example.