History isn’t on the side of a PC-Wildrose party merger

The confetti had hardly been swept up at the NDP’s victory celebration last May when talk of uniting the PCs and Wildrose had begun. Given that the province has just completed a record-breaking 43-year rule by the Progressive Conservatives, this strategy might seem an obvious path to victory at the next election. However, the history and politics behind such a merger warn that a united-right victory party shouldn’t be planned quite yet.

A party that could have combined PC and Wildrose votes would certainly have won a comfortable majority in 2015. Some simple arithmetic combining the two parties’ votes shows that this hypothetically unified party would have won the previous election handily, winning 52 per cent of the vote provincewide, compared with the NDP’s 41. While this would have been a high point for the Alberta New Democrats, they would have ended up in opposition.

The united-right party would have picked up seats throughout the province, particularly so in Calgary. The city was the PCs’ only bright spot, giving them eight of the 10 seats they claimed on election night, with the New Democrats winning 15 of the city’s 25 seats. Yet, combined, the PC-Wildrose package deal would have won 22 Calgary ridings, reducing the NDP to just Finance Minister Joe Ceci’s seat in Calgary-Fort.

Throughout the province, the PC-Wildrose vote would have taken 60 seats, compared with the NDP’s 25, most of which would have been in the Edmonton and Lethbridge areas, while the Liberals and Alberta Party would have each retained their single seat.

Yet, previous mergers have shown that combining parties rarely leads to such a simple combination of votes.

The recent success of the Saskatchewan Party, an amalgam of former Liberals and Tories, might make it seem like a best practice to emulate, but it’s actually a great example of what not to do in Alberta.

When a handful of Saskatchewan PC and Liberal MLAs united inside the legislature to form the Saskatchewan Party, they turned the 52 per cent won by their respective parties before the merger into just under 40 per cent afterward. Given the spectacular failure of the Wildrose floor crossings to the Jim Prentice-led PCs, this approach would be likely to fail again in Alberta.

The creation of the federal Conservative Party as a result of the merger between the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservatives in 2003 is a much better example to follow. Despite their formal union, the new party still couldn’t capture all of the voters that had supported the two parties previously. In 2000, the Alliance won 25 per cent of the vote, while the PCs won 12 per cent. In 2004, 25 and 12 didn’t magically become 37. Instead, they captured just 29 per cent. Even in Alberta, the new Conservative Party was only barely able to best the performance of the Alliance by itself.

This is because partisan support isn’t an easily transferable thing. Voters support political parties for a long list of reasons, some of which are ideological, but others are about brand loyalty, personality and sociological forces. Even among MLAs, public statements by various members of the Wildrose and PC caucuses suggest that some members from either side would be uncomfortable working with the other.

This isn’t to say that a merger is doomed. If the price of oil keeps the province’s financial situation uncomfortable, any government would find re-election difficult. However, if they do unite, the new party should hold off from booking the hall for a victory celebration as similar mergers have shown that the math is harder than it looks.

Paul Fairie is a political scientist in Calgary.