Cory Satermo

A Delighted Duncan | The ecstatic new Edmonton-Strathcona MP hugs it out with a supporter at the NDP’s election-night party at the Rose and Crown.

Supporters are packed in so tight at Linda Duncan’s campaign headquarters on the south side that bike helmets are bumping shoulders and the hardwood floors are getting a good dousing of Sawmill Creek red wine. Volunteers and supporters are up on their tippy-toes, stretching to see the next poll result as the counts are posted on a large board at the front of the room.

To the right, the CBC national coverage flits by on mute over a blue couch with a rainbow-coloured handmade quilt. Jason Foster, a volunteer, watches the NDP vote across the country, remarking on the number of second-place finishes.

Cider heats up in a slow cooker culled from someone’s kitchen and slowly fills the room with a hint of cinnamon. The red-haired bartender offers beer and wine in between pulling her hair in frustrated anxiety. An orange sign on the fridge beside her reads: “In 1997, Raj Pannu won by 58 votes — every vote counts!”

At 9:36 p.m., about a thousand votes separate Duncan from Conservative incumbent Rahim Jaffer, and cheers erupt every couple minutes as new numbers are posted on the wall. Foster remains cautious. The volunteer and long time NDPer warns everyone within earshot that the polls currently coming in are all ones they won last year. The polls are coming in rapidly now, and each new bout of cheering blends into the last. Suddenly, there’s a lull, and everyone is quiet as a volunteer writes the last poll on the wall.

At 9:57 p.m., a communal shout erupts and a man deep in the crowd gives everyone the thumbs up. Foster runs outside yelling: “We won!”

Everyone is hugging and snapping pictures on their cell phones. Foster, completely transformed, dramatically remarks: “In Tory-blue Alberta, there’s a blot of orange.” Around him, friends and fellow volunteers are already talking about how they are going to be able to say they voted in the 2008 election, when the NDP broke though in Alberta.

“We are all going to Ottawa together,” declares Duncan in her first victory speech.

She beat the Conservative incumbent Rahim Jaffer by a slim 442 votes, according to election night results, and she’s the only non-Tory representative from Alberta in Ottawa.

On Vote Splitting And Coalitions

At the central NDP party at the Rose and Crown pub downtown, a Tragically Hip record is playing so loudly that the group of men gathered at a table in the back with provincial NDP Leader Brian Mason can hardly hear him. The former bus driver is in high form, joking and talking about his trip to Alaska and meeting then-governor Sarah Palin.

And he has reason to be jubilant. Duncan’s win in Strathcona means both an increased visibility for the party in Alberta and a bigger, more experienced group of volunteers supporting the party at both the national and provincial levels, he says. As for Edmonton-East, where former NDP provincial leader Ray Martin lost to Conservative incumbent Peter Goldring by 7,855 votes, well, Martin is just setting up the second NDP federal win for the next election, he says.

What about concerns that the NDP have badly split the left vote once again this election, allowing more Conservatives to slip into office?

“The whole vote-splitting issue is just misinformation,” he says. “If anything, the Liberals split our vote.”

But that probably won’t go down well at Claudette Roy’s office. The Liberal candidate in Edmonton-Strathcona placed a distant third with only nine per cent of the vote, compared to the Liberal’s 18 per cent showing in 2006.

“There was a really big sense of strategic voting,” says Duncan volunteer Ross Penner. The 25-year-old knocked on doors in his Strathcona neighbourhood for three hours every day during the month-long campaign, and worked full-out on election day, urging NDP supporters to get out and vote.

He worked for Duncan because of her environmental credentials, because she represented a viable chance to get rid of Jaffer, and not because she holds the NDP flag. Considering Canada has it’s third minority government in a row, he has no problem with the NDP working with the Liberals or anybody else to make Parliament work — so long as they are working towards the core social and environmental values he supports in Duncan. However, he doesn’t see enough good will within the different parties, including the NDP, to make that happen.

“I don’t have any expectations because the Conservatives still have a minority,” he says.

Wachowich defeated

Earlier in the evening at Jim Wachowich’s campaign office on 124th Street in Edmonton-Centre, Anne McLellan, the former Liberal deputy prime minister who lost to Laurie Hawn in 2006, shouts at the television about the NDP splitting the vote, as results pour in from across the country.

“Canadians have to figure out how many minority governments they want,” she says, adding that with the NDP and Green party splitting the progressive vote as it is now, it’s going to be very hard for the Liberals to win another majority. She doesn’t like the idea of a coalition government, and vows to fight for Liberals running in Alberta in the future.

Around midnight, the scene at the Liberal office couldn’t be more different than the jubilant celebrations at Duncan’s. Rows of small wine glasses sit unused on a red-draped table on one side of the mostly empty office.

Wachowich has retained his sense of humour, even at this late hour and after personally conceding defeat to Conservative incumbent Laurie Hawn, and jokes that he didn’t drink enough this election, as he sips a can of Sleeman Honey Brown beer.

Hawn beat Wachowhich by 9884 votes, gaining 49 per cent of the vote to Wachowich’s 27 per cent.

“Nationally and locally there wasn’t an urge for change,” he says, pointing to his own big board of election results. The NDP gained 15 per cent of the vote and the Greens eight per cent. Strategic voting just wasn’t as evident in Edmonton-Centre as it was in Edmonton-Strathcona, he says. He also suspects that the voter turnout was very low in his riding. (51 per cent of eligible voters cast a ballot in Edmonton-Centre, compared to the national turnout of 59.1 per cent.)

But he wants to let the dust settle on tonight’s results before he starts making any grand pronouncements, or deciding if he wants to run again in the next election.

And certainly tomorrow is soon enough to start clearing out his office, he says, gesturing to the uneaten food still sitting on the tables.

“We are not going to put everything under long-term lock and key,” he says, alluding to the Conservative minority. “Because we don’t know — it is going to be 10 months? 20 months?”