The Conclusion: The Alberta Referendum

The Alberta separatist movement just had its best opportunity to prove that Albertans want to separate from Canada. On the October 19 referendum, Albertans voted whether to STAY or to LEAVE.

Using the angle of hard and soft political support, I saw the Alberta referendum as being well-designed to turn a resounding loss for the LEAVE side into a small chance of a coin-flip election. The finer details of my argument are here:

After I published that article, a media outlet reported that both sides were given a campaign spending limit of $607,000. Somewhat knowing the costs of TV and newspaper ads, I thought this amount was much too small to run a modern campaign in Alberta. I was not able to verify this amount from another source.

I suspected that the LEAVE side had no intention of abiding by any limits, using whatever American, Chinese, and Russian money coming into their campaign coffers. LEAVE had nothing to lose by overspending. If they could force STAY to overspend and STAY wins, LEAVE could…