Talk Elections

Since the Alberta election must be held no later than May 31, 2019, I am now opening the topic.  At this point the UCP looks heavily favoured, but as we are seeing with the Ontario election, I think it would be a bit premature to call it.  My thoughts on the four parties with seats are as follows obviously subject to change.

UCP: Definitely the heavy favourites.  Should probably sweep most of the ridings outside of the two main cities with perhaps the exception of the two Lethbridge ridings and maybe a few in the Capital region.  Well ahead in Calgary and if they can hold that, should form the next government.  Edmonton competitive, but I tend to think its really more a question if they can win any seats there or do they get shut out again.  I think the big dangers is Alberta is not nearly as right wing as it was 20 years ago so things like bringing back the Flat Tax, more funding for private schools could scare away some moderate voters who are unhappy with the NDP but feel the UCP is going too far.  Nonetheless Harper got 59.5% in 2015 and while I doubt the UCP will get quite that high, I suspect at least 80% of those who voted Tory federally in 2015 will also vote UCP and that puts them at 48% so still enough to win albeit probably not a landslide.

NDP: Despite what some say, I don't think the NDP is totally out of it.  In terms of the popular vote, I am almost positive they will lose that, but due to voter efficiency I think there is a very narrow path to a majority.  UCP will likely run up the margins in rural ridings without any small city topping 70 even 80% in some whereas unlike 2015 I don't think the NDP will have any blowouts not even in Edmonton.  Their path to power is basically to unite progressives + Red Tories which would mean sweeping Edmonton, capital region, being competitive in Calgary, and winning many smaller cities like Lethbridge, Red Deer etc.  The pipeline also should help too a bit.  So while I think the NDP is likely headed for opposition, I think it is highly likely they will get over 20 seats and even 30 seats I think is very realistic.  Otherwise I don't believe they are in as bad a shape as some claim they are.

Alberta Party: They won't win many if any seats at all, but if things tighten up could play kingmaker.  If they mostly take away soft NDP votes, then probably a UCP landslide, but if they pull away many Red Tories from the former Progressive Conservatives they could create an opening for the NDP to win.  Otherwise if they get 15% and that 15% is mostly Red Tories, the UCP will only get in the 40s and if the NDP can unite the 35-40% of Albertans on the political left this could allow the NDP to narrowly slip in.  If they take evenly from both won't matter then.

Liberals: Along with the Alberta Party, they are battling for the centrist vote, but I think the Alberta Party is in better shape to win it so in all likelihood the Liberals will become like what they are in neighbouring Saskatchewan, i.e. irrelevant.

Two Calgary NDP cabinet ministers (and first term MLAs) have both announced they aren't running again:  Brandy Payne a while back and Stephanie McLean a few days ago.  They both essentially said they wanted to spend more time with their families.  (Stephanie McLean also said she wanted to return to her legal practice.)  

Normally that is the standard line and is generally nonsense, but both are likely telling the truth here as they both gave birth while in office. (Stephanie McLean was the first woman in Alberta to give birth while an MLA and Brandy Payne was the second or third.)  The other, current Attorney General Kathleen Ganley seems to be running again.

Re: the Alberta Party - how much space is there really in the "reasonable center" between Rachel Notley and Jason Kenney?  I presume it'll come more from the "PC" side - but I suspect it'll be a pretty small group. 

Unlike in BC (or perhaps in the future Ontario) the NDP may have a decent chance even if the right is united, it's really hard to see the Alberta NDP win against a (more or less) united right.

Agreed it is pretty tough to win against a united right in Alberta, I am more just leaving all options open as we've seen enough surprises.  As for BC, definitely the NDP can win against a united right, but far from certain.  Ontario will be interesting since if the PCs stay clearly on the right like they are under Ford, were under Harris, and Hudak, I think they will probably lose more often than win.  But if they move back to their traditional Red Tory spot, then I think they will win most of the time.  BC Liberals maybe on the right and similar in many ways to the Ontario PCs, but the BC Liberals are a much bigger tent and don't tend to be quite as ideological.  Ontario PCs right now are more like the UCP than BC Liberals and if you have a divided left you can get away with that, but not a united left, whereas Alberta is more conservative than Ontario so people who are unelectable elsewhere can win there.

That is the big reason Kenney choose to run provincially rather than federally as he probably figured he couldn't beat Trudeau, whereas he could win in his home province.

Ganley is indeed running again - she's been nominated as the NDP candidate for Calgary-Mountain View. She moved to Mountain View in order to allow Finance Minister Joe Ceci to run in Calgary-Buffalo, as his old seat of Calgary-Fort was split up, with his stronger neighbourhoods being added to Buffalo and his other neighbourhoods being joined with PC-voting areas further south to form Calgary-Peigan.


The Alberta Party's currently polling at around 10%, and they've become the go-to third option over the Liberals since their caucus was enlarged to 3 MLAs through floor-crossings (not to mention that the Liberals elected a lacklustre new Leader and their only MLA is retiring). I could see the Alberta Party picking up a couple more seats if they target effectively and concentrate their resources, but I would be surprised if their post-election caucus was larger than 6-ish MLAs. With that said, Notley's pragmatic governing style doesn't leave a ton of room, and the NDP is still the default option for those who want to stop the UCP. It's always worth noting that the NDP were polling around where the Alberta Party is now at this point before the 2015 election, but in all likelihood, the Alberta Party's support would would be most likely to swell in a post-2019 world where the UCP brings in an unpopular, solidly right-wing governing agenda and the NDP elects a more ideological leader to replace Notley.

We've got an interesting UCP nomination election coming up here on Wednesday in Airdrie-East. Incumbent Airdrie MLA Angela Pitt, who was first elected as a Wildrose MLA in 2015, is seeking the nomination in this district. She had appeared unopposed for a while, but at the last minute, Roger Millions (the Sportsnet broadcaster for the Calgary Flames) decided to challenge her for the nomination. The optics won't be good for the UCP if Pitt loses, not only because she's a pretty competent MLA (and UCP Deputy House Leader), but also because she's only one of two female MLAs in the 25-person caucus. To that end, she's trotted out at least 14 endorsements from fellow MLAs in recent days, indicating serious concerns from the UCP brass that she may lose.

Well, that race turned out to be less interesting than I'd expected. Pitt was re-nominated after all.

On the topic of nominations, this summer is when we'll see a good number of the candidates from assorted parties win their respective nominations and begin officially campaigning. So far (including tonight's UCP contest), the UCP has nominated 11 candidates, while the NDP has nominated 7, the Alberta Party has nominated 5, and the Green Party has nominated 1. All of those nominations, except for the UCP in Airdrie-East, saw the successful candidates acclaimed.

United Conservative Party:

• Airdrie-East: Angela Pitt, incumbent MLA (elected WRP) for Airdrie
• Calgary-Edgemont: Prasad Panda, incumbent MLA (elected WRP) for Calgary-Foothills
• Calgary-Hays: Ric McIver, incumbent MLA (elected PC)
• Calgary-Lougheed: Jason Kenney, UCP Leader and incumbent MLA
• Calgary-West: Mike Ellis, incumbent MLA (elected PC)
• Edmonton-Gold Bar: David Dorward, former PC MLA
• Cypress-Medicine Hat: Drew Barnes, incumbent MLA (elected WRP)
• Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills: Nathan Cooper, incumbent MLA (elected WRP)
• Rimbey-Rocky Mountain House-Sundre: Jason Nixon, incumbent MLA (elected WRP)
• Strathcona-Sherwood Park: Nate Glubish, former UCP and WRP constituency association President
• Taber-Warner: Grant Hunter, incumbent MLA (elected WRP) for Cardston-Taber-Warner

New Democratic Party:

• Calgary-Buffalo: Joe Ceci, Finance Minister and incumbent MLA for Calgary-Fort
• Calgary-Currie: Brian Malkinson, Service Alberta Minister and incumbent MLA
• Calgary-McCall: Irfan Sabir, Community & Social Services Minister and incumbent MLA
• Calgary-Mountain View: Kathleen Ganley, Justice Minister and incumbent MLA for Calgary-Buffalo
• Edmonton-Mill Woods: Christina Gray, Labour Minister and incumbent MLA
• Lethbridge-East: Maria Fitzpatrick, incumbent MLA
• Lethbridge-West: Shannon Phillips, Environment Minister and incumbent MLA

Alberta Party:

• Calgary-Beddington: Karen McPherson, incumbent MLA (elected NDP) for Calgary-Mackay-Nose Hill
• Calgary-Buffalo: Omar Masood, engineer at Transcanada
• Calgary-Elbow: Greg Clark, incumbent MLA
• Edmonton-Glenora: Carla Stolte, teacher and former community league President
• Edmonton-McClung: Stephen Mandel, ABP Leader and former Mayor of Edmonton

Green Party:

• Calgary-Mountain View: Thana Boonlert, former federal & provincial Green candidate

Do you think it's possible that the Alberta Party could become a moderate or "Red Tory" version of the Wildrose Party? Or the United Conservative Party actually pretty united (with a few stragglers here or there)?

Pre-2015, did the Wildrose Party ever have a chance or attaining a government on their own?

The Alberta Party is putting up some solid candidates. Would be beneficial to the center if the ALP would just merge into them...

Wildrose led in the polls on the eve of the 2012 election and was widely expected to form goverment.

Indeed, and they were also leading in most polls between the 2012 and 2015 elections, at least until the combined effect of Prentice's election as PC Leader and the WRP mass floor-crossing. So they definitely had a credible chance at points, especially being the go-to non-PC party from about 2009 to 2015. Some people who were not nearly as right-wing as the WRP voted for them in 2012 just to try and get the PCs out (a friend of mine who currently works for Catherine McKenna in Ottawa being an example). Unfortunately for them, they also had a habit of shooting themselves in the foot on the eve of their potential success.

To the question on the ABP, I'd first point out that there was a Red Tory party, namely the PC Party (except for under Klein's tenure). It's very likely that they'll end up filling that Red Tory-esque void in the current Alberta political spectrum. You can see this in some of the candidates and organizers that they are attracting: many are former moderate PCs, and they're also attracting federal and/or provincial Liberals supporters too.

The UCP nomination race in Chestermere-Strathmore is heating up, with accusations of party officials breaking rules to favour the incumbent MLA, and court actions shooting back and forth between MLA Aheer and one of her opponents. See here (http://calgaryherald.com/news/politics/chestermere-ucp-nomination-getting-nasty) and here (http://calgaryherald.com/news/provincial/dispute-between-ucps-aheer-and-challenger-gets-testy-in-courtroom/wcm/0dc92600-344a-4ede-a964-25cb42a82070) for details.

Also, in classic form for the UCP in Cardston-Siksika (context: heavily Mormon, rural, and one of the most socially conservative in Alberta), the nomination contest there saw over 3,000 voters turn out to choose between two firm social conservatives. The losing candidate, who still received 43% of the vote, is a former federal candidate for the Christian Heritage Party, and is Principal of a private Christian school which is one of the participants in a lawsuit against Alberta's Bill 24. The group fighting the lawsuit, amongst other things, alleges that Gay-Straight Alliances in schools are "ideological sex clubs" and that parents' constitutional rights are being violated if they can't be told when their child joins a GSA. (Context for that lawsuit here (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/ideological-sex-clubs-alberta-gay-straight-alliance-law-faces-court-challenge-1.4712581).


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For those interested, here are the candidates who have been nominated since my last post:

United Conservative Party:

• Cardston-Siksika: Joseph Schow, former Jason Kenney leadership staffer
• Central Peace-Notley: Todd Loewen, incumbent MLA (elected WRP) for Grande Prairie-Smoky
• Fort Saskatchewan-Vegreville: Jackie Armstrong-Homeniuk, former PC Party Regional Director

New Democratic Party:

• Central Peace-Notley: Marg McCuaig-Boyd, Energy Minister and MLA for Dunvegan-Central Peace-Notley
• Drayton Valley-Devon: Kieran Quirke, Chair of the Leduc-Nisku Economic Development Board

Alberta Party:

• Calgary-Klein: Kara Levis, former ABP leadership candidate and lawyer at Transcanada
• Drumheller-Stettler: Mark Nikota, former Mayor of Hanna
• Edmonton-Ellerslie: Yash Sharma, publisher and TV producer
• Edmonton-Whitemud: Jonathan Dai, teacher and former Alberta PC/federal Liberal candidate

Liberal Party:

• Calgary-North East: Gul Khan, entrepreneur

Transportation Minister and longtime NDP MLA Brian Mason is retiring from politics at the 2019 election. (https://edmontonjournal.com/news/politics/graham-thomson-after-three-decades-in-the-saddle-ndp-veteran-mla-brian-mason-ready-to-hang-up-his-spurs?video_autoplay=true) I believe that Mason is the longest-currently-serving MLA, having represented Edmonton-Highlands-Norwood since a 2000 by-election. His political career will have spanned nearly 30 years at the next election, as he was first elected to Edmonton city council in 1989. He was NDP leader between 2004 and 2014, and has been lauded across the aisle as one of the most hardworking, capable, and passionate MLAs in Alberta (even winning praise from arch-conservatives like MLA Derek Fildebrandt and Calgary Sun columnist Rick Bell).

I wouldn't mind going with David Christopherson and Brian Mason on a road trip across Canada.

It will be interesting to see who NDP gets as I think this might attract a strong candidate including even someone with future leadership ambitions.  It is a very safe NDP riding so even if the NDP loses as expected, I suspect they will easily win this riding so might be a good place for someone with NDP leadership ambitions who is not part of the caucus to run.

I think you are the one promoting the idea that Rachel Notley will step down if the NDP loses the next election.  I'm not sure what you base this on.  According to the polls at present, the NDP will most likely receive its second highest amount of seats and votes in the upcoming Alberta election.  If the NDP wins around 30 seats I think she would be in a very strong position to remain as leader and fight a rematch with Jason Kenney (assuming Donald Trump hasn't caused a nuclear holocaust by then.)

Two names have already popped up as likely candidates:
http://daveberta.ca/2018/07/brian-mason-retires-ndp-edmonton-highlands-norwood/

2015 federal NDP candidate Janis Irwin and former Public Interest Alberta executive director Bill Moore-Kilgannon.

Perhaps, but I don't know of many cases when a party went from government to opposition and their leader stayed on.  The only few that come to mind are Joe Clark but he lost a subsequent leadership race, John Turner (who never actually won an election), and Dave Barrett.  Could be wrong but I think it has been a long time since someone lost an election and then returned to power later so while you might be right, my guess is unless a minority government she will probably step down if they lose.  And even if she stays on, still could for future leadership to run there since I suspect if she stays on but fails to come back in 2023, she will step down.

Allan Blakeney also stayed on for the 1986 election after losing in 1981 in Saskatchewan. As did Woodrow Lloyd  who was defeated in 1964.  Of course, these both go back a ways.  The NDP has given multiple opportunities to leaders who lost an election but who were never Premier Gary Doer, (though technically he was Premier for a few weeks, he never accepted the title) Andrea Horwath....

The Rachel Notley situation is unique because it was such a 'bonus' for the NDP to win the election, I'd find it hard to believe all that many New Democrats in Alberta would force her out if the NDP lost in 2019.  Is there a logical successor to her?

Given that Brian Mason in one article, for instance, admitted that it's harder to be in government than in opposition, I can imagine Notley would relish the opportunity of the tables being turned against Jason Kenney (though, of course, she'd prefer to beat him in 2019.)

And also BC's Dave Barrett in 1979 and 1983 after being defeated in 1975.

That's the big question the NDP would have to face, because I'd say the general consensus would be that there isn't a go-to logical successor to her. In thinking about the public profile and rough public perception of the members of the NDP caucus, the following would be my list (in no particular order) of potential NDP leadership contenders were Notley to step down:

• David Eggen (Edmonton-Calder): Minister of Education, 2014 leadership candidate, and 3rd-longest serving caucus member after Mason and Notley
• Sarah Hoffman (Edmonton-Glenora): Deputy Premier and Minister of Health, former Edmonton Public School Trustee
• Deron Bilous (Edmonton-Beverly-Clareview): Minister of Economic Development and Trade, and along with Eggen, one of the two potential candidates who was an NDP MLA prior to 2015
• Joe Ceci (Calgary-Fort): Minister of Finance (and therefore senior Calgary caucus member), and former Calgary City Councillor
• Ricardo Miranda (Calgary-Cross): Minister of Culture and Tourism
• Shannon Phillips (Lethbridge-West): Minister of Environment, and considered (though with little substantive evidence) to be the most left-wing cabinet minister
• Danielle Larivee (Lesser Slave Lake): Minister of Children's Services and Status of Women

In addition to those above, I could also see either Rod Loyola (MLA for Edmonton-Ellerslie) or Gil McGowan (President of the Alberta Federation of Labour) running as an organized labour-oriented candidate.

Off course those ones have to hold their seats.  I suspect UCP will pick up Calgary-Cross and Lesser Slave Lake unless they lose the election in which Notley stays on for sure.  Sarah Hoffman would be a huge turnoff to swing voters so the party choosing her would be making a big mistake.  In fairness actually Notley is probably the best they have so I could see them keeping her but depends on how they do.  If they get say 30 seats, she probably has a strong argument to stay on, but if they drop to only 10 seats it will be a much tougher one. 

Again, Allan Blakeney in Saskatchewan was reduced to 9 seats in 1982 and survived to lead in 1986.

I think we may be surprised in both Calgary-Cross and Lesser Slave Lake. Larivee and Miranda have both proven themselves to be capable cabinet minsters and popular local constituency MLAs. And there are local factors to consider in both ridings that make them tougher to predict based on the past election results. For Miranda, the new boundaries of Calgary-Cross blend parts of the old Calgary-Cross, Calgary-East, and Calgary-Greenway. In 2015, the PCs had very strong candidates in two of these ridings: Rick Hanson (former Calgary Police Chief) in Cross and Manmeet Bhullar in Greenway. This makes the area contained in the new Calgary-Cross look friendlier to the UCP than it would have with "generic" 2015 PC candidates. Politics in northeast Calgary is also much more highly dependent on the strength of local candidates, and their ties to major cultural/religious groups in the area, than the rest of Calgary. Depending on the candidates picked by the other parties, this may help or hurt Miranda, but I wouldn't count him out yet.

For Larivee, I'd point out that Lesser Slave Lake is the only indigenous minority-majority riding in Alberta (it was 54% indigenous in 2011 under the old boundaries, which have barely changed). If indigenous turnout is as strong or stronger than 2015, that will help boost Larivee. In addition, the incumbent PC MLA (Pearl Calahasen) who Larivee defeated was a long-time incumbent and a member of the local Metis community, which boosted PC results in some of the heavier-Metis polls. Like Calgary-Cross, this has the result of inflating the approximate UCP strength in the area in 2015.

Neither of them are a sure thing, but overall I'd put Cross as about the 6th most likely NDP hold in Calgary, and Lesser Slave Lake as one of the most likely NDP rural holds.

UCP MLA and Deputy Whip Prab Gill (Calgary-Greenway) has resigned from caucus and won't seek re-election (http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-ucp-report-ballot-stuffing-1.4749468) following a Party investigation into allegations of ballot stuffing at the founding meeting for the new Calgary-North East constituency association, where Gill had been seeking re-nomination.

Also in UCP news, one of the nomination candidates in Brooks-Medicine Hat was disqualified from the contest (http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/todd-beasley-medicine-hat-united-conservative-party-1.4748603) after social media posts came to light where he had used anti-Islam slurs.

Fildebrandt is starting his own party 🤣

Sounds like the Libertarian one.  Here some policy proposals we just might see from him.

1.  Eliminate the provincial income tax and replace with a 10% PST.
2.  Entrench property rights in the Alberta constitution
3.  Eliminate as many environmental laws as possible.
4.  Cut off funding to all universities and colleges that don't fully allow free speech, that includes letting alt right speakers speak on campus
5.  Bring in school vouchers and allow home schooling and private schools to be fully tax deductible against PST and property taxes.
6.  End all restrictions on private health care and allow full market competition
7.  Withdraw from CPP and instead let the private sector take over here.
8.  Make all purchases of private health insurance fully tax deductible
9.  Bring in right to work laws.
10.  Make the right to keep and bear arms entrenched in law and opposed all restrictions on law abiding people owning firearms.

These would be a wet dream for people who feel the UCP is not libertarian enough, but somehow doubt they would be popular even in Alberta.

Joking aside, I suspect his party will go the same way the Trilium Party did in the last Ontario election and BC Conservative party in the last BC election, i.e nowhere.

For context, this appears to be a bit of a benevolent takeover of an existing party. Although it recently changed its name to the Freedom Conservative Party (when they did this, I predicted they were trying to get Fildebrandt to cross over), the party has existed in 1999 under a variety of names and usually with a separatist orientation. Over time, the party has been known as the Alberta First Party, the Separation Party, the Alberta First Party (again), the Western Freedom Party, and finally the Freedom Conservative Party.

Or, whatever Jim Pankiw has attempted in Saskatchewan.

Looks like Fildebrandt's party will still have an Alberta nationalist edge. According to him:


Also, Fildebrandt says that they will only run candidates in ridings where the NDP "doesn't have a chance of winning." How they'll determine this isn't exactly clear, but I imagine it means that they'll run about 35-50 candidates, mostly outside of the major cities except for some suburban Calgary ridings with UCP incumbents and where the 2015 PC+WRP vote was strong.

So the Ottawa boy supports Alberta separatism now eh.

With a name like "Freedom Conservative", I expect them to corner the Proud Boys demo.

The 'Pros' and the "New Boys (or Nu Boys)" were mentioned in an episode of WKRP in Cincinnati.  In my opinion, this is one of the best scenes ever in a television show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhbqIJZ8wCM

They're also a lock with incels, red pillers, racial realists, Rebel Media doners, Promise Keepers, and TERFs.

If they can get the support of the Stonecutters (and/or No Homers) they might be a real threat.

How many here think the NDP still could win and if so how would they do it both in terms of votes and geography.  I don't think they can win the popular vote, but I still could see them winning a narrow majority as their vote is more efficient than the UCP (UCP will likely get over 70% and in some cases 80% in much of rural Alberta), while low 60s is the highest I can see the NDP getting (probably in Notley's own riding) and in fact outside central Edmonton I don't see them getting over 50% in many ridings.

How it would happen is a combination of bozo remarks like in 2012 with the Wildrose party as well as Kenney's austerity plans scare off a lot of middle of the road voters, so the UCP only gets around 43-45%, which is very plausible.  Youth turnout is quite high and NDP wins big there while the Alberta Party gets around 15% of the popular vote and most of that comes at the expense of the UCP, not NDP with mostly former PC supporters who find the UCP too right wing going to the Alberta Party.  They only win one of two seats, but create the splits for the NDP.  Progressives unite behind the NDP, so they get close to 40% (note last federal election, 40% voted for centre-left parties, so if they all unite behind the NDP, they get around 40%).  Seatwise, the NDP not only sweeps Edmonton, but wins almost all seats in the Capital Region.  In Calgary, Alberta Party gets around 20% allowing the NDP to sweep all the inner ridings with the UCP only winning along the periphery thus it is closer but NDP still wins just over half the seats in Calgary.  In the rest of Alberta, NDP wins smaller centres like Lethbridge and Red Deer. 

Admittedly this is a long shot, but if the stars line up the NDP does have a path to majority albeit a very narrow one.  Nonetheless Trump in the US had a similarly narrow path to victory so as long as the path remains open they still can win.  That being said I think there is about an 80% chance UCP wins a majority next May and Jason Kenney becomes the next premier, but I think there is a 20% chance of either another NDP majority or a hung parliament.  Off course UCP could do better than expected and sweep Calgary, rest of Alberta and pick up much of suburban Edmonton winning around 65 seats and high 50s in the popular vote while NDP falls to mid 20s.  That would be the opposite extreme which is unlikely but possible.

The NDP chances of winning aren't yet at 0%, but I don't expect them to win the next election. The NDP don't necessarily have a greater vote efficiency than the UCP: I expect them to run up the margins in a number of Edmonton seats. If Notley could get over 60% in Edmonton-Strathcona when the party was getting 11% province-wide, I'd be surprised if she fell below 70% this time around. While I don't think that they'll win, I would expect the NDP to get at least 30% of the vote and 25-30 seats. But I digress...

It is fun to try and imagine what another NDP government would look like geographically. Right now, this would be my guess for the 44 seats (in no particular order) that they need to win another majority:

1-20. Every seat in Edmonton proper
21. Calgary-Buffalo
22. Calgary-Cross
23. Calgary-Currie
24. Calgary-East
25. Calgary-Klein
26. Calgary-McCall
27. Calgary-Mountain View
28. Calgary-Varsity
29. Lethbridge-East
30. Lethbridge-West
31. Red Deer-North
32. Red Deer-South
33. St. Albert
34. Morinville-St. Albert
35. Sherwood Park
36. Strathcona-Sherwood Park
37. Fort Saskatchewan-Vegreville
38. Spruce Grove-Stony Plain
39. Lac Ste. Anne-Parkland
40. Leduc-Beaumont
41. Maskwacis-Wetaskiwin
42. Banff-Kananaskis
43. Lesser Slave Lake
44. Peace River

Mathematically based on last election's results, for this to happen the NDP would somehow need to beat the UCP by a couple percent in the popular vote. But we all know that this sort of math rarely turns out to be accurate.

Also, just for fun: in the above scenario, the UCP seat with the narrowest margin of victory over the NDP would either be Calgary-Bow, Grande Prairie, or West Yellowhead (an outside shot). We would also have the highest chance of seeing two MLAs elected who are neither NDP or UCP. One would be Greg Clark in Calgary-Elbow for the ABP. The other would either be a second ABP MLA (probably Karen McPherson in Calgary-Beddington) or Derek Fildebrandt under the FCP banner in Chestermere-Strathmore.

Mainstreet out with another poll and looks like UCP has rebounded although regional numbers interesting.  UCP is taken a statiscally significant lead in Edmonton which is normally an NDP stronghold, but in Calgary UCP only 15 points ahead so NDP not totally out of it there.  Note these are the CMAs not city proper so UCP numbers are high in Edmonton as it includes surrounding areas in the Capital region which went mostly NDP, but far more vulnerable than the city proper.  On the other hand that is good news for the NDP in Calgary as the UCP is likely running up the margins in the surrounding areas as well as probably the south side of the city, so the NDP could very well be in the lead still in the central part.  Nonetheless UCP leads amongst all ages so a big turnout by millennials won't necessarily save the NDP if the poll numbers are correct.

UCP 52.1%
NDP32.5%
Alberta Party 5.4%
Liberals 4.8%
Greens3.1%
Others 2.1%

The results amongst Millennials in particular in that poll are giving me flashbacks to the Calgary Mayoral election.

Agreed on millennials they mess up a lot, but even if millennials were say to vote NDP by a 20 point margin UCP would still be ahead albeit by a much smaller margin.  To be fair Mainstreet did correctly call the last Ontario election and asides from Calgary municipal election track record is pretty good.  They also overestimated the NDP in 2015 like most pollsters although still correctly predicted the winner.

Two more polls out, one from Abacus and one from Mainstreet.  Both show UCP with a healthy lead although seems UCP lead is more they are successfully uniting the conservative vote and less so about any enthusiasm for Jason Kenney although his approval ratings are okay.  Rachel Notley's are not great, but marginally better than Christy Clark, Brian Gallant, Philippe Couillard, and Stephen Harper, while significantly better than Kathleen Wynne and Greg Selinger so its tough to win with her approval ratings but not impossible.  Her biggest challenge is uniting the progressive vote won't be sufficient; she needs to pull away some traditional conservative voters to win and that will be tough.

Abacus - Online

UCP 48%
NDP 33%
Alberta Party 8%
Liberals 8%

Mainstreet Research - IVR

UCP 54.3%
NDP 29.1%
Alberta Party 5.5%
Liberals 5.2%

If Mainstreet were correct, you would see a UCP landslide, likely over 60 seats and possibly even over 70 seats while NDP would struggle to reach 20 seats.  If Abacus are correct, then solid UCP win, but probably 55-60 seats, while NDP still forms a strong opposition, probably around 25-30 seats.  Alberta Party will likely hold Greg Clark's riding and maybe Stephen Mandel will win, but cannot see them winning anything else.  I suspect the Liberals unless things change will get shut out with Calgary-Mountainview probably flipping to the NDP, maybe UCP if they win a landslide.  Still a little over 7 months to go so a lot can change, but the NDP definitely has a steep hill to climb and the UCP is without question the favourite at this point.

Of note, the two polls had marked disparities in the proportion of voters who are undecided. Abacus has undecideds at 26% of respondents, while Mainstreet has undecideds around the 9-10% mark.

Leading up to 2012 and 2015, undecided rates of 20-30% were pretty common in Alberta polling, so the Abacus number would represent a return to that norm if true. In both 2012 and 2015, undecided voters appeared to reject more extreme positions (principally those coming from Wildrose), flocking heavily to the PCs in 2012 and splitting between the PCs and NDP in 2015. If the UCP are to lose or underperform in the next election, it will be because undecided voters decide to reject them much as they did to the Wildrose in 2012 and 2015.

NDP plans a throne speech on March 18th so late April would be the earliest they could realistically call an election.  Some thought they might go earlier as they want to go when the students are still in school since they are strongest amongst youngest voters while in the winter before snowbirds return as UCP has big lead amongst them.  My guess is voting day will be May 31st which is the latest date possible.  Notley really needs a pipeline to go through to have much chance so they longer they wait the better the chances get.  Also more time to sprinkle election goodies as well as also more time for the UCP to have bozo eruptions and scare away moderate voters.  Still not sure timing will make a huge difference although UCP seems very anxious for an election.

My bet is on an election for April 15 or 16. Throne speech on the 18th of March, drop the writ on the 19th, and away we go.

Mainstreet has their quarterly mega poll and for Alberta they have the following:

UCP 52.3%
NDP 27.8%
Alberta party7.7%
Liberal 6.1%
Green 3%
FCP 2.4%

So on the surface UCP has a pretty big lead meaning unless they screw up badly they are heavily favoured.  Interesting that 14% are voting for centrist parties so will be interesting does that hold or do many vote strategically either NDP or UCP to stop whom they least want to win.  The one good news NDP has is on personal ratings Notley scores above her party and Kenney below so that would suggest it is more likely the gap will narrow than widen.


Notley: 36.9% Approve 49.3% disapprove
Kenney: 39.7% Approve 33.1% disapprove.

The problem I feel facing the NDP here, just from a little searching, is that their ceiling is just below the natural floor for any united conservative front. This is after all a conservative area, and like Kansas in the US, the Left wins when the Right is hopelessly divided. I wouldn't be surprised that we watch the NDP do everything right, the UCP do everything wrong, and the UCP still easily wins thanks to their floor.

This.

In terms of seat count, I've got the UCP in the low 50s right now. yes, for a conservative party in AB, that's a small majority, but they'll be holding onto that for a long time if they get it. The only thing that might save Notley is that Jason Kenny leads the UCP.

I did some work last year to come up with new vote margins following the redistribution, if anyone's interested.

It will definitely be an interesting election. I feel like this is the most confident a government down by 25% has been going into an election in a long time haha.


Definitely interested.

I think their reasons are not unwarranted.  While Notley's approval ratings are not great, they are no worse than Christy Clark or Stephen McNeil's were in 2017 who both won the most seats although Christy Clark got defeated on a confidence vote.  I think the feeling rightly or wrongly is Albertans vote conservative more out of habit than anything else, but usually in the past the PCs were fairly moderate whereas UCP is a lot more ideologically driven and that once their policies come out many will go elsewhere. 

Certainly on policy issues, most polls I've seen suggests the median Alberta voter falls about midway between the NDP and UCP.  Most want a balanced budget, less bureaucracy, reduced wages for upper paid civil servants, middle class tax cut, at the same time most support abolishing the flat tax (which UCP plans to bring back), oppose frontline service cuts, and support raising the minimum wage even if maybe not to $15/hour so Albertans on the issues aren't as right wing as the stereotypes paint them.  So I agree an NDP win is unlikely, but when you look below the surface, I don't think it is impossible.  Wynne at this point was only 10 points behind, but high dissatisfaction with her made me think she faced more difficult odds than Notley does and once the campaign got under way her numbers fell.

A lot might also depend on whether a minor force like the Alberta Party is poised to reap writ-period rewards from a UCP backlash.

()

I had to resize it because I'd forgotten the pixel dimension constraints, so the writing needs fixing up, and some of the boundaries aren't as tidy as I'd like, but I might do that down the track.

*Edit* I've tidied it up, so it's a bit neater and more like the maps I normally post (cleaned up the pixels along the boundaries). There is also a blank map version that I've uploaded to the gallery.

The shapefile looks like it's in Eastings and Northings instead of GPS coordinates, which seems odd, but I don't think that created any weirdness... keep an eye out for errors, though, just in case.

The estimated results took anything that is a poll and allocated it to the redistributed riding. I then tallied all votes cast in non-polls (Advance/Mobile/Postal/etc) and proportioned them based on the party's strength in each poll (party's vote in the poll compared to party's vote across the original riding, and then allocated the same proportion of declaration votes to that poll). This is slightly less accurate for the Advance Polls which relate to specific polls, but should be close enough.

There were a few polls that were split between two ridings. For rural polls that were thus split, I typically looked on Google Maps, identified the main township, and allocated the poll to wherever that township was transferred, but in some cases, I guessed what proportion of the poll was transferred into which riding (a few of these were split 50-50 between Calgary-Mountain View and Calgary-Klein).

DC - I can send you the .CSV of estimated party votes via Facebook Messenger, if you'd like. I can also send you a spreadsheet showing the poll transfers (2015 Riding Name, 2015 Poll Number, 2015 Poll Name, 2015 Enrolment, 2017 Riding Name, Transfer Weighting).

Sure that would be great.

Okay, I've just sent that through to you.

Amazing blank map, thank you. Do you know if there's a redistricted blank version of PEI?

Thank you - I haven't been on here in a while, but I used to upload blank maps for Canadian and Australian elections after each redistribution.

Because it's been a few years, I'm not sure of the provinces where I'm behind. I can do PEI, no worries. Presumably they have GIS shapefiles? If not, it will be a little longer, but I suspect they have the shapefiles available for download.

What differences in demographics and/or ideology lead Calgary and Edmonton to vote so differently?

A lot more people dependent on the oil industry in Calgary I imagine.

Also, Edmonton is the capital, so it has a lot of civil servants.

Yes. It's not a perfect 1:1 analogy, but the differences are kind of like Houston and Austin.

FYI, both Austin and Houston vote pretty overwhelmingly Democratic these days.

It probably has something to do with Edmonton being more of a "mature" centre, and in many ways more of a westward cultural carryover from Manitoba and Saskatchewan, politically and demographically; whereas Calgary's development and political culture has tended more t/w "wild west" boomtown unruliness.  (Thus nicknames like "Edmonchuk" and "Redmonton")

Calgary has a lot of people in the oil industry and affected by that a lot thus why more conservative while Edmonton has more civil servants.  While not quite as noticeable, generally Conservatives and Saskatchewan Party do better in Saskatoon than Regina while in BC generally the right does even worse in the Greater Victoria area than Greater Vancouver area.  The one that bucks this is Quebec as Quebec City is actually fairly conservative even compared to many rural parts of the province while Montreal is off course fairly progressive.

As for Austin vs. Houston comparisons, I think those are still valid as suburbs around Austin are starting to go Democrat whereas in Houston suburbs for the most part, especially northern ones still GOP.  Likewise in Houston, it is 2/3 non-white thus why Democrats win the city proper and inner suburbs, amongst whites in Houston, I still suspect most vote GOP whereas I suspect in Austin Democrats even win the white vote.

Edmonton's workforce, at least the portion which is outside of the public sector, has also historically been of a more blue collar character than Calgary's, which leans more white collar. Compared to the average Calgary riding, the average Edmonton riding has a lower university-educated proportion of the population, a lower household income, a higher low-income population, and a higher proportion of the population in rental housing, to give a few indicators.

Interestingly, three of the NDP's historically-strongest ridings (Edmonton-Strathcona, Edmonton-Highlands-Norwood, and Edmonton-Beverly-Clareview) are amongst the five ridings with the highest low-income shares of the population.

While likely a minor factor in the overall scheme of things, Edmonton also has a markedly more sizeable urban indigenous population than Calgary, with indigenous people making up about twice the share of the population in Edmonton than they do in Calgary. Edmonton-Highlands-Norwood has the largest indigenous share of the population of any urban riding in Alberta, at 10.5%.

I can't seem to find the redistributed results from 2015, can anyone pass it along to me?

Give me half an hour or so, I'll email you or send it via Messenger.

I've been sorting through some data from the Alberta electoral district profiles, which use data from the 2016 federal census sorted by provincial riding. Here are some top 10 lists which may be of interest from a political demographics perspective:

Top 10 ridings with the highest visible minority share of the population:
1. Calgary-McCall: 86.1%
2. Calgary-Falconridge: 68.0%
3. Calgary-North: 62.3%
4. Calgary-Cross: 58.9%
5. Edmonton-Ellerslie: 57.3%
6. Edmonton-Meadows: 54.8%
7. Calgary-North East: 54.0%
8. Calgary-Foothills: 50.9%
9. Edmonton-South: 47.7%
10. Calgary-Edgemont: 44.4%

Alberta Average: 23.5%


Top 10 ridings with the highest indigenous share of the population:
1. Lesser Slave Lake: 55.6%
2. Peace River: 27.5%
3. Maskwacis-Wetaskiwin: 25.0%
4. Cardston-Siksika: 22.3%
5. Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche: 21.3%
6. Bonnyville-Cold Lake-St. Paul: 18.1%
7. Central Peace-Notley: 14.9%
8. Lac Ste. Anne-Parkland: 14.3%
9. Banff-Kananaskis: 11.0%
10. Edmonton-Highlands-Norwood: 10.5%

Alberta Average: 6.4%


Top 10 ridings with the highest university-educated share of the population aged 15+:
1. Calgary-West: 61.4%
2. Calgary-Varsity: 57.9%
3. Calgary-Buffalo: 56.7%
4. Calgary-Elbow: 56.5%
5. Calgary-Mountain View: 55.0%
6. Edmonton-Whitemud: 53.0%
7. Calgary-North West: 52.9%
8. Calgary-Edgemont: 52.3%
9. Edmonton-Strathcona: 51.4%
10. Calgary-Bow: 47.0%

Alberta Average: 28.2%


Top 10 ridings by share of the population in low-income after-tax:
1. Edmonton-City Centre: 19.3%
2. Edmonton-Highlands-Norwood: 18.7%
3. Edmonton-Beverly-Clareview: 16.4%
4. Edmonton-Strathcona: 16.3%
5. Calgary-Buffalo: 16.1%
6. Lesser Slave Lake: 15.4%
7. Calgary-East: 14.9%
8. Calgary-Cross: 14.1%
9. Cardston-Siksika: 13.8%
10. Edmonton-Decore: 13.7%

Alberta Average: 9.3%


Top 10 ridings by median household income:
1. Fort McMurray-Wood Buffalo: $211,636
2. Calgary-West: $153,405
3. Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche: $143,980
4. Strathcona-Sherwood Park: $141,717
5. Calgary-North West: $133,458
6. Calgary-South East: $131,735
7. Edmonton-Whitemud: $126,512
8. Morinville-St. Albert: $123,571
9. Edmonton-South West: $121,819
10. Airdrie-Cochrane: $119,331

Alberta Average: $93,931

Done. Blank map in the Gallery, copy displayed in the relevant thread.

Alberta Party leader, Stephen Mandel, and several other Alberta Party candidates may have filed their nomination papers too late with Elections Alberta and may be disqualified from running.

This is the situation at the moment (disqualified from running) however, Mandel is appealing claiming the information he was given was unclear as it didn't specify what the starting date was (they had four months after that date to file) and that given the severity of the penalty, they deserve the benefit of the doubt.

Which groups are included, and which are represented in these areas?

The party would still be able to run, but with the leader in question no doubt this will hurt what little chances they had.  What will be interesting is whom does the Alberta Party hurt more.  Are they most likely their membership former Red Tories from the Alberta PCs thus hurting the UCP more or are they more centrist New Democrats who normally vote Liberal but voted NDP in 2015.  In many ways the party is a centrist option for those who don't like the NDP, but find the UCP too right wing to park their votes.

Not sure about the second question, but in Canada, "Visible Minority" = "Anyone who isn't white or Aboriginal/Métis"

Yup. Stats Canada uses the following categories of visible minority (VM): South Asian, Chinese, Black, Filipino, Latin American, Arab, Southeast Asian, West Asian, Korean, and Japanese. I'll run through each of the above ridings and go through the rough makeup, mentioning notable groups.

Calgary-McCall: Two-thirds of the VM population is South Asian. Another one-eighth is Filipino, with the rest disbursed amongst the remaining groups.

Calgary-Falconridge: One-half of the VM population is South Asian, with Blacks and Filipinos each representing a further one-eighth, and the rest disbursed amongst the remaining groups.

Calgary-North: About one-third of the VM population is Chinese, another quarter is South Asian, and one-tenth each is Black and Filipino.

Calgary-Cross: VM population is very heterogenous. About one-quarter is South Asian, while Filipinos, Blacks, and Arabs each represent about one-sixth, and Chinese and Southeast Asians each represent about one-tenth.

Edmonton-Ellerslie: A little over one-half of the VM population is South Asian, while another one-fifth is Filipino.

Edmonton-Meadows: Nearly two-thirds of the VM population is South Asian, and another one-eighth is Filipino.

Calgary-North East: A little more than one-third of the VM population is South Asian, while Filipinos and Chinese each represent about one-sixth and Blacks represent about one-eighth.

Calgary-Foothills: Chinese and South Asians each represent a little more than one-quarter of the VM population, while another one-eighth is Black and one-tenth is Filipino.

Edmonton-South: South Asians are almost one-third of the VM population, while Chinese are one-quarter, Filipinos are another one-eighth and Blacks are a further one-tenth. Koreans are also overrepresented here at 7% of the VM population compared to 2.3% province wide.

Calgary-Edgemont: Just over one-half of the VM population is Chinese, and another one-fifth is South Asian.

For some reason it baffles me that there's a riding in Canada with a whopping 86% minority electorate. Or that there are 8 districts where they are a majority!

Our big cities aren't that White.

This is just in Alberta, too.

But Canada I believe has a slightly higher percentage of non-white people than the U.S. does (this is including First Nations, etc., who strictly speaking are not included in "Visible Minorities") and way more of course than anywhere in Europe. As a result, it's not surprising that there are many ridings that are majority VM/non-white. The UK has a much lower non-white population (around 13% in the UK vs. 27% in Canada) but also has a number of overwhelmingly non-white constituencies.

Actually US depends on definition, if you count all Hispanics as non-white, US has a lower white population than Canada, but if you include Hispanics who are white, then I believe that is correct.  To be fair most Hispanics are mixed race to some degree and Hispanic is more heritage as opposed to any particular race despite the stereotypical image, one can be blonde hair and blue eyed Hispanic and likewise Black Hispanic.

As for Europe exactly, there are UK constituencies that are over 80% non-white so makes sense you would see some in Canada.  I imagine in France and Germany there are majority non-white constituencies and Netherlands, Sweden, and Belgium probably would if they divided theirs into constituencies of 100,000 people. 

Hispanics are considered visible minorities on the Canadian Census (if they select Latin American).

Indeed. Edmonton is actually 42.6% nonwhite (visible minority + aboriginal identity) and Calgary is 39.1% nonwhite. Even in Red Deer, nearly one out of every four residents is nonwhite.

Also, FWIW, when you include aboriginal residents in the count of minorities, you get 11 minority-majority districts (the 8 above plus Lesser Slave Lake, Edmonton-South, and Calgary-East). Another, Edmonton-Decore, was over 48% VM+Aboriginal at the 2016 census and may have surpassed 50% with population changes since.

What was the non-white share of the Canadian population back  in 2000?

According to the 2001 census, approximately 83.3%.

True enough, although Latin American really can be any race as it is a melting pot of people from different parts of the world, only reason it is a separate category is most from that region tend to be mixed race.  Interestingly enough the US classifies people of Middle Eastern and North African ancestry as white whereas in Canada they are classified as visible minority.  If you were to use the US definition of white, countries like France, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, and Sweden would probably be over 95% white while using the Canadian definition all of them are probably over 10% maybe as high as 15% non-white.  UK it wouldn't make as much of a difference as most non-whites there are South Asians or Black and Canada only a minor difference as Arabs and West Asians put together are about 1.5% of the population.

Kenney promises to drop corporate tax rates from 12% to 8%.  While it may not be the most pertinent issue not sure this is a huge vote getter.  Trickle down economics was very in vogue in the 80s and 90s but has sort of fallen out so while not your Hudak moment of firing 100,000 civil servants, I cannot help but think the NDP will probably use this against him and on this policy more will probably side with the NDP.  A cut to 10% or 11% would have faced some opposition, but not as much as this.  I think regardless of what one's views are on economics, the idea of cutting taxes for corporations and the rich and expecting more money is not a very popular policy and in fact Notley's scrapping the flat tax and raising corporate taxes by 2% had over 60% support in 2015 so good or bad idea, I cannot see this helping the UCP politically.  Although probably not fatal on its own, but if the numbers in his platform don't add up or the NDP can get several economists to blow it apart, I think things could get a lot more competitive.  Not sure if it will be enough for the NDP to win, but at least it creates an opening even if very narrow.

https://twitter.com/660NEWS/status/1102732191992176640

Mandel has been vindicated.

Election call might be delayed for a spring session. (https://ipolitics.ca/2019/03/13/alberta-ndp-might-hold-off-on-election-to-let-ucp-investigation-conclude/)

Is Brian Jean planning a comeback? (https://calgaryherald.com/news/politics/braid-harper-and-scott-moe-come-down-hard-on-brian-jean) Who knows! He might not even know!

Never a dull moment in Alberta politics.

I always expected the election to be held on May 31st anyways.  With the NDP's weak poll numbers better to wait and hope something trips Kenney up.  As for Brian Jean will be interesting what he announces too.  On the health care bill, will be interesting the details but the fact doing it now does kind of smack of desperation.  While privatizing health care is very unpopular, I don't think allowing private delivery or even private payment for diagnostic services is as controversial as it was 20 years ago.  Many still oppose it, but the polls I've seen show the public is more split on it rather than against it.  That being said if NDP has concluded they are going to lose, this would be very popular amongst their base so might help firm up their core support so they at least form a strong opposition.

The UCP's been feeling the heat lately, for a very particular reason. Here's the latest from MacLeans. (https://www.macleans.ca/politics/what-really-happened-inside-the-alberta-ucps-kamikaze-campaign/)

Ipsos out with numbers from starting line and UCP well in front as expected but not an insurmountable lead.

UCP 53%
NDP 35%
Alberta Party 7%
Liberals 7%

Will the students still be in university?

The NDP probably should have released a budget first, although I can understand not passing one, as that would 'bind the next government.'

After the sh**tshow that the UCP has had over the last few days, it'll be interesting to watch what happens to the UCP vote, considering that poll didn't really cover much if any of this period.

Notely couldn't have had a better opportunity to call this election even if she tried, as this will keep going throughout the campaign.

Kind of reminds me of Watergate because both scandals seem so foolish and unnecessary. Jean didn't have much (if any) chance of winning even before the kamikaze.

ThinkHQInc poll
https://twitter.com/CTVMarkVillani/status/1108342170505887745


The NDP has done better with ThinkHQ polls than with Mainstreet Research polls, so, I don't know what to make of that.

However, it does seem possible the NDP could end up with a (slightly) higher share of the vote than they received in 2015.  Of course, were that to happen, they'd almost certainly still be defeated.

The main difference between this survey and the recent Ipsos survey is Edmonton.  The Ipsos survey had the NDP ahead 44-43%.  I believe that was for just the city of Edmonton.  This survey has the NDP ahead 52-34% for the entire Edmonton metropolitan area.  The NDP won all the Edmonton suburbs in 2015, but mostly by much tighter margins than the ridings in the city of Edmonton.  The only suburban Edmonton ridings where the NDP dominated in 2015 were the older suburbs of Sherwood Park and St. Albert (even though Sherwood Park is technically a 'hamlet' and not a city.)

UCP lead in Calgary is probably biggest barrier to the NDP as they need to win there or be competitive there to form government.  It does though seem no matter which poll you look at most 2015 NDP voters are either in the NDP or undecided column.   Their big problem is vast majority who voted PC or Wildrose in 2015 favour UCP so it woud be 52% to 41% if people voted the same as 2015 and UCP winning a pretty big majority, around 65 seats while NDP sweeps Edmonton but wins only a few outside.  Notley really needs to portray Kenney as too right wing and hope enough red Tories from the PCs switch over, but my guess is if they do switch it will be to the Alberta Party not NDP.  So she needs the Alberta Party to get in at least mid teens and all their gains from the UCP, none from NDP.

Mainstreet will have a poll out tomorrow morning, 10 PM (Alberta time) for subscribers only.  Hints are it will be a big shocker although with the recent news a much closer race or even tied wouldn't totally shock me.  Solid NDP lead would though.

And...it's 50.7% UCP (-1.6 from Jan), 37.8 NDP (+9.3 from Jan), nobody else above 5%.

https://www.mainstreetresearch.ca/ndp-gain-nine-points-since-january-but-ucp-lead/

Pretty nothingburger for a "shocker", unless you subscribed to the conventional wisdom that the NDP was due for a total pummelling because, 2015 aside, anything north of 30% for them in Alta is "unnatural".

Ultimate banter outcome: fluke NDP re-election despite trailing significantly in the pv due to massive, useless UCP majorities in the countryside.

Not likely, Calgary and Edmonton Metropolitan Areas are roughly 2/3 of the ridings.  Only about 1/4 of the ridings are rural.  (The remainder are the smaller cities: Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, Red Deer, Grande Prairie and Fort McMurray.)  However, as a bit of confusion, one of the ridings including the name Medicine Hat, and one including the name Grande Prairie are largely rural.  Not sure about Fort McMurray or one of the Airdrie ridings (Calgary suburb) or one of the St Albert ridings (Edmonton suburb.)

The topline numbers are pretty much the same as the ThinkHQ poll, but the polls are quite different.

ThinkHQ Edmonton (CMA)
UCP: 34%
NDP: 52%

Mainstreet Edmonton
UCP: 39%
NDP: 38%

ThinkHQ Calgary (CMA)
UCP: 54
NDP: 33

Mainstreet Calgary
UCP: 45
NDP: 36

Question about Calgary: why do they keep on reelecting Nenshi if they are so conservative?

As a Calgarian, the simplest way I can explain it is that Calgarians are big-C Conservative, but when party identity is taken out of the equation, Calgarians tend to vote in a more centrist/progressive way. Our 2 mayors prior to Nenshi, at least, were strongly Liberal

I think Calgarians are also regionalist too so they don't mind bigger government if closer to home, but the further away it gets the more they think it will be hostile to them.  Otherwise most progressive at municipal, somewhere in between provincially, while most conservative at federal level.

By 'progressive' standards outside of Alberta, from what (admittedly) little I know about Nenshi, he's pretty conservative.

And even Ralph Klein was a Liberal when elected Calgary Mayor (he switched teams when he went provincial)

He’s moderately conservative fiscally, but strongly socially progressive

Canada also has a wierd tendency to elect mayors of the opposite side of their usual voting.

I think Nenshi also benefits from low turnout in the more conservative suburbs, although that's more an assumption than an analysis... He also is very charismatic and plain-speaking, just says what he thinks, regardless of whether popular or not/politically correct (I'm thinking specifically of this story (https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/06/23/calgary-flooding-2013-naheed-nenshi-darwin_n_3487421.html)). You know, sort of joking about Darwin Awards is not something the typical politician would do, but he's really just saying what people are thinking, so it's kind of refreshing that he's setting aside political correctness. Now that I've typed that, it sounds a bit like a certain US President, however he has a very different tone, obviously.

Yes, that's what I was mostly thinking of.  However, he's also spoken strongly in favor of the pipelines (obviously not a big surprise for the mayor of Calgary, however, it doesn't win 'progressive' credentials outside of Alberta) and he was a big proponent of the Olympic bid.

The UCP is still heavily favoured to win but FWIW the paywalled daily tracking from Mainstreet has the UCP lead is now barely in double digits and the NDP is now ahead in Edmonton and almost tied with the UCP in Calgary while the UCP is potentially wasting a ton of votes with a North Korean-style margin in rural Alberta.

If the UCP province-wide lead slips further to say mid-single digits, then things could actually get interesting

The UCP lead over the NDP continues to narrow and the NDP continues to gain ground in Edmonton and Calgary...

What’s the sweet spot for a narrow NDP victory? A 5 point popular vote deficit?

Would be hilarious if Notley lost the popular vote but won more seats like the Saskatchewan NDP in 2003.

In 1996 the BC NDP lost the popular vote to the BC Liberals 41-38 butbthey won in seats 39-33

What'd be interesting is if the NDP actually surpasses its 2015 Calgary performance (even though it's Kenney's  backyard)

The Saskatchewan P.Cs also lost the popular vote in 1986.

The biggest gap that I'm aware of is the recent New Brunswick election, though it resulted in a minority.  38.1-31.4% in favor of the Liberals but the P.Cs won the seat count 22-21.

That is almost certain to happen. In 2015 the NDP won Calgary 35% to 33% for the PCs and 26% for Wildrose. In a pure two-way race its almost certain that the NDP will get over 40% in Calgary...I think that Calgary is moving away from its past as a conservative monolith and will start to have a voting pattern more like Edmonton, Regina, Saskatoon and Winnipeg

I think the south end of Calgary where Kenney and Harper hail from still remains quite conservative, but that area has always been an anomaly in urban Canada.  However the other parts of the city are more mixed bag.  Central part has a lot of millennials and renters so should be good for the NDP.  Eastern and Northern parts are very ethnically diverse so depends on who can appeal most here while Western part is fairly affluent thus should favour UCP, but also percentage with post-secondary degrees well above national average so more your traditional Progressive Conservatives as opposed to right wing populists.  In the next week hopefully some other public polls come out just as I like to do a comparison.

Nevertheless I always felt things would tighten up and unlike some I never thought this was in the bag.  UCP favoured, yes, but certain win no.

I don't have access to the Mainstreet daily tracking polls, but it seems like the Alberta and Liberal parties are at risk of getting crushed in a two horse race.

I think that was always a given when things are as polarized as they are.  If you want to get rid of Notley, UCP is your best bet.  If you want to stop Kenney from becoming premier, NDP is your best bet. 

It all reminds me a bit of Quebec in 1981: the NDP/PQ running on first-term "good governance" that transcends the socialist/separatist stigma, vs a "natural governing party" seeking a united-force comeback as everything else gets sorted into the margins.  (And Claude Ryan's Liberals didn't have anything like UCP's bozo problems)

Well, Claude Ryan was claiming to be guided by "the hand of God".

EKOS poll for Unifor shows a tightening race, 46% for the UCP and 42% for the NDP (https://twitter.com/gilmcgowan/status/1112039973312585728?s=21)

As someone who worked on that poll, I would be a bit cautious. It was leaked by the client (we seem to have a problem with that, lol).

While the methodology is sound, my worry is that because we had to disclose the client (this is necessary under Alberta election law), conservatives were less likely to want to do the poll in the first place, as it was for a union.

Well, isn't the client allowed to leak his poll? He paid for it, after all.

How many people in Alberta would even know what "unifor" is? Unless you are a serious political junkie you probably think its a forestry company

Well, it was mostly online so not hard to look them up if they wanted to. And we had done another poll for them a few weeks before.

so comparing apples to apples a 13 point UCP lead is now a 4 point lead. The trend line is very clear!

That much is true. 

So the final election results are:

NDP: 44
UCP: 42
AP: 1

What are the 44 NDP ridings?

I think you'd have to start with the 20 city of Edmonton ridings and the two Edmonton 'inner' suburbs of St. Albert and Sherwood Park.  That's half way there.  What are the rest?

Who gets the other 13%?

That's not the percent of vote, 87 is the number of seats in the Alberta legislature.

Interestingly enough, the regional results make it seem like the UCP wouldn't get screwed by FPTP. The right and left would run up the score in rural Alberta/Edmonton and split Calgary.


Both Lethbridge seats, Banff, Grand Prairie, a few rural northernish seats like Fort-Saskatchewan-Vegreville. That would leave 12-14ish seats in Calgary, which seems doable in a popular vote tie.

FYI in 2015 the NDP won 16 out of 28 seats in Calgary CMA while winning the popular vote in Calgary by a slim 33-31 margin over the PCs.

If the NDP wins Calgary - say - by a 46-44 margin its not inconceivable that they could win 16 (or more) seats again.

Looks like Mainstreet has the NDP leading in both Edmonton and Calgary: Alberta is looking more and more like BC; NDP (unified left) vs UCP (unified right).

Edmonton
NDP - 46.4%
UCP - 37.8%
AP - 7.3%
FCP - 3.9%
Green - 2.4%
ALP - 2.2%

Calgary
NDP - 45%
UCP - 43.9%
AP - 3.9%
ALP - 3.9%
FCP - 1.6%
Green - 1.6%

Rest of Alberta
UCP - 65%
NDP - 23.3%
AP - 5.9%
FCP - 2.8%
ALP - 2%

Also very much like Manitoba and Saskatchewan where the NDP tends to do very well in Winnipeg, Regina and Saskatoon but get annihilated in rural areas

Maybe salvaging something in Red Deer as well; plus FN-heavy northern seats like Lesser Slave Lake and the Peace River seats; some other Edmonton exurban seats like Leduc-Beaumont, Morinville-St Albert, Spruce Grove-Stony Plain...

I presume someone here runs leantossup.ca - how does this poll look through the lens of your model?

I can imagine that in Calgary, the NDP will run up their margins in the inner seats (Buffalo, Mountain View, Varsity, Klein, Currie), and the UCP will run up their margins in the Western suburbs (especially South of the Bow, but also in the North-West). The South-East will probably also go UCP, but less strongly so, and then the North-East goes NDP?

Edit: Have any of our number mapped Nenshi's latest victory? I think I did the previous one.

I made this map a while ago. Purple is Nenshi (obviously), blue is Bill Smith.

()

My rough list is as follows (grouped roughly geographically as opposed to by margins):

23. Calgary-Buffalo
24. Calgary-Mountain View
25. Calgary-Currie
26. Calgary-Varsity
27. Calgary-Klein
28. Calgary-Bow
29. Calgary-East
30. Calgary-Cross
31. Calgary-Falconridge
32. Calgary-McCall
33. Lethbridge-West
34. Lethbridge-East
35. Morinville-St. Albert
36. Strathcona-Sherwood Park
37. Leduc-Beaumont
38. Spruce Grove-Stony Plain
39. Fort Saskatchewan-Vegreville
40. Maskwacis-Wetaskiwin
41. Lesser Slave Lake
42. Peace River

For seats 43 and 44 (and 45, if you want a stable majority including the Speaker), it'd have to be some combination of Banff-Kananaskis, Grande Prairie, Central Peace-Notley, Lac Ste. Anne-Parkland, one of (or both) Red Deer seats, and/or another Calgary seat.

Debate will be April 4th.

I would love it if the Alberta election came down to Maskwacis-Wetaskiwin, and the riding was decided by whichever party won Westerose.

New poll by Research Co that was in field March 29-April 1:

Voting Intention (Decided Voters) in Alberta:

United Conservative Party (UCP) – 45%
New Democratic Party (NDP) – 40%
Alberta Party – 6%
Liberal Party – 3%
Other parties – 6%

Its getting interesting

If the NDP manages to win reelection, do we think the UCP survives, or does it collapse back into its constituent parts?

To be honest, I think that too many of the leading folks from the legacy parties have already left the UCP and made their home in the Alberta Party, or one of the fringe right wing parties like the Freedom Conservatives or the Alberta Advantage Party. The UCP is now largely led by and made up of people from Jason Kenney's personal machine, as well as transplants from the federal Conservative Party. So I think it stays together as an entity. That said, there isn't really a go-to leader in the event that Kenney loses and steps down from the leadership, so it will be very interesting to see who would end up stepping up to take over.

Janet Brown Opinion research shows UCP with a 19 point lead.  It is a CATI which is what Nanos uses who has a good track record, but since it is out of whack with other pollsters I tend to think it is a bit closer, but would be nice if more polls were in the field.  Numbers in Edmonton and rest of Alberta are inline with other pollsters, main difference is in Calgary they show UCP solidly ahead rather than a competitive race.  Also CATI might skew towards older voters as all polls show UCP well ahead amongst older voters but NDP ahead amongst millennials so perhaps that is part of it.  Indeed millennial turnout will be key.  If they show up in droves it should be competitive and Notley might even win, but if they don't I expect Kenney to coast to a pretty easy victory.

UCP 53%
NDP 34%
Alberta Party 8%
Liberals 4%

If I understand well, the sponsor is the "Global Petroleum Show".

looks like that just like Ontario, there is a large mode affect in polling (excluding Mainstreet). Phone surveys show a large UCP lead, online surveys show a tighter race.

In Ontario there was remarkably little CATI polling done and that one poll i know of that was done with live-interviewers by Innovative had the NDP ahead so go figure...

I think turnout generally will be key... Turnout is frequently low in Alberta, I suspect because there are so few ridings that could go either way.  A by-product of this string of close polling results could be that it motivates suburban conservatives to go and vote because the result is in doubt.

Prior to 2015, it was pretty much a foregone conclusion it would be a conservative landslide thus why few bothered to show up.  I think since Kenney is more right wing and scares progressives more than past PC leaders, progressives will be motivated to show up while with conservatives hating Notley and even hating Trudeau more (who they think she is too cozy with) they will be motivated to show up as well.  It really comes down to do millennials show up as the NDP absolutely needs that to be even competitive.  Also the small numbers voting for Liberals and Alberta Party, can either win them over as neither can win much but they could play spoiler in some close ridings.

It’s worth noting that even in the orange wave of 2015, turnout only got to 54%. Even the turnout in our (Calgary’s) municipal election got higher than that in the Nenshi-Smith faceoff.

New poll from Leger (https://calgaryherald.com/news/politics/new-poll-shows-ucp-with-9-point-lead-over-ndp)

UCP: 47%
NDP: 38%
Alberta: 9%
Liberal: 4%

NDP upwards trend continuing, Still got a ways to go, but getting there.

Also, the guy who runs tooclosetocall.ca put up his model a few days back

https://www.tooclosetocall.ca/2019/04/the-alberta-2019-model-and-simulator-is.html

If the Alberta Party were to break through and get say, 5 seats, which would they be? I assume the seats held by Clark and Fraser would be two, plus Edmonton-McClung, but where else do they have any chance.

I presume if the Liberals were to get 5 seats it would be the 5 they had prior to 2015.

This is a bit of a crapshoot, but some ABP potentials:

• Calgary-Mountain View: Angela Kokott (pretty well-known former broadcaster) is the candidate
• Peace River: Dakota House (indigenous actor, known for his role on CBC's North of 60) is the candidate in this northern, 27% indigenous riding
• Calgary-McCall
• Calgary-East
• Calgary-Currie
• Edmonton-Castle Downs
• Edmonton-Riverview
• Edmonton-Ellerslie

The latter six are ridings where the ABP candidates have been quite active and have been featured a fair bit in social media from the central party. As anecdotal as this is, I drove through parts of McCall and East yesterday and the ABP candidates were holding their own in the private property lawn sign game. Given the present state of the race I don't necessarily think any of them will win, but in the event of a very random ABP breakthrough, the candidates in these ridings are the sort who I think could win.


Regarding the Liberals, it would be very unlikely that they would hold the same 5-seat combination that they did in 2015. Calgary-Mountain View, and possibly Calgary-McCall (but even that's an outside shot) would be the only seats of those 5 that I could see them holding. Of the others, Edmonton-City Centre doesn't even have a Liberal candidate. Edmonton-West Henday (rough successor to Meadowlark) is too much of an NDP-UCP race, and the Liberals really only won that in 2012 (barely) because their Leader was the candidate there. And Calgary-Buffalo has been made into the closest thing to an NDP stronghold in Calgary, and are running their finance minister there.

As sad as it is, I honestly can't think of any Liberal candidates who have a high enough profile to win, aside from Khan himself.

Technically an upwards trend relative to previous polls; but when it's a 9-point gap, vs other polls that show something narrower, one wonders whether this'll be yet another case where the left comes temptingly ohsoclose but just couldn't clear that final necessary hump, however much they spin the we-got-the-momentum narrative...

I think the NDP will likely outperform what they got in Ontario and may even outperform what they got in BC percentage wise, but their biggest problem seems to be the right is united behind the UCP and so uniting progressives unlike most provinces is not enough, they need to pull over some soft Tories which to date they have not been able to do.

Outperforming the ONDP wouldn't be a problem because there isn't a vestigially strong vote-grabbing "middle option" like the Wynne Libs in place  And likewise in BC relative to the Greens.

I don't think any of those you mentioned are likely to go AP. I'm hoping that Stephen Mandel can pull it off, but if he does it will be him and Clark.
I suspect David Khan is the only candidate who could win, and even then it's against the current Buffalo MLA. In Buffalo itself I suspect some Liberals will rally behind Joe Ceci.

Yeah, like I said I don't the ABP will actually win those ones, but if they were to surge in support and win 5, it's possible some on that list could be amongst the 5.

New polls!

Ipsos: (https://globalnews.ca/news/5144960/ucp-ndp-ipsos-global-poll-alberta-election-2019-post-debate/)

UCP: 47%
NDP: 39%
Alberta: 10%
Liberal: 2%


ThinkHQ: (https://thinkhq.ca/alberta-votes-2019-the-provincial-political-horserace/)

UCP: 46%
NDP: 40%
Alberta: 8%
Liberal: 2%

Swings from last poll from each pollster (disclaimer: the last poll from both were pre-campaign). The parenthesis is the percentage in the last poll

Ipsos
UCP: -5 (52%)
NDP: +4 (35%)
Alberta: +4 (6%)
Liberal: -3 (5%)

ThinkHQ
UCP: -3 (49%)
NDP: +2 (38%)
Alberta: no change (8%)
Liberal: -1 (3%)

Seems to be a gradual rise in Alberta Party support at the expense of the UCP and Liberals.

Yesterday was the first day (of 5) of advance voting, and 140,000 folks turned out to vote. This is compared to 58,000 on the first day of advance voting last election. It should be noted that Elections Alberta is allowing voters to vote at any advance polling station in the province, no matter the riding, so voters who are out of their home ridings but still in the province don’t have to request absentee ballots. Yesterday, 33,000 people voted at an advance poll outside their home riding.

What would happen to the votes of those 33000? Would they be counted in the riding they voted in or the riding they live in?

They’ll be counted for the riding they live in. When a voter goes to an advance poll outside their riding, the elections workers will print them a ballot for their home riding. After advance voting ends, the ballots will be sent to a central facility in Edmonton and counted there after Election Day votes are counted.

The rolling tracking poll that Mainstreet is doing shows the gap narrowing yet again and the NDP getting over the 40% mark for the first time...I don't see them closing the gap completely but if the province wide gap can get to 4 points and the NDP can move ahead in Calgary we could actually have a real race

I haven't been following this recently and I just realized the election is in less than a week, it looks like the NDP are surging in the polls. Could they even win, or a UCP victory still a sure thing?

There’s a mild chance the NDP could win. As in, 1 in 10 chance. The polls are tightening, but as far as I’m concerned, that impacts how big the opposition to the UCP is.

The CBC's forecast has the NDP's odds at less than 1%, that does seem a bit too low.

That's because the poll tracker isn't projecting out trends. It suggests odds of winning if an election were held today based on their current polling average, which still has the NDP down quite a bit.

Not to mention Eric Grenier's anti-NDP bias.

Another 136,000 Albertans voted yesterday, including 50,000 voting outside their district. Advance poll turnout this election has, in two days, surpassed the 4-day total from last election.

Momentum is still strong at the advance polls. 127,000 voted yesterday, bringing the to-date total to 403,000.

Worst case for the NDP is that Rachel Notley will have succeeded in making Alberta another Saskatchewan politically.

Since I don't know where to put non-US Political Geography and Demographics posts...

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=317871.0

How are you voting Njall?

Or, for that matter, another BC.  Because I can see the worst-case parallels with 1975 here; that is, ultimately no match for an aggressively united anti-socialist-hordes force, but still maintaining its prime-electable-alternative integrity.

Or to go back to Saskatchewan: the worst case'd likelier be closer to a 1986-style seat-total differential than the 1982-style seat total differential many were predicting because, y'know, Alberta just ain't a "socialistic" kind of province...

Alberta Party, although I would have voted NDP in a riding with a close UCP-NDP race. I currently live in an Edmonton riding that should be a shoo-in for the NDP and I really like my ABP candidate, so I can vote for him without worrying about accidentally electing a UCP MLA.

Two new polls from Angus Reid and Pollara

Angus Reid:52-396

Pollara: 45-388

I suspect the NDP are getting into "couldn't quite get over the hump" territory. Maybe they pull it off if Alberta Party vote collapses (very possible if they are AnyoneButKenney) and there's a polling error.

Probably the NDP has to hope for a BC 2013 scenario (except reversed).

At this point, my guess is just Alberta 2019 will be like BC 1975 rather than BC 2013: that is, the NDP (like 1975's BC NDP) will get the same 40+% of the vote that they got when they won in 2015 (like 1972), but they'll lose b/c the united right-wing is consolidated behind the UCP (like 1975's Social Credit).

Nanos is out: (https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5861122/Nanos-Research-Alberta-election-poll.pdf)
UCP: 44%
NDP: 36%
ABP: 12%
LIB: 3%

Mainstreet will release their final public poll tomorrow.

Also, a total of 696,000 Albertans ended up voting in the advance polls. This is up from 235,000 in 2015, and represents about 47% of the number of total voters from 2015.

The AP's vote share went the opposite direction I expected it to go in this campaign. I wonder how much of it is people who would otherwise be UCPers jumping ship.

From the news reports, the election campaign was extremely negative.  Sometimes that leads to polarization and third parties falling back, other times that leads to a 'pox on both your houses' (of the two main parties) and an increase in third party support.

Of course, that doesn't answer your question and I doubt this is something you didn't already know.

A whole slew of polls today, but all show UCP in lead with as small as 6 points for Pollara to as large as 14 points for Leger.  Most are 8-10 points so UCP definitely favoured, but slight chance of an NDP upset.  Nonetheless the fact it won't be a runaway landslide for the UCP does show that Alberta is not the conservative stronghold many think it is.  Mainstreet has the following seat projections:

UCP 54 seats
NDP 31 seats
Alberta party 1 seat
Liberals 1 seat

Our internal polls do not show the Liberals winning a seat BTW. The NDP are winning Mountain View, perhaps their only pickup of the night.

My calculations on the redistribution tipped it into the NDP column on 2015 results, because of NDP polls to the North that were transferred in, and Liberal polls in the West that were transferred to Varsity. Of course, if Swann had run in those areas in 2015, it probably would be different, but without him on the ballot, I was guessing the NDP would be favoured to win the seat.

Edit: Actually, my mistake, it's NDP if you treat the PC/WRP separately, however if you amalgamate their votes, it becomes a UCP seat on the redistribution, and therefore classing it as a "pickup" is fair (even though we know that 1+1 =/= 2 in political mergers, treating it that way is probably the fairest way of working out which seats are gains/losses).

The only other potential pickup I think is Grande Prairie.

Will you make an overall prediction of the seat count?

And Grande Prairie is notionally an NDP seat on the new boundaries

This is mine:
UCP: 56
NDP: 30
Alb: 1

Of course, all I've really done is apply the result of the 1975 B.C election to this, more or less.

1975
S.C: 35
NDP: 18
Liberal: 1
P.C: 1

(The P.C was Dr Scott Wallace from Oak Bay, the Liberal I believe was Gordon Gibson from North Vancouver-Seymour.)

NDP predictions:
Edmonton CMA: 20 of 27 ridings
Calgary CMA: 8 of 30 ridings
rest of province: 2 of 30 ridings.

According to election-atlas.ca, Gibson was from North Vancouver-Capilano.

Nothing official. We'll see how much time I have tomorrow.

Alright y'all, it's officially April 16th, Election Day, in Alberta so you know what that means: it's final prediction time! Please feel free to post your predictions of how you think the election will have played out by this time tomorrow.

As for me, I'm gonna say screw it, go w/ my heart (likely stupidly), & roll the dice to say:
NDP 43 (41.3%)
UCP 43 (39.4%)
AP 1 - Clark (12%)
LIB 0 (3.2%)
Freedom 0 (2.2%)

NDP minority government (possibly w/ Greg Clark providing confidence & supply), just b/c it'd be amazing to hopefully see the NDP snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

My final prediction is as follows, let's see what happens.

Gonna give the Alberta Party a second seat on a whim.

UCP: 57 - 8 in Edmonton (South, South West, St Albert, Morinville, Strathcona-SP, Sherwood Park, Leduc-Beaumont, Spruce Grove) and all seats lost not listed below.  
NDP: 27 - 19 in Edmonton (all except McClung and the above 8 ) ; 6 in Calgary (Buffalo, Varsity, Currie, Klein, Mountain View, North) ; 2 in the rest (two Lethbridge seats.)
AP: 2 - Mandel comes up the middle in McClung and wins by 1/2%, Clark is re-elected.
ALP: 0 - Khan loses Mountain View.
FCP: 0 - Fildebrandt loses significantly in Chestermere.

My guess:
UCP: 53
NDP: 32
AP: 1

Is Khan competitive in Mountainview or is he well behind?

UCP: 48
NDP: 38
AP: 1
LIB: 0

UCP leads by 7% in the popular vote (45-38), but the NDP is helped by an inefficient distribution of UCP votes, though not by enough to hold on to power.

Sorry.  Thanks for the correction.

Well, more competitive than any other Liberal (I think), but I think he's well behind. 

Personally, I think he would've had a better shot had he run in Calgary-McCall.

UCP:  42 Seats
NDP:  39 Seats
Alberta: 5 Seats
Liberal:  1 Seat

idk what the coalition would be

Mainstreet from Yesterday:
https://www.mainstreetresearch.ca/united-conservatives-headed-to-majority/?fbclid=IwAR27FyKxDTMjLRRDUVo1bLibO4enox_AL5WjY9MeMOnxAdEt9xD3q-z-PC0

UCP - 47.5%
NDP - 40.1%
AB - 7.9%
ALP - 2.1%

What is the likelihood (my hope) that the UCP blows out their vote in rural Alberta, mostly the south, as well as a few, urban seats mostly in south Calgary, and the NDP squeaks in with a slim majority, 44. That's 8 seats lost, say 4 in the cities and 4 rural?
We are seeing the NDP leading in Edmonton, basically a tie in Calgary, but blown out in Rural Alberta.In Calgary and Edmonton if the UCP vote is concentrated in only a few seats...
perfect scenario for the NDP? :)

there's always that chance that the polling error Mainstreet saw in the Calgary mayoral election plays out in this election too, and the NDP ends up winning most of the seats in Calgary. Not sure how likely that is though, as their crosstabs definitely look more reasonable in this election.

My rough prediction, FWIW:
UCP - 51 seats, 48%
NDP - 35 seats, 41%
ABP - 1 seat, 8%
Others - 0 seats, 3%

2019 Alberta election
Jason Kenney-UCP: 61+36 48.2%(+48.2%)
Rachel Notley-NDP: 25-27 38.7%(-1.9%)
Stephen Mandel-Alberta: 1-2 7.4%(+5.1%)
David Khan-Liberal: 0-1 2.6%(-1.6%)
87 seats
44 for majority

Mine are as follows.  Usually for whatever reason the governing party tends to slightly outperform polls so I show the NDP a bit on the high side.

UCP 49 seats - 46%
NDP 36 seats - 41%
Alberta Party 1 seat

Is this an Alberta-specific pattern or wider? The PCs of course were the governing party for a long time so it could have been anti-PC bias in the polls.

Student vote surprisingly favours UCP and close to my prediction

UCP 49 seats
NDP 35 seats
Alberta party 3 seats

Is there a good site to track results?

CBC results here. (https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/elections/alberta/2019/results/)

Given that this is still a respectable showing in the face of a united opposition, does anyone think Notley has a future in national politics? I know she is to the center of most of her party, but given that the NDP is likely to lose seats in this falls election I could see her as viable candidate for the leadership of the national party.

Looks like the UCP has won and it's not very close either.

A wider vote differential than many forecast (at this point, about 52-34)--but for the NDP to still manage 25 seats or so on that margin isn't quite a *blowout* blowout, I reckon...

The NDP did even worse then I expected.

I'm not sure if the popular vote totals right now are reliable given counting is still incomplete. It does look like my expectations were about right, this is a bit similar to Ontario 2018 imo.

CBC projects that Stephen Mandel has lost. It seems the Alberta Party may get 0 seats, and it could just be a UCP vs NDP parliament.

United Conservatives are now up to 55% of the vote.  Obviously remains to be seen how this changes with the ballots that won't be counted tonight, but the NDP are lucky to have so far won 24 or so seats with a popular vote of 55-32%.

wow fantastic result for Kenney and UCP.

Rip Notley. She was the best Alberta was ever going to realistically elect. Hopefully she sticks around & makes a play in 2023.

Tbh the UCP appear to have slightly underperformed if anything the CBC seat projections. So it is a good night for them but no upset.

If anybody's curious as to what happens next, Notley will still be Premier tomorrow. She remains in office until she resigns *or* is defeated in a confidence vote in the legislature. But with such a strong UCP majority, she'd be sure to lose a confidence vote, so to save the humiliation, she'll obviously skip that part.

The Lt. Gov. of Alberta (Lois Mitchell) will get a call or a visit from Notley sometime this week (tomorrow, perhaps). There, Notley will inform the LG that she wishes to resign, along with the rest of the Executive Council. If Notley wants to be extra-proper about it, she'll also advise the LG that Jason Kenney would make a suitable replacement. Regardless, the LG will respond by summoning Kenney, where she'll ask him to form a government for Alberta. Upon accepting, Kenney *officially* becomes Premier-designate, with Notley remaining a caretaker-Premier during the transition period (probably a couple weeks).

Fast forward to the last day of transition: Notley will visit the LG that morning & officially take her leave from her role as Premier. Then the swearing-in ceremony will happen with the LG presiding, the Secretary to Cabinet will swear in Kenney as Premier. Once sworn in, Kenney will present the LG with a letter called an instrument of advice, recommending the appointment of the rest of the Executive Council. The LG will accept, & Kenney's cabinet will be sworn in. At that point, the new (UCP) Government will be officially formed & free to exercise the full constitutional authority of the Crown-in-right-of-Alberta. The legislature will then be recalled sometime after that, once Kenney's got a Throne Speech ready.

Oh, & also, Notley officially announced during her concession speech tonight that she's not stepping down as leader, so she will take up the post of the Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition in the new legislature.

Every riding has at least 2 polls still outstanding (4 have 3 polls.)   I think it's safe to say these 2 polls per riding are the ballots that won't be counted tonight.  By my math the total votes counted so far are 1,661,840.  There are around 223,000 votes to be counted.  For the polling firms to be close to accurate, of these 223,000 votes, about 185,000 have to be for the NDP and about 35,000 for the UCP.


These are the closest ridings, all of them have 2 polls outstanding.
NDP numbers are the first column, UCP are the second column.

1.Calgary-Currie,  8,270, 8,662
2.Calgary-Falconridge, 5,853-6,016
3.Calgary-Varsity, 7,113-7,601
4.Edmonton South 9,108-8,523
5.Edmonton South West, 6,974-7,742
6.Edmonton-West Henday, 6,873-6,760
7.Banff-Kananakis, 8,273-8,945
8.Lethbridge West, 10,296-9,919
9.Sherwood Park, 9,849-10,763

These are the last four ridings still to report final totals tonight
1.Calgary-Peigan
2.Drumheller-Stettler
3.Fort McMurray-Wood Buffalo
4.Red Deer South

Not sure what happened in Calgary-Peigan.  It's now up to having just two polls outstanding, but this one additional poll added 3,949 votes.  If this is not a mistake, it brings the total votes counted to 1,665,789 (all by my math)

Biggest surprises for me? Banff-Kananaskis and Lethbridge West, as well as how badly David Khan did. My prediction wasn't too bad, although I underestimated how inefficient the AP vote was.

Turned out to be a snoozer. UCP overperformed and NDP underperformed the polling. I wonder if there was a shy Tory thing going on or if the UCP was just more motivated?

I suspect shy Tory.  And the NDP overperformed in the seats relative to underperforming in the polling.

Though the Alberta Party being shut out at least neutralizes the likelihood of their pole vaulting ahead of the NDP in 2023...

Poor Rachel. Was it surprising that Greg Clark lost by so much?

Are UCP connected in any way with CPC?

Unofficially, but it's the same people.
From what I know, only the NDP is officially linked to the provincial partys.
Which is why you see in Ontario the PCs, Progressive Conservatives and in Saskatchewan, the SaskParty, etc... All are conservative parties with I would assume have unofficial ties to the federal CPC.

Thanks!

Everyone on Twitter was lambasting Forum's last poll because of how off it was compared to everyone else's, but it turned out to be the closest. I really do fear there was some herding going on with the other pollsters. Our internal riding polling was consistent with a 15-20 point lead for the UCP.

Yes. Most people thought he would be re-elected with an increased margin.

He should never have stepped down as leader. What was his plan, that they would double their seats every election by changing leaders  like Quebec solidaire? :P

Interesting.  I wonder compared to your numbers and general what went wrong.  Looking through the regionals, it looks like the polls were pretty close in Edmonton.  In Calgary they were all over the map and UCP was in line with the most optimistic ones.  It seems though Calgary is the one place the NDP might have outperformed or at least tied 2015 results vote wise, but UCP got the combined PC + WRP vote thereby ensuring they won big as NDP only won Calgary on strong vote splits.  NDP got 62% in Edmonton last time around so not surprised they fall a bit there.

It looks like polls messed up the worse in rest of Alberta which on the seat count front doesn't matter as all showed UCP well ahead, they just had an even bigger blowout, but it did affect topline numbers.  It seems in most elections rural areas is where right tends to most overperform the polls so I wonder if there is a shy element that distrusts pollsters on the right so doesn't respond.  We've seen this problem in other provinces too in rural areas.

Still this was a pretty big miss and only reasons pollsters aren't being raked over is at least they correctly predicted the winner.  Quebec saw a similar miss but at least that could be explained by 19% drop in Anglophone vote turnout thus why Liberals underperformed there.  For whatever reason it seems there is a tendency to underestimate the right.  Maybe age demographics in that millennials lean left, but don't vote as often as older voters?  Or perhaps shy Tory effect?

  Do the results in Alberta have a message for the upcoming federal election?

It will make federal-provincial relations even rockier and means Trudeau has fewer allies, but I wouldn't read too much.  For starters Harper got 59.5% in 2015 while Kenney got 55% so Kenney actually underperformed what Tories usually get federally mind you in Alberta Tories usually get about 10% more federally than provincially.  I think since the Tories are expected to win the vast majority, maybe all, seats in Alberta it probably is less meaningful than if in Ontario, Quebec, or BC.  Still if the Tories coast to coast can win in all the areas they are provincially it would mean a majority, but I am not sure this will happen, especially in Quebec where CAQ and Tories may sit in similar spots on political spectrum but also have vast differences too.

I think for Mainstreet, they were trying to over-correct for their Calgary blunder. I mean, the had the NDP and UCP neck and neck.

Nice to have Alberta home again.   

I don't think it was a 'shy conservative' vote so much as the turnout being quite different from the pool of all voters.  About 1.9 million Albertans voted in this election, which is about 70% of the 2.7 million registered voters.  The 2015 election, with about 1.5 million votes, had a 57% registered voter turnout and that had been the highest turnout in Alberta for a number of elections.

It seems reasonable to conclude that virtually all of these additional 400,000 voters voted United Conservative and that many of the 800,000 registered voters who didn't vote were younger or from more marginal communities.  From a quick look at the riding results, it seems that turnout in Edmonton considerably lagged turnout in the rest of the province (especially in the areas of Edmonton most favorable to the NDP.)

Perhaps a lot of the new conservative votes were ones in 2015 who were sick of the PCs and unsure of Wildrose so just stayed home or could be a lot of conservatives just assumed Alberta would always vote Conservative so didn't bother showing up and the NDP election poured cold water on that idea so they showed up.  if you look at federal numbers, I don't think the UCP vote total is too far off what the federal Tories usually get.

1.Provincial turnout is usually lower than federal turnout.

2.Not likely as about 200,000 more people voted in 2015 than in 2012 and turnout increased from 54% of registered voters to 57%.  I believe this provincial election will have the highest 'registered voter' turnout ever and either the highest or the second highest turnout of all eligible voters for a provincial election.

As far as I'm concerned, by far the simplest explanation is that there was a surge in turnout with nearly all of these new (provincial) voters voting for the UCP.  Maybe it's too simple.

I wonder if US leftists will learn from their Canadian cousins?  Or will they forge ahead to impose carbon taxes?

Ahh yes, we should learn from the party that lives in denial, with no plan for the future & nothing to offer people. The only thing that Jason Kenney & the UCP have offered is a failure to recognize that a changing economy & their climate change denial are a dead-end for the environment, the economy, & the future.

Any reason why Lethbridge has flipped from the Klein era.  During Klein's reign it was Lethbridge West that went PC while Lethbridge East went Liberal whereas last night Lethbridge East went solidly UCP while Lethbridge West (unless absentee ballots change things) went NDP.  Any reason for this?  Only I can think of is redistribution moved the university into a different riding or is there some other reason for this?

Candidate strength (Ken Nicol for the Libs in the 90s/00s, Shannon Phillips for the NDP presently).  And also remember that the Alberta Libs' "left identity" was somewhat ambiguous in Nicol's time--perhaps more comparable to the Alberta Party presently than the NDP...

Kenney has asked the Lt. Gov. to swear him in on April 30th. He'll then convene a spring session of the legislature during the third week of May.

It seems Alberta is the West Virginia equivalent in Canada in terms of the popularity of combatting climate change and general significant right-wing leanings, so the UCP's win should hardly be indicative of Canadian politics as a whole(though Trudeau soiled his personal brand so could very well lose) and is certainly not a reliable indicator of politics in other countries.

lol, the provincial politics of Alberta definitely compares to the US as a whole.

Heh.

The NDP vote compared:

Alberta 2019

Calgary CMA  32.2%
Edmonton CMA  46.8%
Rest of Alberta  20.9%
Alberta total  32.2%

Saskatchewan 2016

Regina  43.1%
Saskatoon  38.1%
Rest of Saskatchewan  22.8%
Saskatchewan total  30.2%

And the UCP/Sask Party vote:

Alberta 2019

Calgary CMA 54.8%
Edmonton CMA  39.7%
Rest of Alberta  67.4%
Alberta total  55.2%

Saskatchewan 2016

Regina  49.3%
Saskatoon  55.5%
Rest of Saskatchewan  70.3%
Saskatchewan total  62.6%

I wonder who will be in cabinet? Ric McIver, Jason Nixon and Tany Yao spring to mind.

Can the Americans please stop relitigating their country's political disputes on the international threads?

Since we're talking about a "have" province vs a "have-not" state, the W Virginia comparison does not quite compute.  Perhaps if the Texas Panhandle were paired off with DFW, you'd have a closer equivalent, economic, political, etc...

Well, if I were a betting man, I'd say that Ric McIver will be the next Finance Minister.

Saskatoon = Calgary, Regina = Edmonton?

Regina=Edmonton largely true although Regina a smaller city but still if you look at results do seem somewhat similar.  Saskatoon is more conservative than Regina, but not as conservative as Calgary which is without question the most conservative city in Canada. 

Anyone know when the updates on the absentee ballots will be?  Will be interesting if any flip.  Based on numbers and closeness I could see the following flipping:

UCP

Sherwood Park
Edmonton Southwest
Banff-Kananaskis
Calgary-Currie
Calgary-Falconbridge
Calgary-Varsity

NDP

Edmonton South
Edmonton West-Henday
Lethbridge West

So if things go NDP's way they could win a total of six seats in Calgary which is not a bad showing in the face of a united right and a good base to work from next time around.  UCP is unlikely to flip the three NDP seats.

On the other hand if UCP can hold the one they have in Edmonton and pick up the other two that would give Edmonton more representation on the government side.  Also I suspect any member elected in Edmonton is almost guaranteed a cabinet post.

Will be interesting to see final vote totals, but pretty sure UCP will exceed combined PC + WRP vote of 52% in 2015.  They would need to get only 28% in the absentee ballots for them to fall below this while 13% to fall below 50% so won't happen.  Likewise no way NDP beats either their 2015 record of 40.6% or falls to third best at 29.2% in 1986, otherwise will be their second best showing in both seats and vote percentage.  Though may if they do well in absentee ballots get their highest absolute vote total as turnout was much higher than 2015 so could get same absolute total even with a lower share of the popular vote.

Alberta has the most "American" political culture of any province.

Any idea on how "Vote Anywhere" ballots will lean? I have seen idle speculation that they will lean UCP.

In most of Canada strong majorities agree that climate change is caused by human activity but in AB/SK it's around 50% or so I believe.

Elections Alberta has updated the results so that there is now only 1 poll per district outstanding.  The UCP gained the most votes but the results have marginally improved for the NDP from 55.2-32.2 to 55.1-32.4%.  From my memory of the results prior to these additions, the UCP gained about 71,000 votes and the NDP about  45,000.  No seats have changed over.  I'm not sure how many votes are still outstanding.  The biggest change in the close ridings is that the UCP added about 1,000 votes to their lead in Banff-Kananaskis.

https://results.elections.ab.ca/wtResultsPGE.htm  

In Edmonton Southwest, the lead is 856 with only around 1,600 votes left so pretty much a near certainty Madu Kaycee wins his seat thus ensuring at least one UCP seat in Edmonton.  Edmonton West-Henday widened to 316 lead so will be interesting what position Kenney gives Madu Kaycee as cabinet minister since he will be only one from Edmonton.

Going through them all, the most likely outcome is probably no change.  Calgary-Falconbridge and Calgary-Currie the NDP only closed by single digits number wise and not sure if enough ballots out to flip.  Lethbridge West so the gap almost cut in half so if any flips, that would be the most likely but still think NDP will hold that.  Sherwood Park and Calgary-Varsity both widened as did Edmonton South so no way those are flipping either.  Banff-Kananaskis saw a big jump as mentioned and numbers actually look more realistic as based on 2015 the initial results looked out of whack with overall swing.  But it is also a quirky riding too in terms of you have in the west around Banff and Canmore a large tourism industry while eastern parts more ranchland so former being fairly progressive latter fairly conservative.

Actually the first batch suggest really was a mixed bag but nothing significant.  In BC, they usually favour the NDP, but not sure if that will be the case in Alberta and so far no sign off this.  Advanced polls favoured UCP, but in BC, advanced ones favour BC Liberals.  Actually advanced polls pretty much always tend to favour parties on the right, but up until now BC was the only province doing absentee ballots.

I'm disappointed in the results, but not surprised. I think most of us that watched in awe of the 2015 election pretty much knew it was likely a one-term government. At least they're still a respectably strong opposition caucus with their seat count, unlike most Alberta governments in the past.


What were the 2015 results for the NDP? I think I read they were at like 62% in Edmonton then, so it's a pretty steep loss there, but they seem to have held on very well in terms of seats.

It seems to me like the biggest problem now for the Alberta NDP is Calgary, where they've been historically weak (both at the federal and provincial levels). They really capitalized on a divided right-wing in 2015. If they ever want to form government again, it seems like they have to make massive inroads into Calgary and re-solidify Edmonton.

Also, I know the results haven't been finalized yet, but what was the median seat?

There are still 86,000 votes outstanding and it is the special mobile ones to be counted.  Looking at the numbers, NDP is only 22,000 votes shy of what they got in 2015 so they will likely have a higher raw total and when all is said and done, probably the third highest ever in Alberta history only behind off course UCP this time and Alberta PCs in 2001.  UCP will for sure pass the million vote marker.

Of the absentee ballots counted so far the results are 51.6% UCP to 33% NDP so very slight swing to NDP but not much and was far from uniform across ridings.

I know federal and provincial politics are quite different in Canada, but I have to wonder if the results in Calgary could potentially bode well for the Liberals in Calgary Centre and Calgary Skyview.  The Alberta NDP ran very strong in Calgary-McCall, which seems to overlap with the federal Calgary Skyview riding.

Generally the federal Conservatives' total should be higher than the provincial total, but regardless, I can't see the Liberals getting near the NDP total.

I would argue the Liberals' best shot for a hold is Edmonton Centre.

Even if Calgary Centre falls, Calgary Skyview seems far more likely to hold to the LPC. I'm not trying to translate Alberta NDP results into LPC results of course. However, the provincial Calgary-McCall, where the Alberta NDP won a majority and their best results in the city, overlaps with the federal Calgary Skyview riding. That was the Liberal's best riding in Calgary and in all of Alberta by margin. I think the federal NDP is too strong in Edmonton for the Liberals to have anything close to reliable or safe now.

It depends how you look at it, I think the Conservatives have a high chance of sweeping Alberta so whether Calgary or Edmonton swings more won't affect the total. Demographically Skyview and Mill Woods may have similar results which are different to Calgary and Edmonton Centre. Interestingly although Edmonton is definitely the more left city, EPP saw Calgary as better for the Liberals last time, although it seems most of us have put Centre as a Conservative gain and the others TCTC. The Liberals may have denied the NDP a second seat last time so there's clearly a lot of crossover. As is often the case with Canada, just wait and see what happens.

Indeed, many Americans even moved there...

IIRC in the 2015 election the Conservatives got around 55% of the vote in Calgary and just under 50% in Edmonton.  In other words Calgary voted very similarly to the way it did federally (though with the main center-left competitor being different) while Edmonton is full of "orange Tories."

ETA: Clarification -  I mean the 2015 federal election.

I agree that we'll just have to see what happens. A lot will depend on the vote split and how many on the vote strategically once again, something I think that's more likely to happen in Calgary than Edmonton. I'd actually guess that Calgary Skyview is probably the most likely Liberal seat in Alberta, but a lot will depend on how they do nationwide. I think Edmonton Strathcona still stays with the NDP. Linda Duncan may have been a strong candidate and incumbent, but I think that's a fundamentally NDP seat.


Do you know what the median seat was in this election? I'm curious to know.

In Calgary-Varsity, Calgary-Currie, Banff-Kananaskis, and Edmonton Southwest, NDP candidates have all conceded defeat so obviously based on outstanding votes they probably don't believe there is a realistic chance of catching up.  So at this point Calgary-Falconbridge, Edmonton West-Henday, and Lethbridge West still outstanding.  Edmonton West-Henday swung towards NDP in absentee ballots so far so trend looks good for them.  Lethbridge West did swing in UCP's favour, but I've heard only 300 ballots left to count and 200 vote gap so seems unlikely they will close it.  Anybody know what the recount threshold is?

Final results are in and no changes in seats, 63 seats for UCP, 24 seats for NDP.  It does seem the final ballots did help NDP a bit but overall results only changed slightly.

UCP 54.8%
NDP 32.7%

The NDP though did get more votes total then they did in 2015 and had the third best showing in total votes in Alberta history only behind off course UCP, and Alberta PCs in 2001.

Of the mobile polls counted today the results were as follows.

UCP 46.2%
NDP 38.8%

So actually polls were pretty close to this one, but way off on the others.

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I would be interested in seeing a map of how UCP did compared to the combined PC + WRP vote in 2015.  Overall they exceeded the combined vote slightly.  It looks like in Rural Alberta especially the northern parts they exceeded it greatly and also did in Edmonton while Calgary got about the same so interesting to see what it visually looks like.

The strongest area for the Alberta Party was the suburbs around Edmonton.  From the election results prior to the final outstanding ballots, the Alberta Party received more than 10% of the vote in 28 of the 87 ridings.
Over 10% of vote
Calgary: 7/26
Calgary suburbs 0/4 (both Airdrie ridings, Highwood (Okotoks) Chestermere-Strathmore)
Edmonton: 10/20
Other Cities: 3/8 (8 ridings: 2 Lethbridge, 2 Red Deer, 2 Fort McMurray, Grande Prairie and Medicine Hat-Cypress, the Fort McMurray and Medicine Hat ridings might be majority rural)
Rural: 3/22
Edmonton suburbs: 5/7

If the Alberta Party doesn't go back to Greg Clark as leader, I would suggest Neil Korotash who ran in Morinville-St Albert and received about 14.5% of the vote.

For the NDP, if Rachel Notley does decide to step down as leader, I would think the front-running candidates would likely be

From Edmonton: David Eggen or Deron Bilous
From Calgary: Kathleen Ganley or Irfan Sabir

I would also expect Rod Loyola to run with the endorsement of the 'socialist caucus.'

I think Shannon Phillips is probably too isolated as the only member of the caucus not from the Edmonton or Calgary regions, and she also won re-election by a very narrow margin.

What about Joe Ceci?  He was finance minister so pretty high profile.  Sarah Hoffman is another but she unlike Notley came across more as the pitbull so good person to play a lead role in attacks in opposition but not sure if best to lead.

As for Notley running in 2023, I am of two minds.  She suffered a pretty bad defeat and in almost any other province would mean resigning.  It's very rare for a defeated leader to come back and win.  On the other hand the two elections she was leader were NDP's two best showings so real risk the party falls back to its normal single digits with someone else so probably best to stay on for now as the next election is not for another four years so lots of time to see how things unfold and go from there.

In Saskatchewan, Allan Blakeney ran again in 1986 after being reduced to 9 seats in 1982--and actually won the popular vote, though losing in seat count...

it's not like anyone else is going to do any better than Notley. She should stay for as long as she wants.

Some (most?) of you may have seen these already, but I thought I'd best upload them here as well. These are some poll by poll maps taken from the 2019 Alberta Provincial election results.  

Vote share of winners in each poll, based on the preliminary (end of election night) count. Given that the out-of-riding ballots aren't linked to specific polls, they shouldn't affect these, although any recounts might.

As always, bigger versions in the Gallery (and even bigger versions are available).

Calgary:
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Edmonton:
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Lethbridge:
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Medicine Hat:
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High River and Okotoks:
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Red Deer:
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Grande Prairie:
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Fort McMurray:
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I'm also working on Election Day Turnout maps (bearing in mind that Advance Poll voters won't show up on that map, except by their absence). There are some weird instances, however, so I don't think I should upload them without closer inspection.

Firstly, some polls have greater than 100% election day turnout (highest is St Albert poll 75, where the 51 voters cast 114 ballots, if I remember correctly - and those are numbers on the Elections Alberta website), there were a handful of others, too, with above 100% turnout. Some of these might be in growth areas, and perhaps the enrollment figures were recorded at the time of the redistribution or something... that could explain it.

Secondly, I think the Fort Mac seats often have very low turnout, whereas it was suggesting quite high turnout. Perhaps that's not wrong, but I want to check more closely first.

I also want to review my handling of split and combined polls, to check I'm not double-counting anything.


Edit: Here is a teaser, but bear in mind that I haven't QA'd these yet, so errors are possible.

Calgary:
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Edmonton:
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I'll probably also work on some vote by party versions, too, similar to Earl's Alberta Party map above, although I don't think I'll be able to achieve a swing map because that would require me to match pre- and post-redistribution polls to one another.

Polls with more than 100% turnout are usually explained by people registering to vote on election day.

Anyway, looking at the Calgary map, one could easily gerrymander the city for 1-2 more NDP ridings, with a nicer looking map.

Yeah, St Albert poll 75 is up in one corner - Google Maps satellite view had a cluster of small houses or condos - looked like maybe a retirement village or something, just very small houses, and the rest of the poll was mostly streets and fairly recently cleared dirt, so presumably a new housing estate. A similar thing could also be said of the poll the NDP won in High River, as I was discussing with Miles yesterday, so yeah, I was figuring that the high turnout polls are mostly going to be in growth areas where people move in and register on the day (similar things happen here, despite compulsory voting, etc - lowest turnout is in high "churn" electorates near the inner city, where people may have not updated their enrollment after they move out, while highest turnout is in outer suburban areas with high development, because of the large number of people moving in but few people moving out.

Just looking at Calgary-Varsity, it looks like voters in the most conservative part of the riding were most likely to turn out on Election Day, but whether that's because they had higher turnout, or whether it was because the other parts were more likely to vote in Advance polls, I couldn't say.

It would be possible to deliver more Calgary ridings to the NDP by changing the boundaries, but remember that Calgary-Falconridge was quite close, changing those boundaries would make the NDP vote less efficient if the party were to do slightly better in another election (would be accused of packing). Moving the (predominantly NDP) polls North of the Bow River from Calgary-Bow to Calgary-Varsity would probably make sense, though, and may have allowed the NDP to win Varsity (especially if the safe Conservative polls in the NW corner were to drop out to accommodate the new polls from Bow).

I would move McCall and Falconridge  up, as I think it makes more sense to have the Skyview ranch area in McCall.

And yeah, it doesn't make sense that the Montgomery neighbourhood is in Bow and not Varsity.

I'm inclined to agree with you about McCall and Falconridge - I think those changes make sense, however in a good year for the NDP, the current version might give three Calgary ridings (McCall, Falconridge, and perhaps North East, although perhaps the margin in North East is too large for that to make a difference), while in a bad year for the NDP, it only yields one NDP riding (McCall). Given the closeness of Falconridge currently, it probably typically would give two ridings. Moving McCall and Falconridge North probably gives two solid NDP ridings, regardless of how well the NDP performs, reducing NDP vote efficiency in a good year. Some on the left might accuse such riding boundaries of packing. All that said, I think that those changes make sense.

That whole North-Eastern area was split across McCall and Falconridge prior to the redistribution, so I've remapped the poll results with the old boundaries overlaid as the riding boundary layer.

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And to complete the set of poll results with different boundaries overlaid, here are Calgary and Edmonton with the current federal riding boundaries.

Calgary:
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Edmonton:
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and federally:
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By the way, I realised that there was a slight error in the maps I posted last night - mapping the polygons didn't map the holes within the polygon, so it over-plotted polls 10 and 11 in Banff-Kananaskis. I've edited the post above to correct the map accordingly. My humble and sincere apologies for this error - I've been mapping in R for a while, but only very basic stuff, I'm just starting to learn a few of the slightly more complex functions and techniques (I learnt a few functions I haven't used before creating these maps over the past couple of days).

Maybe mild "historical continuity" sense in that Montgomery and Bowness were something like twin Calgary satellites prior to being annexed by Calgary in 1963-4...

How about a map of Banff, Lake Louise, Canmore, and Jasper.  Those are fairly touristy towns so wouldn't be surprised if they went NDP even though UCP won the ridings.  Sort of akin of Blaine County in Idaho and Teton County in Wyoming and sometimes Summit County in Utah.  All very red states and surrounding areas deeply Republican but those usually vote Democrat for that reason.

Those towns tend to be quite non-Conservative (see various federal and provincial elections on election-atlas.ca). I have some family stuff planned, but can do them in a bit.

Excellent comparison points.

Here is Banff, Canmore, Cochrane, plus the nearby reservations, but also the rural parts of the riding bordering on Calgary:

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Jasper will take me a little longer yet - there are a few towns but large spaces between them. I might need to do a few insets instead, because they aren't especially clear. I'll play around with it and try to get something for you in the next 24 hours or so.

Great work, was interested to see this!

Banff looked odd but then I suppose out of the 'rural' federal ridings, only Fort McMurray-Cold Lake and Lethbridge were worse for the CPC - and it showed in the latter this time round, with Fort McMurray having it's own resource-driven outcome. If I'm not mistaken the UCP parts of Banff-Kananaskis are in other federal ridings.

No surprise here.  It looks like Cochrane went UCP but it is in Airdrie-Cochrane not Banff-Kananaskis.  It looks like there most of the towns went NDP as did Indian reserves and it was more the ranchland areas that UCP won and won big.  That might explain why on election night it looked close, but absentee heavily favoured UCP as perhaps many of the ranchers voted here who would have heavily voted UCP.  Other possibility is a lot of the developers in Banff voted in this and they probably unlike many of the service workers went UCP whereas most service workers in Banff probably went NDP.  Probably the fact those towns have a lot of millennials helped the NDP, but also many in the service industry.  My guess is many of those got a raise in wages as they would have benefited most from higher minimum wage so probably favour the party who raised it, not the party who opposed the raises although UCP won't rollback minimum wage but have said open to doing so for tipping businesses (Not working in this industry, I would be interested if higher minimum wage meant people tipped less).

If anyone's interested I'm calculating a scenario with three member districts.

Greg Clark still loses.

The boundary looks weird because it crosses the river, but Bowness and Montgomery are actually very similar communities due to their similar patterns of development as satellite communities, and their demographics (and voting behaviours). They also share a main street (Bowness Road) which seamlessly connects them and actually makes them appear to be parts of the same community when you drive through them.



The area between the Stoney Nation and Calgary isn’t ranchland (mostly), it’s actually primarily populated by very wealthy families living on acreages who commute into Calgary for work and/or school. If you know (or look up) the communities of Springbank and Elbow Valley, you’ll know/see what I mean. I would actually guess that, combined with the community of Priddis (south of the Tsuu T’ina Nation), over 10,000 very wealthy folks live in that area. Adding those wealthy communities after Cochrane was redistricted out was how the riding was able to continue to exist, and under the distribution of 2015 votes to new boundaries, it actually made the riding more conservative. My explanation for why the out of ED advance votes were so heavily UCP was that the many of the wealthy folks (and their kids; student vote results incicate kids there vote almost as conservative as their parents) voted in advance polls at or near their work or school locations in Calgary.

Sure, but rivers make natural riding boundaries, and natural riding boundaries within cities should be used as much as possible over dividing up neighbourhood clusters.

I would agree with that, but also major streets as opposed to small ones or residential should be used too.  Certainly rivers make a lot of sense for boundaries and even in rural areas in many ways are useful ones as our mountains (not for urban but rural).

Here is the whole-of-province map (bigger version in gallery, even bigger version available). Obviously less detailed in parts, but happy to zoom in and do detailed maps of any towns of interest (yes, I realise I still haven't done Jasper yet, for Miles). This is now the Official Results, whereas the other maps were all preliminary results. I think Elections Alberta has corrected the two data entry errors in Calgary-East, where the Liberals were "winning" two polls, which were obviously actually NDP votes. Although I think this looks pretty, if you want better detail, obviously head on over to election-atlas.ca (http://www.election-atlas.ca/alberta/), which I think is managed by another poster on here.

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Also, Miles, that poll in High River we were discussing - looks like that might also have been a typographical error in the preliminary results, as it seems to no longer be a win for the NDP.

Don't know if there is one but I'd be interested to see the results for 2019 on the 2015 boundaries (mostly to see Calgary)

That one's on the previous page (it's listed as 2010 boundaries, as that was when the redistribution occurred, this election was on the 2017 boundaries). It's easy enough to do, though, if you want other areas. I've edited my previous post to include Edmonton on 2010 boundaries.

I've also completed maps for 2015, both "true value" and "merged PC + WRP", with both boundaries from the 2010 redistribution and 2017 redistribution (so basically four sets). Happy to upload them if anyone is interested - if so, would mods prefer I post them here or go all necromancer on the 2015 thread?

By the way, how's your three-member districts map coming along?

I've managed to create an unmapped version with all the values and results in three member districts, although those three-member districts have been made of existing ones; I haven't yet done one with entirely new districts. It works quite well, although there are naturally a couple of districts that aren't great (one ends up merging Northern Sturgeon with Westlock and Athabasca) It's largely as expected: a two party system. The thing with Canada as opposed to the UK, is that redistributions tend to work well, so you're joining existing communities of interest with similar ones and doing the same on a bigger scale. I'm doing the same with Quebec 2018 also, but I haven't finished or mapped that either.

Yesterday, the legislature met for the first time, with two-term MLA for Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills Nathan Cooper elected as Speaker, and Angela Pitt (Airdie-East) and Nick Milliken (Calgary-Currie) as Deputies. Just to make sure there weren't too many Northern Alberta MLAs in higher positions (i.e. more than one)

The UCP have promised a lot but they're in a great position to deliver the change they want. Should be exciting times in Alberta.

While a lot can happen in four years, the UCP should probably govern to get as much done in 4 years but also think in many ways about next 8 years.  There are 41 seats outside two major cities and only in five was NDP even somewhat competitive while you have 6-8 Calgary seats, mostly on South side which are solidly conservative so while shouldn't get too arrogant, they do have a pretty strong blue wall.  NDP sweeping Edmonton, winning a few more in rest of Alberta and winning all of Calgary save the conservative south side would still put them shy of a majority.

I think NDP will someday return to office, but probably need to wait for next redistribution which should be more urban friendly.  Also I think as long as Liberals are in power federally, people will stick with UCP.  I think once the Tories win federally, that will help NDP as people will feel less risk in voting for them since with the federal government perceived as a hostile to Alberta, many want a government who will fight them not work with them.

Alberta's demos (and probably culture too) have to change OR another split in the right wing need to happen first before the NDP wins again. And the fact that Albertans know the NDP can win will make strategic voting on the right more likely to happen, making a perfect right wing split almost impossible anyway.