Miracle In The Prairies
A United Conservative Majority, An Empowered New Democratic Opposition
Election Outcome
Alberta’s election is over and it was as close a race as you could get in Wildrose country.
As of the writing of this article, Danielle Smith’s UCP were re-elected with 49 seats while Rachel Notley’s NDP took the remaining 38 seats.
Voter turnout, unofficially, sits at 62.4%. This is down from the 67.5% in 2019.
The results of the election were:
United Conservatives: 49 seats / 52.6% of the vote
New Democrats: 38 seats / 44% of the vote
Greens: 0 seats / 0.8% of the vote
Alberta Party: 0 seats / 0.7% of the vote
Now, it’s also important to note that there are some races that ended with very tight margins, one as few as 7 votes. There will absolutely be recounts, so don’t take these seat counts as gospel just yet.
The Opposition Grows
Projections and polling ahead of last night’s election were pretty confident the UCP were going to pull off another win and form government. But, despite that confidence, the NDP managed a fairly decent showing.
The NDP gained 14 seats from the UCP last night, jumping from the 24 they won in 2019 to 38. Although they didn’t win government, they definitely brought themselves much closer to the tipping point and that gives them a good jumping off point for the next election in four years time.
The NDP swept Edmonton, picking up the last couple of seats the UCP won there in 2019. Meanwhile, Calgary was almost evenly split between the two parties with the NDP winning 14 of the city’s seats and the UCP taking the other 12. Again, the NDP did a good job at swinging those seats in Calgary given they only won 3 seats in Calgary in 2019.
But the NDP failed to make any gains outside of the major cities, except for a very close race in Banff-Kananaskis and their hold on Lethbridge-West.
Two Party State Indeed
Speaking of opposition parties, the NDP firmly coalesced the anti-UCP vote behind it and left many of the minor parties in shambles.
The Greens pulled a decent result, pulling 0.8% of the vote despite fielding just under half the candidates of the NDP and UCP, and they finished third in the popular vote.
The Alberta Party was thoroughly smashed, dropping 8.4% to 0.7% and falling behind the Greens. A party that once held a couple of seats has been relegated to a few lawn signs on the streets. The same goes for the Liberals; They only managed about 0.3% of the vote which is on par with some of the new Wildrose parties that tried to play spoiler for Smith.
Overall, only 3.4% of Alberta voters voted for a party that wasn’t the NDP or the UCP. In 2019, minor parties pulled 12.4% of the vote.
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How Did The Polls Fare?
The polls in Alberta have always been a little weird. Alberta is famously a more difficult province to poll given its political makeup and distribution of the population.
However, the results of the election were caught by a few pollsters fairly accurately and a couple not so much.
Janet Brown had the most accurate poll prior to election day when she said the UCP would win 52% and the NDP 44% (Very close to the 52.6% and 44% they would recieve) and, as such, Janet Brown outperformed everyone else.
Ipsos, Forum and Research Co. all did pretty well but Brown’s performance in the polling makes them seem further off the mark as a result. But on their own merits, they did quite well.
Ekos, Leger, Oracle, Mainstreet and Abacus all sit in the 2-3 error point range. The pollsters in this range aren’t bad by any means, their error average is still decent all things considered. But, they’re definitely in a separate class of their own compared to the first four.
Counsel got nailed to the wall this election. Their final poll had 14% for other parties, the UCP in the low-40’s and the NDP ahead. Either they were going to look like gods or be very wrong and, unfortunately for them, they were quite wrong, hence scoring an 8.07 on the average error.
As noted below, Angus Reid was excluded from this calculation. Only pollsters who provided a poll within the last week of the election are considered for their accuracy. As a result, pollsters who released polls prior to the writ-period, such as Navigator and ThinkHQ, are also excluded from these results.
Angus Reid was a noted exclusion because they released a poll two-weeks prior to election day and did not release a final poll. Would be quite unfair to include them in the averages if they just got to decide their earlier poll was more accurate while every other pollster did their due diligence and released a final poll a couple days out from election day.
