How the NDP came to govern in Alberta
(Of all places!)

by Maurice Y. Michaud (he/him)

When Alberta pollsters would be reviewing their data prior to the 2015 election, many were probably rubbing their eyes. Some may have even wondered if they were seeing a pig fly by their window. Someone must have been pulling a prank on them, because how could the NDP possibly be so far ahead in opinion polls ...in Alberta?

By all accounts, Alberta is one of the most conservative provinces in Canada — if not the most conservative. It has reliably sent slates of right-of-centre MPs to Ottawa and, provincially, it has been governed by right-of-centre parties since 1935: the Social Credit from 1935 to 1971, and the Progressive Conservatives from 1971 to that point. The largest opposition occurred during the 23rd assembly from 1993 to 1997, when the PCs faced a 32-member opposition from the Liberal Party in a legislature of 83 members at the time.

And truth be told, probably many Alberta NDP supporters were just as incredulous. Like all of us, including pollsters, they had become accustomed to the effects of our first-past-the-post system, whereby getting 25% support might yield only a handful of seats, if any at all. Moreover, they had become accustomed to the conservative dynasty that seemed eternal.

As the results of the 2015 election show, notwithstanding the campaign it ran, two factors combined at the right moment for the NDP.

1. A division of the right, as had occurred in Canada up until a decade earlier
2. Voter apathy, as manifested in the low voter turnout rate

Prior to 2015, the highest percentage of the popular vote that the Alberta NDP had achieved was 29.22% in 1986. However, also clear from the 2015 results is that the combined support for the Wildrose and Progressive Conservatives was nearly 12% above the NDP’s. So the question is obvious: “Exactly how many seats did the NDP win through vote splitting?”

To find the answer, let’s:

Thus we could conclude that there would have been 50 differences.

So, if the NDP had not picked up 29 seats through vote splitting, it would have won only 25. Put differently, they would have won only 28.73% of the seats (instead of the 62.07% they got), while a united conservative party would have had 68.97% of the seats, or 60. Inherent to the FPTP system is its “will” to yield certain majorities, whether they’re fair or not.

Where Canadian conservatism as it exists today largely took root in Alberta, and conservative-minded people there did not want a replay provincially of what had happened federally more than a decade earlier, they quickly banded together to form the Alberta United Conservative Party in 2017. It is thus easy to argue that, just as the Reform/Alliance absorbed the federal PCs, the Wildrose did the same to the Alberta PCs. And the effect was seen immediately in the 2019 general election.

But a few observations and arguments can be made from here.

1. A superficial look at the results of this FPTP election can lead to the conclusion that the NDP was severely beaten. But comparing the number of seats it should have won in 2015 to the number it did win in 2019, a fairer observation would be that it managed to keep its base.
    
2. Just like the People’s Alliance of New Brunswick has shifted that province’s political spectrum to the right and contributed to making populism more mainstream, so has the Wildrose in Alberta.
    
3. The Alberta Liberals are the main collateral damage of this shift, as they have been squeezed out. They formed the province’s first four governments, but the last time they formed the official opposition was in 2008. Fifteen years later, if the party cannot be declared dead yet, it is certainly on life support.
    
4. The Alberta New Democrats have also been pulled by this shift, placing them more at the centre than on the left, thereby filling the vacuum left by the Liberals.
    
5. To support this claim, I offer you the results of the 2023 general election, below — the best result in term of votes that the Alberta NDP ever achieved. There were some very close races, especially in Calgary, but it won its 38 seats fair and square — no vote splitting giving them a hand.

Time will tell, but has the NDP reached its peak in profoundly conservative Alberta? If it couldn’t beat a controversial premier holding very libertarian views (to not say downright crazy conspiracy theories), what would it need to form another government, without the help of infighting among its opponents?

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