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Alberta Politics

alberta election maps: percentage of vote by constituency.

I have spent some time over the past week looking at the voting numbers from Monday’s general election and have created these maps showing the percentage of vote earned by each party. The most stunning change from previous election is the significant drop in support for Alison Redford‘s Progressive Conservatives in rural central and southern Alberta rural constituencies, which have given the PCs large majority votes in most elections over the past 40 years.

The strength of Danielle Smith‘s Wildrose Party was largely concentrated in rural central and southern constituencies, a few rural northern Alberta constituencies, and in south Calgary. Only one Wildrose candidate in an urban Edmonton-area constituency earned more than 30% of the vote (Garnett Genuis in Sherwood Park).

Rural Alberta was a vast wasteland for the Liberal Party and NDP in the 2012 election. Only in three rural constituencies did these two parties earn at least 11% of the vote (New Democrats Mandy Melnyk in Athabasca-Sturgeon-Redwater and Bruce Hinkley in Wetaskiwin-Camrose and Liberal Pete Helfrich in Banff-Cochrane.

Dr. Raj Sherman‘s Liberal Party found its only significant support concentrated in less than a dozen constituencies in central and west Edmonton and central and northeast Calgary. Support for Brian Mason‘s NDP was concentrated in central and north Edmonton constituencies and Lethbridge-West.

Progressive Conservative percentage of votes by constituency in Alberta's 2012 General Election
Progressive Conservative percentage of votes by constituency in Alberta's 2012 General Election
Wildrose percentage of votes by constituency 2012 Election
Wildrose Party percentage of votes by constituency in Alberta's 2012 General Election
Liberal Party percentage of votes by constituency in Alberta's 2012 General Election
Liberal Party percentage of votes by constituency in Alberta's 2012 General Election
NDP percentage of votes by constituency in Alberta's 2012 General Election
NDP percentage of votes by constituency in Alberta's 2012 General Election

26 replies on “alberta election maps: percentage of vote by constituency.”

Hinkley was a real candidate for Wetaskiwin Camrose, but Libs and NDs show such disrespect for rural areas when they field paper candidates who have no idea of constituencies and issues, and sometimes not even where those constituencies are. Neither the Libs or the NDP had any connection to my community that they could build upon to run a local candidate. Its not only disappointing, but rather insulting to me and my neighbors that they would see our votes as so inconsequential so as to be only a number in their final statistics.

Wonder what the percentages would be without those paper candidates?

I’m surprised this map does not include the PC member for Hong Kong – in the end he won his riding by a handy margin

Dave; the reason southern Alberta was lost was twofold, first we have marginal oil, lots of nat. gas but our oil is 2 to 300 barrels a day on the best wells, Stelmach being the media stampeded clown he was, decided to take “our fair share” of bugger all here in the south, that pissed the oil boys off to no end, then in all his infinite wisdom he fell for glowball warming and H1N1 and on and on, this cemented his “hunky dory’ image to all of us in the south. Second, we have unbelievable encroachment by the cultists of farming,? into EVERY facet of our business here in southern Alberta. Yes you people up north, and under the “dome”have no idea how many businesses the cultists have taken over, they make and market, every thing that small business used to make a go of it at, and they do it all without paying GST, taxes on cash and all while abusing their women and children and we scream and holler about human rights abuses in Afganistan, GO FIGURE. Alison had better take heed to the south, she can turn this around, but if she continues to bring in niggling little laws for us non-cultists, while 13 year old cultists still run loaded tandem grain trucks up and down our rural roads, and over innocent law abiding electricians, well her and her partys days are numbered.

If Raj Sherman stays Liberal leader after this election it will show how clueless the Liberals are. They are a shell of what they used to be as a political alternative. This is a historic low that they should be embarrassed about.

Paul C
Former Liberal member

Great pontificators like Midge have clearly not been meaningly involved in political action when she talks of paper candidates. It takes local people with principles, guts and hard work to step up and run for office. When none bothers, anyone can take a run at it for a party. No big deal. It’s a free democratic country.

Aden, if you live next to a colony, and thats all I’ll say there, and see the abuse the women and children endure, there is only one conclusion.

@Aden

I think what our bright young friend is saying is that innocent law abiding electricians.? like him scream and holler about human rural road abuses in Afghanistan while making and marketing, every thing that small business used to make a go of it at, and a 13 year old Alison runs up and down the “dome”, up north in a “hunky dory” tandem grain truck and glowball warming and H1N1 abuses their women and children without taxes on cash and GST.

Am I right? Am I close?

@Paul

Why would Raj resign? He didn’t do anything positive for the party, no, but how much of that was the situation instead of the person? Would Hugh or Laurie or Bruce have done really all that much better?

The Liberals were being crowded out in the centre already by the PCs under Redford, and with the rise of the Wildrose, all the Anti-Conservative voters ended up moving to the PCs – voting percentages and movements of voters show that. It was a no-win situation for anyone, but Raj and the Liberals were able to keep 5 seats – which is ultimately more important than vote percentages, because they will maintain a vocal presence in the media and the political discourse.

So if you’re basing your calls to resign off of a no-win election where the Liberals exceeded expectations by 500%, I cannot agree with you there. If you’re basing it off of going forward, however, you might have a point. Raj is fiercely combative and partisan, and it might be time to merge the left – something Raj won’t do unless his team comes out ahead in the deal. The NDP likely won’t agree to that, and so we’ll have the minute quibbles between Raj and whomever is NDP leader next election all over again. However I can’t see Kent or Laurie being much different, and I don’t see David or Darshan going for the leadership.

Basically, and this is my partisan opinion here, for the Liberals to survive they have to pry 20% of the vote away from the PCs, one riding at a time. They saved money on this election by not giving it their all, focusing on just staying alive. Next election, debt free and hopefully with a full warchest, the Liberals will be able to win back a dozen or so seats from the PCs as the Wildrose continues to divide the right. We don’t know what that will look like – we don’t even know if there will be an Alberta Liberal Party in 4 years or weather it will be a merged Alberta Party or a United Alberta Party or whatever – but changing leaders won’t help that situation at all. Raj came out with decent marks from this campaign, and if situations had been different (if PCs hadn’t elected one of Redford or Horner) he could have seen a major boost in Liberal Party fortunes.

Ultimately, Raj did well, meeting expectations on the campaign trail and exceeding them electorally. I don’t know if someone else would do better, but Raj is certainly a solid leader for the moment and, God’s willing, with a change in circumstances he can start reclaiming the soft progressive votes by doing what he does best – tearing the PCs a new one.

Note: I was a Bruce Payne guy last election because I felt Bruce would best be able to counter the NDs and solidify the left before Liberals started tracking right versus the PCs. It didn’t turn out that way, but hey, elections rarely turn out as expected 😉

I was a Raj guy, but it would be nice to see our next provincial election contested by four parties led by capable women: the Alison Redford government, Danielle Smith’s official opposition, the Rachel Notley NDP, and of course Laurie Blakeman’s Alberta Party (which if common sense prevails will have merged by then with the Liberals under the AP banner).

No Jon; the 14 year old ran a stop sign with a loaded truck, T boned an electricians truck, and then rather than call or run for help, grab the electricians cell phone whatever, he ran the 10 minutes back to the elders of the colony, rrealizing the situation they tried to make it look like a licensed driver was driving, the police sniffed it out, but all this took over 48 minutes and when the dying electrician asked in the ambulance why it took so long, the EMT’s said,”we didn’t get the call till now. Tell that to his wife and family who now don’t have a breadwinner while the colonys will continue to sell their bread at farmers markets for cash. Did I type slow enough for you.

Dave. .. In studying the results I think it is telling that the PCs won a dozen or by less than 500 votes, and another 6 or 7 by Less than a thousand

Yes Joe. What it shows was that in the end the Wildrose was too ideological and extreme to cut into many of the urban seats. That and the leader needs to be changed…

Brilliant PC campaign strategist Stephen Carter summed it up perfectly after the election when he said, “There is nothing more powerful than a fact to confirm a myth.” Vulnerable because of their culture of corruption and entitlement, the PC party shifted critical focus to the challenger by promulgating the myth that the Wildrose party was scary and intolerant. Initially this smear campaign had little traction; however, the bozo eruptions of Allan “Lake of Fire” Hunsperger in Edmonton and Ron “Caucasian Power” Leech in Calgary fed perfectly into the PC war room’s simple narrative and turned the tide, enabling Wildrose to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Notably, Leech was set to run as a PC in 2008 but the party wisely refused to sign his nomination papers, illustrating the difference between a stale but seasoned team that knows how to win and a promising but inexperienced party that hadn’t quite figured it out yet.

Dave what is your view on the dichotomy between the number of seats and the popular vote. Is this election yet another call for proportional rep?

The political parties, though they should take a hint from the fact that their memberships are puny, don’t accept that most people pay almost no attention to politics. The last week of the campaign supposedly revealed to Albertans that the WR party was led by a climate-denier and had many bigots and homophobes in its ranks. But anyone who had been following Smith and the WR would have known that years ago. The left-of-centre parties meanwhile deluded themselves that they were individually building something of importance; but all voters saw during the election was that the perennial losers continued to be divided into 3 or 4 blocs and so why should they have given them any consideration? I think the PC versus WR combat, one between mean and meaner, will be the story for several more elections. The left might gain something by unity but the train for that may already have left the station–uniting parties that had 40 percent voter support in 2008 would have created a formidable bloc whereas uniting parties that now have 21 percent may not do much. It would depend on whether those who jumped to the PCs eventually come to regret their decision or turn out to be happy enough with what Redford offers.

“Would Hugh or Laurie or Bruce have done really all that much better?”

Hugh would have done better, yes. Hugh was an effective MLA, and could have held on to Liberal votes better than a floor crosser from the PCs could have. Voting for someone like Raj who ran against the Liberal team in 2008 makes little sense to me when his main claim to fame seems to be alleging bribery, coercion, and coverup without solid evidence.

Actually Brian, what it shows is that Redford likely would have ended up with a small majority, or as everyone was hoping, a minority but the liberal vote saved her ass… But you keep drinking the coolaid buddy.

The closeness of the race is reflected in the popular vote- normally that percent should have translated to around 30 seats.
So it will be interesting to see if there is buyers remorse, given the closeness of the vote.

What will the voter be willing to forgive? New salary will jaw dropping! No schools or clinics until the budget is balanced ( can she keep this promise)?
When the oil and gas revenue fails to materialize- what then?

So it will be an interesting 4 years. And I think it will be interesting as the Liberals and NDP will not always vote with the PC. I cannot imagine Raj voting for the health care initiatives.

“when oil and gas revenues fails to materialize” as a sentence is not only incorrectly worded it is bunk. Garbage. Once again – bullshit.
Less than two weeks after you wrote “new salary jaw dropping” – another sentence which makes no sense Rural gal – Premier Redford announced she would not take the recommendation from Major concerning her own salary. Your analysis of the percentage of the vote is flawed if you think it was close. Wildrose is a weak opposition led by an inexperienced legislator whose media strengths will not translate to the legislature simply because she is not smart enough to know that. Hmmmm….”no schools or clinics”? Now I not only have suspicions about your contacts but suspicions about what you source and your ability to understand it. This is a majority Progressive Conservative sitting of the legislature Rural gal – how the NDP, Wildrose or the Liberals now vote is completely and totally irrelevant. Exactly like the views of the rural Albertan constituency. (to be clear – I mean you)

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