United Conservative Party candidates were elected in by-elections held in two traditionally strong conservative voting districts on July 12, 2018. Both districts were held by the UCP before the by-elections were called and voters in both districts elected Wildrose Party candidates in the 2015 election.
In Fort McMurray-Conklin, Laila Goodridge soundly defeated New Democratic Party candidate Jane Stroud, a three-term Wood Buffalo municipal councillor, with a 45 percent margin of victory. In Innisfail-Sylvan Lake, one of the strongest conservative voting districts in Alberta, Devin Dreeshen was elected with 81 percent of the vote.
The NDP was nowhere close to victory in either district. In Fort McMurray-Conklin, Stroud finished with 29 percent, only one-point lower her party’s share of the vote in the 2015 election. NDP candidate Nicole Mooney finished a distant second with 9 percent of the vote in Innisfail-Sylvan Lake, but this still represented her party’s second best ever showing in this district since it was created in 1993.
With 7 percent of the vote in Innisfail-Sylvan Lake, Alberta Party candidate Abigail Douglass finished only slightly higher than this district’s past Alberta Party candidate Danielle Klooster, who finished with 6.2 percent of the vote in the 2015 election. In Fort McMurray-Conklin, Alberta Party candidate Sid Fayad finished in a distant third with 2.7 percent.
The Liberals barely registered on the radar in these by-elections, with Fort McMurray-Conklin candidate Robin Le Fevre earning 1.1 percent and Innisfail-Sylvan Lake candidate Nick Jansen finishing with 0.9 percent.
Here are the results:
Fort McMurray-Conklin
Laila Goodridge, UCP – 2,635 (65.8%)
Jane Stroud, NDP – 1,181 (29.5%)
Sid Fayad, AP – 110 (2.7%)
Robin La Fevre, Lib – 44 (1.1%)
Brian Deheer, Grn – 29 (0.7%)
Innisfail-Sylvan Lake
Devin Dreeshen, UCP – 8,033 (81.7%)
Nicole Mooney, NDP – 907 (9.2%)
Abigail Douglass, AP – 729 (7.4%)
Nick Jansen, Lib – 93 (0.9%)
David Inscho, Ind – 63 (0.6%)
Here are the 2018 by-election results compared to previous results in these two districts from the time they were formed:
4 replies on “No surprises as UCP wins big in Fort McMurray-Conklin and Innisfail-Sylvan Lake by-elections”
1. The UCP has momentum
2. the NDP has stalled and Notley’s pro-Pipeline agenda isn’t convincing conservative Albertans to vote for her party.
3. The Alberta Party remains electorally irrelevant.
4. The Liberal Party is dead.
So much for the “Stephen Mandel bump.” The Alberta Party is only slightly more relevant than the Liberals.
2019 is a fight between UCP and NDP. All others are watching from the sidelines.
The UCP has no momemtum. They are a repeat of the very bad Alberta PCs that we had to remove from office in 2015.
The irrelevance of both the Alberta Party and the Alberta Liberal Party is rapidly approaching the “fringe party” level. Hello Christian Heritage, Libertarian and Communist Parties, you now have two new kids on the block..