Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party will form a majority government in Alberta and Rachel Notley’s NDP will form the Official Opposition.
As of 2:00am, the UCP has 49 seats and the NDP has 38, which I believe is the closest election result in Alberta’s history. There are still some remaining polls that haven’t reported in a few Calgary ridings with tight races, so those numbers could shift slightly.
This election has been a wild ride and the electoral map shows a deeply divided province.
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One reply on “Never bet against the Conservatives in Alberta”
So close, but yet so far. What must make this particularly hard for the NDP is if they won a half dozen more seats, they would have won the election and there were a number of close races.
However, the overall trend was clear, close but not close enough. The NDP actually did fairly well in Calgary where they focused a lot of their efforts and of course in fortress Edmonton. Where they did not do well was in what I would call the UCP’s Fortress Rest of Alberta.
Edmonton has around 20 seats, the so called rest of Alberta almost 40, so anyone who really wants to win an election in Alberta needs to win more than two of these. Perhaps some time in the future demographics will eventually change this hard fact, but not this time, not yet.
It will be interesting to see what direction Smith’s UCP now goes in. This time I feel her opponents underestimated her, but she still does have a very rocky history. Will it really be a Klein like miracle leading to long term conservative rule again or like Redford’s come from behind also miracle win, which was the last one for her party?