The UCP won, but the vote was close, which means that the conservatives will no longer be in charge
Doreen Barrie is a political scientist at the University of Calgary, and she wrote this piece.For more information about CBC’s Opinion section, please see the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ).
For people who have lived in Alberta for more than 50 years, seeing two parties compete in a close provincial election was something new.
The UCP should enjoy its win, because conservative parties can no longer be sure to win an Alberta election, even if they work together. With the rise of two political parties that are competing for power, the political landscape has changed in a big way.
Even though the UCP won the election exactly one month ago, the result was acouple of thousand votesFrom going the opposite way.
Before the New Democrats won the election in 2015, the Social Credit party and then the Progressive Conservatives ruled the province for 80 years.
Danielle Smith won an amazing race on May 29, but she will have to deal with a lot of problems in the short term.She will have to fix the problems in her caucus and show corporate Calgary that her rule will give investors stability and predictability. She will also have to make sure those in her conservative base are happy, because she owes them a lot.
When she looks further ahead, she sees that her party will have to get past much bigger problems.
The two-lane road ahea
The province has changed, and the way things are going now doesn’t help Smith’s party.
Think of the second NDP win in “Fortress Calgary” as a (small) prairie miracle for the party. When Rachel Notley’s party almost lost all of the ground it had made in 2015, it was thought that the Natural Governing Party of Alberta would stay in the same place for a long time.
The UCP’s position in this changing political environment, especially in cities, needs to be looked at again after the last election.
Even though the divide between rural and urban areas was clear after May 29, both Edmonton and Calgary had been electing progressive mayors for more than a decade: Don Iveson and Amarjeet Sohi in Edmonton, and Naheed Nenshi and Jyoti Gondek in Calgary. Now that the provincial vote and the municipal vote are the same, it shows that the way people think has changed in the two places where most Albertans live.
There is also a chance that younger people will want to break away from the conservative ways of their parents and their province. Mostelection pollsShowed that younger Albertans were very likely to vote for the NDP.
This is important because millennials now make up 23% of Alberta’s population, which is more than baby boomers, who make up 21%.Statistics Canada. And recent polls in the UK and US found thatMillennials aren’t getting less liberal. as they age.
More Gen Z voters will soon be able to vote, which will make this problem for conservatives in Alberta even worse, since Gen Z cares more about issues likeclimate change and social issues.
For a “youthquake” to happen, young people have to vote, but young people, especially those aged 18 to 24, vote much less than older people. Research shows that voter turnout gets better as people get older. This is another red flag for conservatives if getting older doesn’t mean getting more conservative.
In 1921, Alberta stepped out of the political mainstream for half a century, governed by the United Farmers and then Social Credit. A mainstream Canadian party, the PCs, won the 1971 election establishing dominance by becoming a fierce champion of provincial rights in energy and constitutional battles with Ottawa.
In such a political climate, it is not surprising that dissent had a whiff of disloyalty and was muted: to disagree with the PCs on anything was tantamount to being opposed to provincial rights and interests.
Similarly, Smith is characterizing her battle with the Trudeau government as an existential threat to Alberta sovereignty. However, without the towering majorities that premiers like Peter Lougheed and Ralph Klein enjoyed, she cannot speak with the same authority.
With close to half of Albertans voting for the NDP, UCP can no longer claim to be the Voice of Alberta. Opposition has been legitimized.
A (healthily) divided Albert
With a slim UCP majority and a strong opposition contingent in the legislature, Albertans will be treated to the rare sight of democracy in action. The Westminster-style parliamentary system works best with two competitive parties, with the Official Opposition able to challenge the dominant narrative.
Arguably, the NDP has already delivered effective opposition, most recently helping pressure the newly elected UCP leader to alter her Sovereignty Act and to make promises on a public health care guarantee and to hold a referendum on an Alberta Pension Plan.
With a larger-than-ever opposition, the NDP will have a larger team and caucus staff to do more work holding Smith’s government to account, and devise alternative policy ideas.
The next few years will be a real test of Alberta’s political maturity. Having enjoyed the experience of lively political debate, it is difficult to imagine Albertans regressing to the political apathy that prevailed when election results were a foregone conclusion. A thriving marketplace of ideas should make politics more interesting.