Nopes to the nine? Blue walls? Five takeaways from Alberta's referendum results
A majority of provincial ridings rejected most of Danielle Smith's ballot questions.
Most provincial ridings rejected most of Danielle Smith's ballot questions
Jason Markusoff · CBC News
·
Listen to this article
Estimated 5 minutes
The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.
The “strong mandates” that Premier Danielle Smith requested on her nine referendum questions never materialized.
But aside from soft support, there might be another reason Smith is expressing reluctance to act quickly, even on the immigration questions where she won a majority.
Consider that Smith’s own government mandate isn’t derived from the popular vote — it’s based on prevailing in a majority of Alberta’s 87 seats.
And sifting through the riding results from all the referendum questions, some apparent political signals emerge.
Here are some takeaways:
Ridings say no to seven of nine
Smith has signalled she’ll act most quickly on the ballot measure that got the most support — Question 5, to require proof of Canadian citizenship when voting in provincial elections (58 per cent support).
She’s also intent to continue wresting from Ottawa more provincial control over immigration to Alberta, as Question 1 suggested (55 per cent support).
The victory margins were tighter on Questions 2, 3 and 4, to variously restrict social services and financial supports for temporary residents. But on each of those questions, a slight majority of ridings went no — meaning that while four of Smith’s questions failed in terms of total vote, seven of nine would have lost if this was a riding-by-riding contest.
Edmonton was almost uniformly opposed to those temporary resident questions, and only six Calgary ridings were supportive of them.
Twelve Calgary ridings had gone UCP in the last election, which suggests that several parts of Calgary that supported Smith in the 2023 election weren’t on board with her ideas on who should or shouldn’t get fully covered health and education.
Constitutionally blocked
The per-riding results on Question 1 (48 yes, 39 no) roughly tracked the seat math after the last provincial election (48 UCP, 39 NDP).
But on Questions 6 to 9, Smith would have been on the wrong end of the sort of landslides that former premiers Ralph Klein and Jason Kenney enjoyed, had this referendum been settled riding by riding.
More than two-thirds of ridings voted no to Question 8 on opting out of federal social service programs, the most lopsided of the constitutional ballot measures. But in all of them, no was the popular choice in more than 50 constituencies.
Not a single riding in Edmonton or Calgary said yes to a single one of the constitutional questions.
Rural Alberta, however, stayed loyal to Smith’s push for more provincial powers and to tilt Canada’s Constitution in favour of Alberta.
Blue wall, orange wall
Premier Smith asked voters to vote yes on all nine questions that didn’t threaten national unity; NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi was effectively part of the “no to the nine” campaign.
According to Elections Alberta, 24 ridings voted no down the line, while 27 voted yes to all of them.
What went all the UCP government’s way? Ridings that solidly backed the party in 2023, including all predominantly rural or small-town seats, as well as the seats that include Grande Prairie, Medicine Hat and Fort McMurray.
The all-no seats? Most of them were in Edmonton, some in inner-city Calgary and its northeast, as well as St. Albert — a seat which has gone NDP in the last three elections — and Banff-Kananaskis, which has swung back and forth between UCP and NDP.
Swing ridings?
While a majority of ridings in Alberta went either solidly yes or solidly no, that still leaves 36 provincial constituencies where voters were choosier about how they marked their referendum ballots.
Which seats were running hot and cold on Smith’s plea for referendum support, and might wind up being hotly contested in next year’s election?
Of Calgary’s 26 ridings, 18 of them delivered a mixed yes-and-no verdict on the referendum questions. That includes a handful of NDP-held seats — as well as all the UCP-held seats in the province's largest city.
Calgary has become swing city in Alberta provincial politics, and offered the greatest mix of yes and no verdicts on the premier's referendum questions, compared to the solidly no-leaning Edmonton and yes-leaning other areas of the province. (CBC)
A few suburban Edmonton constituencies broke up the capital’s preference for no with yes majorities on Question 5.
Most of the ridings that surround Edmonton — known politically as the doughnut — swung between yes and no, including NDP-held Sherwood Park, as well as UCP-controlled Spruce Grove-Stony Plain, Strathcona-Sherwood Park, Morinville-St. Albert and Leduc-Beaumont.
Lethbridge’s two seats were a mixed bag too, as they have been politically in the last few elections.
Voters in Alberta’s other two cities of around 100,000 people — Red Deer and rapidly growing Airdrie — have been more consistently UCP in recent votes. But in all four of those cities’ ridings, voters defied Smith’s bid for a clean sweep by voting against Question 8 (and Question 9, in Airdrie-Cochrane).
Calgary-Shaw went orange, but…
Nenshi’s NDP managed to take away a formerly deep-blue suburban seat in September, in the Calgary-Shaw byelection.
The much-watched riding voted yes to all immigration questions last week, but no to all constitutional questions.
Newly elected Calgary-Shaw MLA Kyle Campbell, left, celebrates his byelection victory with NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi. (CBC News)
That more closely resembles voting patterns in other UCP ridings like Calgary-Peigan, Calgary-South East and Calgary-Hays.
However, it’s striking which seat featured a voting result more similar to NDP-held districts: Calgary-West, which voted yes to Question 5 on citizenship markers, but no to the rest. That seat has been held by Deputy Premier Mike Ellis since 2015.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jason Markusoff is a CBC producer and writer. He analyzes what's happening — and what isn't happening, but probably should be — in Calgary, in Alberta and sometimes farther afield. He's covered Alberta for more than two decades, previously reporting for Maclean's magazine, Calgary Herald and Edmonton Journal. He appears regularly on Power and Politics, West of Centre and various other CBC current affairs shows. Reach him at jason.markusoff@cbc.ca
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.