History of Alberta politics
Alberta's parliamentary governments are determined by general elections held every three to five years. Five years is the maximum term allowed. By-elections are conducted between the general elections to fill seats left vacant by death or resignation. In each election (so far) a single party has taken a majority of the seats, although sometimes it does this after receiving less than half the votes cast.
Alberta's politics has historically been one of long-lasting governments with government changes being few and far between.
For the first 16 years Alberta was a province it had a Liberal government. Through the 1910s the growing farmer movement forced reforms out of this government and, embodied in the United Farmers of Alberta group, it launched itself into direct politics, winning power in the first election it contested.
Alberta was swept up in the wave of "prairie populism" that took place after the First World War; from 1921 to 1935 the United Farmers of Alberta headed the longest-lived of the farmers' governments that won power in Canada during this time. It made several reforms including changing Alberta's election system to ranked voting (through a mixture of proportional representation and Instant-runoff voting). It lost all its seats in 1935 when William Aberhart's Social Credit party was elected on a radical reform platform. After Aberhart's death in 1943 and changing economic conditions, the SC government under Ernest Manning moved to the right.
For over 80 years, the province was governed by right of centre parties. The Social Credit was succeeded in 1971 by the Progressive Conservatives. Ralph Klein was premier of Alberta from 1992 to 2006 and despite multiple controversies, he remained the leader of the Progressive Conservative party and thus the province although only 55 percent of delegates from his party signified their approval of his leadership on the spring of 2006, pushing him into retirement.[1]
Left wing Edmonton was an exception to the province's post–Second World War conservative voting pattern, earning it the nickname "Redmonton". Edmonton city residents, to a larger extent than elsewhere, tend to vote for other parties, such as the Liberal Party of Alberta and Alberta New Democrats, but that is often obscured because of the first-past-the-post system. No Labour or CCF or NDP candidate won an Edmonton seat from 1955 to 1982, despite the large left vote in the city overall.[2] The 2004 provincial election was an example of how the city got its nickname "Redmonton"; Liberal and New Democrat candidates won 15 of the city's 18 seats.[3]
While Tories won 13 of Edmonton's 18 seats in 2008, Klein's successor, Ed Stelmach, represented a riding just outside Edmonton and was perceived to be less connected to the interests of the energy corporations whose headquarters are in Calgary.
Stelmach gave way in 2011 to Alison Redford, the province's first female premier. She led the Tories to a 12th consecutive election victory in 2012. Redford was forced to resign in 2014, and was ultimately succeeded by former federal minister Jim Prentice. The conservative dominance of Alberta politics was broken in 2015, when the Alberta New Democratic Party formed government for the first time, and Rachel Notley became Alberta's 17th premier.
On April 16, 2019, the 2019 Alberta general election saw Jason Kenney and his new United Conservative Party (UCP) sweep to power winning 63 of 87 seats in the Alberta legislature, returning the province to conservative politics. This was the only election in Alberta history to dethrone an incumbent government after only a single term. However, the UCP received just 54 percent of the vote, the first-past-the-post system inflating the avalanche of switched seats and exaggerating the appearance of the party's popularity.
Alberta's conservative tilt (after 1940) is no less pronounced on the federal level. The province was the heartland of the Reform Party of Canada and its successor, the Canadian Alliance. These parties were the second-largest political parties in the federal Parliament from 1997 to 2003 and they were located on the political right. The Canadian Alliance merged with the Progressive Conservative Party to form today's Conservative Party of Canada. The Conservatives' former leader and ex–Prime Minister Stephen Harper, moved to Alberta in the 1980s and represented a Calgary riding; Rona Ambrose, the party's interim leader and Leader of the Opposition (2015–17), is also an Albertan. Rural Alberta ridings typically give the Conservatives (and Reform and the Alliance before them) some of their highest margins in the country; in many cases, the other parties are lucky to win over 20 percent of the vote.
Alberta's political stability has led to a series of political continuity. Voters have turned a government out of office only five times in 115 years. The two governments prior to 2015 were among the longest-lived in the Commonwealth.
Alberta elections are held using a first-past-the-post system so MLAs elected do not necessarily receive a majority of the votes in the constituency, and the party with a majority of the seats in the Legislature does not necessarily receive a majority of votes cast in the election. For example, in the 2004 election, the Progressive Conservative party won 61 of 83 seats (73% of the seats) but obtained only 47% of the popular vote.
During the UFA and early SC government periods, elections were conducted using transferable preferential ballots (see ranked voting), and candidates in cities ran "at-large", using preferential balloting under the single transferable voting system ensuring city-wide proportional representation in the Legislature.[4] Many of the opposition parties today include electoral reform in their policies.[5][6]
In its history, Alberta has seen only six distinct governments, with no party ever returning to form government under the same label again after defeat. (The UFA government of 1921-1935 can be seen as a precursor of the NDP government of 2015-2019 as it organizationally was its forerunner. The present UCP government is an organizational descendant of the old Progressive-Conservative Party that reigned from 1971 to 2015.)[7]
All Alberta elections have resulted in a majority government, a trend unseen in any other Canadian province. Even with crossing the floor or by-elections, Alberta has never had a minority government.
From Liberal to Social Credit (1905-1971)
Progressive Conservative to UCP (1971 to 2019)
Some Albertans continue to resent the imposition in the 1980s of the National Energy Program (NEP) by the Liberal federal government of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. It was considered to be an intrusion by the federal government in an area of provincial responsibility. This led some Albertans to advocate separation of the province from Canada but this advocacy (despite occasional surges in interest) has never resulted in electoral success. Neither, however, has the Liberal Party of Canada enjoyed much success in Alberta (outside of Edmonton) since that time. The NEP was ended when the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, led by Brian Mulroney, formed the federal government following the 1984 federal election.
In the 2006 election, the federal Conservative Party of Canada won all the seats in Alberta, providing them with a complete sweep of the province. However, the NDP won the seat of Edmonton—Strathcona in the election of 2008, denying the Conservatives a sweep of the province in this election. No Alberta seats changed parties in the 2011 election, in which the Conservatives went from a minority government to a parliamentary majority. In all three elections, many of the Conservative candidates were elected with large majorities of the vote. Alberta has for decades been considered a conservative fortress, no matter which right-of-centre party they may have chosen to support. Albertans followed strong support for the Progressive Conservatives in the 1980s with the same degree of support for the Reform Party, and the Canadian Alliance in the 1990s, finally delivering a clean sweep for the new Conservative Party of Canada only a few years after its creation in 2003–2004.
However, small disaffection with the Conservative Party of Canada over policies enacted during its minority government such as Equalization payments in Canada and the Conservatives' reversal on income trusts led to the founding of the nascent federal Party of Alberta, in 2006. Provincially, while the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta had been in power for 40 years, they continued to win large majorities in the Legislative Assembly, winning 72 out of 83 seats in the March 2008 provincial election, although with declining popularity and lowering voter turn-out, reflecting increasing disfavour among ordinary Albertans regarding the government's market-first policies, its low quality of health and education services, and its flat-income tax policy.
As well, for the first time since the 1980s, the PCs faced a challenge from the right wing, the upstart Wildrose Alliance Party. A November 2009 poll said the new party had 28% support, just 6 points behind the governing PCs.[8] In polls, the Wildrose Party had a double digit lead over the PCs in December 2009, with 39% versus 25% each for the PCs and Alberta Liberals.[9]
In April 2015, Jim Prentice called an election for May 5, citing the need for a mandate in order to make longer-term economic changes.[10] Though initial polls had the PCs in the lead, as the election approached they fell behind the opposition Wildrose party, and the NDP. On May 5 the NDP gained 53 seats, winning a majority government under Rachel Notley.[11]
The United Conservative Party (UCP) was established in July 2017 as a merger between the Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta and the Wildrose Party. When established, the UCP immediately formed the Official Opposition in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. The UCP won a majority mandate in the 2019 Alberta general election to form the government of Alberta.
