The United Conservative Party was re-elected to majority government, receiving both majority of votes cast and majority of the seats in the Alberta Legislative Assembly. The Alberta NDP received a record (for that party) 43 percent of the votes cast and elected its second-best-ever number of MLAs. The race was noteworthy both as one of the fiercest two-way battles in the last hundred years in Canadian history and by its results -- electing only two parties in the Legislature, unusually producing a second back-to-back two-party legislature. Since Alberta became a province in 1905, only two times prior to 2019 did the Legislature hold only two parties - in 1913 after Socialist Party of Canada's Charles O'Brien lost his seat - and 1993 when Conservatives and Liberals shared the hall.
Normally more than two parties are represented, and normally one party takes the lion share of seats, sometimes as much as 61 out of 63 seats. But this election gave seats to only two parties, and each party took a very similar share of the legislature's seats. Only eleven seats separating their seat tallies. The UCP elected 14 MLAs in Calgary, and 35 in districts outside Edmonton and Calgary. The NDP made a clean one-party sweep of Edmonton's 20 seats. It also elected 12 MLAs in Calgary and six outside the two major cities.
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Alberta 2023 election: Party-proportional for two main parties, by accident Seats: UCP 49 seats (56 percent) NDP 38 seats (44 percent) Votes: UCP 54 percent NDP 44 percent [seat breakdown not totally clear at this point] Regional: Edmonton: NDP clean sweep of all 20 seats 20/20 Calgary: UCP 12 NDP 14 (total 26) Outside major cities (suburbs included here) UCP 35 NDP 4 (total 41) [regional votes shares unknown at this point, although it seems NDP took about 30 or 33 percent of votes cast in each region of Alberta's countryside. But got only six seats outside Edmonton and Calgary.
Clearly UCP did not take its due share of Edmonton seats;
NDP did not take its due share of rural seats.
It appears that each major party took about its due share of seats in Calgary, just by chance.] (UCP seat shares proportionally/regionally would have likely been 8 in Edmonton, 14 in Calgary and 27 outside cities. NDP seat shares proportionally/regionally would have likely been 12 in Edmonton, 12 in Calgary and 14 outside cities.) UCP, being leaders in more districts than the NDP, got a two-percent windfall in seats. It vacuumed up the five percent of votes of the non-UCP, non-NDP voters to take more than its due share of seats while the NDP got almost exactly its due share of seats. This fairness happened by accident as I detail below.
Former Calgary mayor Nenshi on radio this morning (May 30, the day after the election, says election was lobsided in votes and razor thin by seats won.
He pointed out that he knew of eight districts that were won by less than 1.5 percent of votes cast. These, it seems, were all UCP victories. (There may have been similarly close NDP victories, I don't know, but if so, they are apparently accorded the sympathy accorded to the under-dog.) For votes, Nenshi is wrong -- the vote counts - 44 percent to 53 percent - were not lobsided.
A moderate margin separated the two main parties' share of popular votes. Clear difference but not overwhelming - not lobsided. When Nenshi won the mayoralty in 2010, he secured a lobsided victory. (Wiki: "Nenshi' earned 40 per cent of the vote, finishing nearly 28,000 votes ahead of second-placed McIver.") When a party takes 63 percent of the votes as the Progressive-Conservatives did in 1975, with no other party getting more than 18 percent of the vote, that is lobsided. Looking at party shares, say 1.8M votes cast, UCP received about 900,000 votes; NDP received about 780,000, so a difference of just 150,000 votes lies between the two main parties' vote tallies, less than it sounds in a province of 4.4M people.
The Conservatives did take majority of votes so were due majority government. The election was not a false-majority government, as happens so often in FPTP elections. Unlike past elections, the leading party (UCP) did not take about 20 percent greater share of seats than their share of votes. The NDP did not take majority of votes so were not eligible for majority of seats. The NDP took fewer votes than the UCP so UCP election is not an example of a wrong-winner election. But as pointed out, the result under FPTP could have gone to produce a wrong-winner false-majority government if the NDP had taken just two percent more of the vote in eight districts. UCP 49 to NDP 38 would have changed to UCP 41 to NDP 46 But actually turn-over in six districts, produced by NDP getting just 2 percent more votes in six districts, could have created NDP majority --- NDP 44 to UCP 43. If those shifts had happened and the NDP had won such a wrong-winner false-majority government, it would have caused outrage and likely helped the movement for electoral change - people would have asked why we are enduring such an accident-prone electoral system? If we were wise, we would look at the near-miss and decide not to wait for such an un-democratic result before taking action. We missed this accidental result this time, but the next election with just slight change could result in NDP doing better in rural areas. There a shift of just 1000 or 2000 votes in each closely-contested district would cause seat to shift.
2000 votes in each of ten districts is just a small amount in a province where 1.9M votes are cast. Such a shift (with all votes remaining equal) would make hardly a dent in the party vote shares and percentages, but would give the NDP majority.
So the NDP would take majority government with still about 44 percent of the vote.
Or under FPTP the election could have been much worse for the NDP. And next election, without PR, the tables may easily turn against the NDP and they will be reduced to just a hub of a caucus in the legislature, although still getting more than a quarter of the vote.
Under FPTP, the Conservatives could gerrymander districts in Edmonton or slightly increase their vote totals, and deny the NDP four seats in Edmonton or even more, while still holding their seats in Calgary and the rural areas. Thus it would take about the same numbers of seats as it did in 2019. when it received 72 percent of the seats with 54 percent of the vote. This could have easily happened this time. UCP vote share stayed about same as last time, but through some fluke Alberta avoided giving the UCP the same number of seats that it received in 2019. This time the Conservatives took only 1 percent fewer votes than in 2019, but took 14 fewer seats. This seems due to the non-UCP vote lumping behind the NDP, which allowed NDP to increase their vote to 44 percent from 33 percent before, and to move from 24 seats to 38. so UCP was only slightly less popular than before, but due to NDP vacuuming up the non-UCP vote, the NDP got 14 more seats. Because under FPTP the vote share is not important -
the only thing that is considered is who had the most votes in each of the 87 sub-battles, taken separately. There were lobsided results -- Rachel Notley won her own district by taking 80 percent of the vote.
Danielle Smith won her own district Brooks Medicine Hat, likely with great un-necessary lead, although I don't see her vote count yet. These lobsided results in the separate little battles balanced each other, and so overall results were roughly proportional to party shares of the two main parties which is not often the case in FPTP.
all other parties were denied any representation, and in fact their vote was likely dampened by their supporters picking sides in the main binary fight, and engaging in strategic voting (voter mis-representation).
But the two main parties did take approximately their due share of the seats. That is not to say that the NDP won its due share of seats in Calgary or that the UCP won its due share of seats in Edmonton. But that is to say, the dis-proportional result in Edmonton, where UCP with perhaps 20 percent of the vote or more, received no seats, was balanced against the dis-proportional result in Calgary, where the NDP with perhaps 30 to 40 percent of the vote got only 6 seats. All other parties were: A. denied some of their fair votes due to their supporters voting strategically. B. denied any representation at all. 1 in 20 votes cast were simply ignored.
Historically this election stands out in Alberta history.
At no other time were two parties so evenly supported. The 1975 lobsided victory is also an outlier, as mentioned above, but almost all other elections saw one party take 55-65 percent of the vote with three other parties taking 15 to 25 percent each.
At no other time did two parties take such similar shares of seats. If it happens that ten UCP MLAs do not show up to work, if all the NDP MLAs do show up and feel like it, they can bring down the government.
Or if break-away Conservative or Wildrose division re-exerts itself, the government with such a slight majority in the chamber could face defeat. Each of those two parties did run a token candidate in this election and so both parties still exist as a fallback position for either faction.
Will the Conservatives, used to 80 to 90 percent of seats or more in the chamber, be comfortable with their 55 percent of seats?
Grant Notley, Rachel's father when he sat in the 1975-1979 legislature, was in an six-member opposition. All but those six seats were Conservative - and Grant was the only NDP member. in 1975 Conservatives took less than two-thirds of votes cast so were in no way due their great lobsided representation in the chamber.)
But that situation is more like what Conservatives are used to in Alberta. Seeing such an almost-evenly-balanced government and opposition benches must be a strange experience for them. Will the party throw off Danielle Smith and thus cause a rift between her backers in the Take Back Alberta faction and the old-time Conservatives?
Or how will party members somehow see a rosy future for themselves as the party drifts to the Smith-led Trump-style right while Alberta voters generationally have moved leftwards, with the NDP getting more votes and a larger vote share than ever before in its existence. UCP NDP total votes 2019 1,040,000 619,147 1,896,542 2023 927,000 776,000 diff. 150,000 1,763,441 valid votes 1,772,324 votes cast
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Here (below) is write-up of Alberta election by Fair Vote Canada. I wonder why it shows Edmonton as having 22 seats.
Edmonton by most counts has 20 seats. the FVC must include two of the suburb districts outside Edmonton this is not too serious (even by my skewed scale of seriousness!) but is strange as one Sherwood Park is included in Edmonton -- It went NDP -- while another Sherwood Park district which went UCP is not included in Edmonton. So that correction ups the number of seats the NDP received outside (corporate limits of) Edmonton and Calgary. which FVC seems to say was three when it was six. But FVC definitely correct in how FPTP caused FPTP straitjacket.
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First-past-the-post delivers Alberta a polarized, two-party system
First-past-the-post has delivered an exaggerated majority for Danielle Smith’s UCP in Alberta. The party won 56% of the seats with 52.6% of the vote.
The map of the results shows exaggerated regional differences: In the 13 ridings of Northern Alberta, UCP voters cast 67.5% of the votes but elected 100% of the MLAs. Voters for the NDP cast 29.6% of the votes but elected no one. [NDP due 4] [I am not sure where the boundary is between Northern, Central and Southern Alberta. Nor why Edmonton and Calgary are not considered to be Northern, Central and Southern Alberta - they must be some place!]
In the 13 ridings of Central Alberta, UCP voters cast 65.5% of the votes but elected 100% of the MLAs. Voters for the NDP cast 30.0% of the votes but elected no one. [NDP due 4] In the 13 ridings of Southern Alberta, UCP voters cast 63.0% of the votes but elected 92% (all but one) of the MLAs. Voters for the NDP cast 33.1% of the votes but elected only one MLA [NDP due 4].
[so altogether outside Edmonton and Calgary, NDP proportionally due 12 (or maybe 12 plus St. Albert and Sherwood Park), and got 6. As I said above, UCP seat shares proportionally/regionally would have likely been 8 in Edmonton, 14 in Calgary and 27 outside cities. NDP seat shares proportionally/regionally would have likely been 12 in Edm., 12 in Calgary and 14 outside cities.]
Conversely, in the 22 Edmonton ridings, NDP voters cast 61.8% of the votes but elected 100% of the MLAs. Voters for the UCP cast 35.5% of the votes but elected no one. (Actually Edmonton has 20 seats and the NDP did take all of them but not with anything close to 100 percent of the vote. The NDP also won St. Albert and one Sherwood Park district outside the corporate limits of Edmonton, as well as four other seats outside Edmonton and Calgary.]
Only Calgary voters saw the overall results reflect how they voted. In their 26 ridings, NDP voters cast 48.7% of the votes and elected 12 MLAs, while UCP voters cast 48.9% of the votes and elected 14 MLAs.
The more glaring observation, however, is how first-past-the-post has entrenched a two-party system.
In 2022, the Economist’s Democracy Intelligence Unit, commenting on Canada’s fall on their Democracy Index, issued a stark warning that our political problems are looking increasingly like those which have become entrenched in the United States.
Nowhere is that more apparent than in Alberta. The stranglehold of first-past-the-post was acutely felt in a negative, divisive election campaign. First-past-the-post suppressed support for smaller parties, leaving them struggling to survive. In a polarized environment, first-past-the-post forced voters to choose between two big parties, with many voters probably motivated mainly by a desire to keep the other party out of power.
As Abacus noted in its May 22 report: “The deep divide on almost every measure shows how polarized the choice in this campaign has become. NDP voters really don’t like Smith while UCP voters really don’t like Notley. Almost equal numbers think the NDP and UCP are the most risky and scary choices.”
CBC’s Vote Compass showed that one big tent does not represent the diversity of Alberta - UCP is significantly more conservative than their votes.
Opponents of proportional representation often fearmonger about “extremists” being elected. The UCP’s flip flops on how to deal with their candidate (now MLA) Jennifer Johnson, after she compared transgender children to feces, illustrates the real danger of extremists in winner-take-all systems.
The fact is, politicians with extreme views win seats with all voting systems - but their impact can differ greatly.
Winner-take-all voting systems, by forcing everyone on one side of the political spectrum into a single party, means that extremists will not only win seats, they can become cabinet ministers, or even the leader of a one-party government.
Turnout is lower when many voters feel their vote won’t count. In the 2021 federal election the turnout in Alberta was 64.4%, and in the last Alberta election it was 67.5%. But in Germany’s last election it was 76.6%, and in New Zealand’s it was 81.5%. In both countries voters had a choice of five or six parties expected to elect MPs.
The Alberta NDP supports proportional representation - on paper.
Their constitution states: “The New Democratic Party offers an alternative vision of the future based on the following three principles:
Democracy is one of the most valuable parts of our heritage and recognizes that all citizens, including minorities, must receive equal civil rights with representatives elected by way of proportional representation. Our country will only be a genuinely democratic one when all people participate fully in determining the policies of the institutions which directly affect their lives. The necessary role of governments must be recognized in order to build an equitable and socially just society.”
The Alberta NDP had Proportional Representation as a plank in their platform for the 2012 election and early in 2015, but removed it in February 2015, three months before winning their false majority.
The party had a rare window of opportunity to implement proportional representation when they formed a “majority” government in 2015, with 40.6% of the vote [and Had they put voters first eight years ago and implemented PR, it’s quite possible to imagine a democracy in Alberta where several viable parties thrive, all voters have meaningful choice and fair representation, and parties work together in the legislature.
That won’t be the case so long as Alberta has first-past-the-post, which has given Albertans only two real choices. ### Fair Vote Canada is a national citizens’ campaign for proportional representation. We are calling for a National Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform.
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The question about Edmonton being said to have 22 or 23 districts instead of 20 was discussed recently.
It led to discussion of
Multi-Member Districts (MMDs) and arbitrary district versus natural boundaries.
What you are talking about is like Strathcona (the old City of Strathcona) which awas amalgamated with the City of Edmonton in 1912. Still "Old Strathcona" compels a loyalty . its somewhat famous as its main drag, Whyte Avenue, is tourist mecca to some degree. its old buildings, some from 1800s. protected from demolition and "development" due to neglect - money and interest flowed to downtown northside Edmonton as soon as amalgamation took place.
Whyte Avenue was once busy commercial strip serving both city dwellers and farm communities nearby - nearby Strathcona county - this rural municipality being source of name of the provincial electoral district - Strathcona-Sherwood Park (not to be confused with Old Strathcona's Edmonton-Strathcona)
In Edmonton's case, using natural districts means using the corporate limits of the City of Edmonton as boundary.
And analysis can be based on that same city-wide district, throwing in some but not all suburbs just causes debate and confusion.
(see footnote for more discussion of Edmonton and Strathcona and Sherwood Park and Strathcona County.)
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I am hearing lots of complaints of long wait for election results
This is old complaint - one proportionalist jokester observed that if we want election results at 8 o'clock on May 29, we should hold our election on May 28th!
Sure there was a wait, but did we need to know - or start reporting - at exactly 8 pm when polls closed?
I would hope that we could put off gratification until say half the polls report or until the next morning or until the outcome of the election arrived at through fair voting was produced.
I stand opposed to the use of mechanical tabulators.
the human touch verified by human eyes is most transparent and not slower than - and likely cheaper than - using corporate-owned machines.
LOCAL representatives
provincial "regions" are used as most-easy form of base for top-up seats in a future Canadian MMP system.
Even in MMP, we could use MMDs say at city scale.
the local sports team or radio station is local.
we elect the city mayor at city-wide scale.
That is local as I see it.
our present provincial districts are micro-local. and arbitrary.
no one says let's go tonight to support the "Barrie-Springwater Oro-Medonta" hockey team
Our provincial districts, like our federal districts, are arbitrary constructs that have no existence on the ground.
in Ontario prov and fed districts they are very similar or the same.
But elsewhere the provincial districts are of very difference size and with different boundaries - but oddly each is considered local.
They arbitrarily separate voters from other voters and are source of gerrymandering and vote inefficiency.
But use of multi-member districts would allow flexibility - use same district based on cities or counties and allocate seats at roughly equal ratio across the board to each district in line with population and overall seats.
do people think of themselves as belonging to the poll? doubtless no, as they are often/usually placed in different polls for cities, provincial and federal elections. Can we expect loyalty?
1000 MLAs would be great. Someone once noted that we will never have exactly proportional representation unless every person was elected. any increase toward that goal is a step toward that "perfect PR."
But of course there are acceptable systems somewhat short of that perfection.
No matter what districts are used, price tag and policy lurch can be avoided by fair voting --
somewhere MMD or some ooling of votes with single voting and fair allocation of multiple seats must be done.
if voters vote consistently and votes are used to elect people, there should be no lurches.
if voters vote differently and votes are used to elect people, there should be change.
that is just PR.
(simple to say but hard to get apparently.!!)
I understand South Africa does not use districts. people vote in their polling place - located in the centre of a circle a mile or two across - and the votes are grouped in provincial totals and seats allocated that way.
MMDs would operate like that but at perhaps at city scale - people would vote in polling place and then all the city votes would be - eventually - composed together to allocate seats.
same as we do for mayor of a city. A city-wide district is not magic.
FPTP districts are an artificial construct - with having to make each of approx. equal size, there is no way to use natural boundaries.
And even grouping of districts for analysis purposes -- the artificial 22-district "Edmonton" above -- are arbitrary unless based on something concrete on the ground such as a city or county boundaries, etc.
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By this I mean that arbitrary districts are bad whether in FPTP or PR elections.
In FPTP, they are necessary.
But in any system using MMDs, there is no reason to use arbitrary districts.
Arbitrary districts are in one way more acceptable under PR -
every (approx.) vote counts in each district, no matter how boundaries are drawn
but in another way, arbitrary districts are un-necessary if MMDs are used - and
if MMDs can fluctuate in size (keeping number of seats in due ratio to number of voters).
STV-PR
once you break from single-winner voting systems,
the number of members in each district can be massaged to accommodate natural boundaries that set districts of varying sizes,
anywhere from 2 to 21 seats per district can be accommodated under STV-PR
Two to 21 seats are being filled in STV contests using MMDs presently in the world.
NSW actually fills 42 seats through STV by using staggered terms, 21 are elected each time, with half the Council up for election each time.
list-PR
once you break from single-winner voting systems,
natural districts based on cities or counties or provinces or whole nations can be used, with upwards of 100 members elected in one list-PR contest if that is the choice.
In conclusion,
under PR, arbitrary districts not so bad as under FPTP
under PR any bad effect of artificial districts is addressed through some other mechanism. (or it would not be PR)
The debate on natural versus arbitrary districts hinges on fairness:
Natural districts cannot be gerrymandered -
True, a district is likely not evenly balanced in votes to parties
but that im-balance in votes is not artificially created.
when imbalance is artificially created, it is likely created to give one party unfair advantage or another.
Artificial districts are easily gerrymandered and are always contentious and their formulation is involved.
Natural districts are already existing -- there is almost no debate on them - the only question is how many counties and which ones must be grouped to form up a MMD.
Each city worthy of its own district will simply use the corporate limits of the city.
Under systems that use MMDs, arbitrary districts are un-necessary - as long as districts can have varying numbers of members.
Still, like under FPTP, the approx. ratio of voters to each member can be achieved by tinkering with district seat counts, while using already-existing natural districts.
The important thing is that each MLA is elected with about the same number of votes - that can only happen if a science-based mechanism is brought in to allocate votes fairly in multi-member districts or some pooling of votes, the allocation done either done according to popularity of candidate (STV) or popularity of party (list PR or MMP).
Irrespective of the seat-allocation method used, elections can be at-large or the contests can be held in separate multi-member districts. The only thing is generally it is taken that STV does not work well to fill more than ten or 12 seats at a time, with 21 being the most every elected by STV at one time anywhere. (But a District Magnitude of 21 has proven itself to work just fine -- in NSW Australia for 30 years now.)
List PR can work in small districts (Denmark uses list PR in districts as small as three members) and in districts so large that 100 or more seats are filled in one contest.
Just the problem with list PR is that voters cannot vote for an individual candidate if they want to - unless a somewhat convoluted ballot is used, allowing both party preference and individual candidate preference to be marked.
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The election set two firsts - the first election in Alberta of a Black woman and of an Indigenous woman. These were Rhiannon Hoyle in Edmonton-South and Jodi Calahoo-Stonehouse in Edmonton Rutherford, respectively
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Here's more on the 2023 Alberta election
(partially in response to the Tyee article: https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2023/06/07/No-Alberta-First-Past-The-Post/)
my research tells me that election result would have been much the same if Alberta did not use FPTP. assuming PR had been instead, the seat count would have been almost identical, especially if some list PR system was used that used electoral threshold -
no third party got more than 1 percent of the vote so would not be eligible for seats under most List PR or MMP systems.
STV likewise. although at the district level effective threshold would be perhaps ten percent of the vote in district containing one-ninth of province's seats. But of course small parties would have more votes if system was fair. But if district-level PR was used, each major city would have mixed rep and more votes would be used effectively to elect someone, not what happened under FPTP. article says that the 2019-2023 government was the first Conservative government to serve its full term since Klein in 2004. But the 2004-2008 and 2008-2012 government went the usual full (four year) term. actually, government can serve as much as five years. the last to go the full distance was in 1935-1940.
But in each other case the government made conscious decision to call an early election - they had majority government and was not brought down by vote of non-confidence. Alberta has had no minority governments but it has has had false-majority governments - where leading party did not receive majority of the vote. in fact, the 2004/2008-term government (which was overlooked as being among those that did not stop early) was elected with just 47 percent of the vote. so in fairness sake it should've stopped early! article quotes tweet by Bryan Breguet FPTP is a terrible system A party that won the popular vote by 8 points was 1300 votes away from losing the seat count. I see someone else contribute an interesting counter-point/corollary that UCP was 505 votes away from taking four more seats and thus making the seat count a very disproportional 53 to 34. (Calgary Acadia NDP won with 20 vote lead Calgary Glenmore NDP won with 30 vote lead Calgary Foothills NDP won with 250 vote lead Banff Kananaskis NDP won with 300 vote lead Calgary Edgemount NDP won with 300 vote lead) I actually don't see the 505 number - it would take about 600 (still miniscule number) for four of the districts listed above to flip. (actually only half that number if votes switched from NDP to UCP.) the closeness of the vote meant the election result could have gone any way. That's the chancy-ness of FPTP. 87 separate little sub-battles with no fair-ness overlap or overall proportionality.
"The irony in Parker’s strategy is that under first past the post and the drive to create an ever-bigger tent, political parties must push to expand their fringes far enough to capture enough votes to win a majority." actually the UCP is "good" how it is, it does not need to grow in order to take government.
With seats allocated how they are (FPTP), they could take government with as few as 47 percent (as Klein did in 2004) or even only 38 percent as Trudeau did federally).
UCP's 52 percent is more than enough if it gets the breaks allowed by FPTP. I went to the tweets that were linked Tiffany called for return to "Alberta's pre-1952 use of STV in Edmonton and Calgary and use of single-member districts elsewhere" actually it was in use pre-1959. with modern transportation, it would be easy to have three-seat districts even in rural areas, thus having STV there as well. or list PR in three-seat district ala Denmark. another said that the urban rural disparity of district sizes meant that Alberta now had a government elected by minority of votes in rural areas while a majority vote in the cities would be better. actually the popular vote overall did go to the UCP. (But yes, the UCP caucus is predominantly from the rural districts.)
Someone else pointed out that the "popular vote is an interesting although largely meaningless stat." it certainly is used nowhere in our electoral system. But can be used as rough measure of fairness, and determines whether it is a false-majority government or not. "The poor performance by third parties and an overall voter turnout five percentage points lower than 2019 indicates that citizens who couldn’t stomach either of the big tent parties chose not to participate in the vote at all." the low turnout could also be due to people realizing/thinking that they were in a safe seat and figured their vote would not make any difference. (Perhaps they were correct - if they did not vote, we'll never know.) The media did much for this - saying Edmonton were safe seats for NDP and the rural area were safe seats for UCP.
It is just that kind of coverage and prediction that causes the stunted growth of the voter turnout.
but also it shows weakness of FPTP and should - I say should - lead to voters clamouring for redress. "The votes within the three main electoral regions ... Outside of Edmonton and Calgary city limits, 63.4 percent voted for the UCP and 32.3 percent for the NDP. Within Edmonton city limits, 62.7 percent voted New Democrat, 34.6 percent United Conservative." But within Calgary, the NDP edged out the UCP, 49.3 to 48.2 percent." [and took more seats 14 to 12] from Alberta’s close election by the numbers | Globalnews.ca
a third of the votes in Edmonton (35 percent - UCP) were ignored and got no rep the rural NDP vote, almost a third of vote outside Edm and Calg, got only four seats. NDP was due 13 seats. votes wasted about half the vote in many Calgary districts, where the NDP and UCP vote tallies were close, was disregarded, got no rep. in all other Calgary districts, no matter whether UCP or NDP won, no less than a third of votes went to unsuccessful candidates. if you look at the waste of votes under FPTP, it is a wonder that people bother to vote at all. as I said in recent article "It is important to get out and vote on May 29. Even if many of the votes cast will be ignored, you can’t know your vote will be among them! So take a chance. It is all we have – for now."
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Here's my write-up of the election (originally written for June 2023 Millwoods Mosaic)
Alberta election -- Very different election result was a possibility due to voting system used
(alternative headline: 2023 election result a matter of chance)
By Tom Monto
Many in Millwoods must be disappointed by the overall results of the recent Alberta election. In the Edmonton-Millwoods provincial district, more than 60 percent voted to re-elect the local sitting NDP MLA Christina Gray. However overall, the United Conservatives (UCP) won a majority government.
The UCP did receive a majority of the votes cast across the province. But most everything else about the election reeked of unfairness and undemocratic representation.
The actual voter turn-out was pretty dismal, and it seems that many voters voted for parties that were not their first choice in order to try to get their vote to count. And despite this, many votes were ignored and were not used to elect anyone.
This seems harsh criticism, but the election method that we used did actually produce such dysfunction. With just one MLA elected in each district and votes being only used in that one district, there is no overall proportionality or fairness. The idea that one MLA can represent the range of sentiment in the district just does not compute, and yet that is the polite fiction that we believe in when we elect an MLA that will “represent” us, even if we did not vote for him or her.
Other countries do not use the single-winner system to elect their legislators, and in their elections the votes cast are used more coherently to determine the elected members.
Overall the recent Alberta election did produce a Legislature where the United Conservatives and the New Democrats did get the approximate correct proportions in the chamber as compared to votes cast. But that was a sheer accident. The NDP made a clean one-party sweep of Edmonton's 20 seats, but received only two-thirds of the city’s votes. The UCP got all but four seats outside Edmonton and Calgary but received only about two-thirds of the votes cast in those parts.
Those two dis-proportional results actually balanced each other as far as overall party representation goes. But now we see UCP MLAs from farm country trying to be the voice of big-city conservatives living in Edmonton.
In Calgary each party took about half the votes and about half the seats. This fair sharing of the seats was just by chance - with a shift of just three hundred votes, the NDP might have lost four of its Calgary seats and the city result would not have been so fair. The small shift in votes would have meant that the new Legislature would be made up of a very lopsided 53-seat UCP caucus facing only 34 NDP members.
And the opposite holds true as well. The NDP with just a bit more luck could have been elected to majority government. With a different shift of less than 2500 votes, the NDP might have won six more seats overall, which would have produced a NDP-majority legislature. (These close districts where UCP won with just a small lead over the NDP candidate were Calgary North, Northwest, Bow, Cross and East; and Lethbridge East.)
This very different result would have been produced by a shift of less than 2500 votes of the 1.8M votes cast in this election. Or it could have been produced if just 2500, of the one million eligible voters who did not vote, got out the door and voted NDP. (It would have to be a very specific 2500 voters to have this result, but the possibility still exists.)
Yes, in this election, one of the most significant elections in our history, more than a million of Alberta’s eligible voters did not vote. Voter turn-out was actually lower this time than in 2019 – 100,000 fewer voters voted this year compared to 2019.
Meantime the two main parties combined took more votes than they had in 2019, while fewer votes were cast. Voter turn-out was significantly lower in this election than in 2019. Even though there were more eligible voters, fewer votes were cast this year compared to 2019. I believe this drop came from voters who had voted for third parties (parties other than UCP and NDP) in 2019. Unable to see any chance for their preferred candidate to win, many of them simply stayed home. Those parties received just 74,000 votes as opposed to the 240,000 they had received in 2019.
And even many voters for the two main parties likely stayed home as well. The media identified Edmonton as safe seats for the NDP and the rural districts as safe seats for the UCP, so likely some stayed home feeling their preference just did not have a chance. It takes a stalwart voter to get out to vote, knowing their vote will likely be ignored. Somewhat surprisingly, there are many such voters – a third of Edmonton voters went against the NDP tide, and a third of rural voters went against the UCP tide. In four rural districts NDP voters actually prevailed against expectations.
And there is no way to know how many voters felt forced to vote for candidates not of their first choice. No time ever in our history has the “third parties” received such a low percentage of the votes cast. Only about three percent of the votes were cast for parties other than the UCP and NDP. Heck, even in Alberta’s first election, back when we were just coming into provincehood, five percent of the votes were cast for other than the two main parties. Generally a good 20 percent of votes cast are for parties other than the most-popular ones. It is not likely that that usual 20 percent of voters just of their own free will decided that the NDP or the UCP was the answer to their dreams.
Should politics work that way?
Should voters feel that voting for whom they truly want to see elected is a waste of time?
Should a third of the votes cast in our capital city go for naught?
Should more than a third of the voters outside Edmonton and Calgary be almost totally un-represented?
If you are like me, you answered “no” to each of these questions.
And we can look at most of the countries around the world and see a better way to elect our representatives - Proportional Representation. This can take the form of party list PR where voters vote for parties.
Or it can be Single Transferable Voting where voters vote directly for candidates. With most successful candidates getting the same number of votes, and each party getting a seat for each 20,000 votes cast or so, each party gets its fair share of the seats. STV offers the benefit that votes cast in Edmonton are used to elect Edmonton MLAs, which may not be the case in list PR.
As well, the system known as Mixed Member Proportional secures local representation and also party proportionality.
No matter the system chosen, PR will dependably produce fair results. This is not done by the system used in our last election, where less than one percent of votes cast determined whether we would now be living under a UCP or a NDP majority government.
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Footnote:
More discussion of Edmonton, Strathcona, Sherwood Park and Strathcona County
If Sherwood Park is part of Edmonton, then both Sherwood Park districts should be included in Edmonton, not just the one that elected an NDP member. But I have never seen anyone previously say Edmonton has 23 districts, as some analysis has done recently.
What is Strathcona?
Strathcona (the old City of Strathcona) which was amalgamated with the City of Edmonton in 1912. Still "Old Strathcona" compels a loyalty . it is somewhat famous as its main drag, Whyte Avenue, is tourist mecca to some degree.
Whyte Avenue's old buildings, some from the 1800s, have been protected from demolition and "development" due to neglect - money and interest flowed to downtown northside Edmonton as soon as amalgamation took place.
While Whyte Avenue is now basically an entertainment district. It once was a substantial retail and service centre - selling farm goods and supplies and everyday household goods and so much more.
Whyte Avenue was once busy commercial strip serving both city dwellers and farm communities nearby - nearby Strathcona County. This rural municipality being source of name of the provincial electoral district - Strathcona-Sherwood Park (not to be confused with Old Strathcona's Edmonton-Strathcona).
The County though is split by three provincial districts -
Strathcona-Sherwood Park; Sherwood Park and Fort Saskatchewan Vegreville.
So the county is not used as natural entity to form up the provincial district.
I found handy map of prov districts online:
This map tells me that Strathcona-Sherwood Park takes in only small portion of Strathcona County (including part of Sherwood Park and adjacent rural or suburban land).
Strathcona County extends north past Bruderheim, which is outside Strathcona-Sherwood Park
but Strathcona Sherwood Park prov district extends no farther north than the Sherwood Park prov district. Both are nowhere close to north end of County.
Strathcona County is split and covered by:
Sherwood Park
Strathcona Sherwood Park
Fort Saskatchewan Vegreville.
Fort Saskatchewan is actually encircled by Strathcona County.
This situation - of dispute, lack of clear information, overlapping geographical terms and confusion - actually supports my contention that prov. districts are arbitrary and not based on anything concrete on the ground and a person needs to do deep research to learn exact boundaries of prov districts.
If districts were based on cities or counties in their entirety, then there would be no such confusion.
Some say Edmonton has 22 districts - they want to include St. Albert with the 20 districts inside the corporate limits of Edmonton. And also include Sherwood Park. but exclude Strathcona-Sherwood Park from "Edmonton," although both Sherwood Park and Strathcona-Sherwood Park take in part of the hamlet identified as Sherwood Park and both cover part of the Strathcona County.
My position is that organic entities should be used for formulating of MMDs and analysis should be based on those as well.
The corporate limits of the City of Edmonton are well established. They determine who can vote in Edmonton city elections.
Not using that as district boundary leads to contentious blurring or angels-on-pinhead discussion of what is urban, what is suburban what is rural.
and anyways if members of each MMD are elected proportional, the boundary does not make much difference -- each vote counts wherever it is.
But simplicity does -- the City of Edmonton is well defined.
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