One Step Closer – The Application Period Ends for UCP Leadership Hopefuls
On October 6th, the United Conservative Party will gather in Calgary to unveil who will take grab the reins and lead the province’s conservative movement into the 2023 general election. While the deadline for application passed on July 20th, there are some reports circulating that suggest the final list of official candidates may not be released until July 27th.
With that said, all indications seem to suggest that the current list available on the UCP website will be the group that will find themselves on the ballot when packages are mailed out to members on September 2nd. It will be a much more crowded ballot than we witnessed in 2017.
According to the party website, the official candidates that have met the requirements are:
UCP Official Candidates
Leela Aheer
voteleela.ca
Brian Jean
brianjean.ca
Todd Loewen
toddloewen.com
Rajan Sawhney
rajansawhney.ca
Rebecca Schulz
rebeccaforleader.ca
Danielle Smith
daniellesmith.ca
Travis Toews
travisforalberta.ca
While all of these candidates bring about a certain uniqueness about each of them, it cannot be said that there is a tremendous amount of “new blood” in this race – none, in fact. All but Danielle Smith currently sit as MLAs in the Alberta Legislature. Of course, Smith sat as an MLA and as the leader of the Wildrose and Progressive Conservative parties for years. She has stated, regardless of leadership race outcome, she intends to win a seat to become an MLA once more.
Dropped Candidates
Throughout the first stages of the leadership race, we saw ten individuals who registered with Elections Alberta their intent to run for the party’s top job. At the time of writing, two of those individuals have announced that they will resign from the contest while another’s future is not quite set in stone.
On July 10th, mayor of Amisk Bill Rock announced that he would be pulling his name from the race. Speaking to his decision, he indicated that he could not raise the money needed to become a candidate and that "we were also not able to secure sufficient support from our rural constituency associations and without their support, we feel our bid to win the leadership would have missed the mark.”
A mere 10 days later, former banker Jon Horsman signaled that he will no longer pursue the leadership of the United Conservative Party.
“While we are on track to meet the requirements of today’s deadline, it is a very crowded leadership race and having one more does not serve the purpose of why I decided to run - which was to contribute to the success of the conservative movement in Alberta by growing the moderate and inclusive base for the party.”
Also out of the running appears to be former Progressive Conservative MLA and leader of the Alberta Liberals, Dr. Raj Sherman. In an email to Global News from UCP spokesperson Dave Prisco, it was shared that “Mr. Sherman (sic) missed a few of the requirements, including the need to have had a membership for at least six months and provide 1,000 signatures from party members.”
On deadline day, Dr. Sherman had wrote on twitter that he provided his signatures and $125,000 to the party five minutes before the deadline.
What’s Next for These Leadership Hopefuls
Of those listed as official candidates for leadership, one of those men or women will become the next Premier of Alberta. To get there, a few more important dates and events await on the horizon.
Tomorrow marks the first of two official UCP leadership debates hosted by the party. The event will occur at the HALO Hangar in Medicine Hat from 5:00 – 7:00PM. The second will be held in our capital on August 30th in the Maclab Theatre at the Citadel from 6:00 – 8:00PM. Both events require ticket purchase for in-person attendance (though both can be live streamed online).
Outside of the live debates, another major deadline for hopefuls is the membership sales deadline on August 12. While this is important for UCP members to know to ensure they have an opportunity to vote, it is equally important for the candidates as there is generally some correlation between membership sales and the votes available to a given candidate. While it is by no means a 1:1 ratio, most voters are likely to cast their ballot in favour of the person whom sold them a membership in the first place.
Member’s ballot packages will be mailed out on September 2nd with a mail-in ballot due date of October 3rd. The final tally will be announced from Calgary on October 6th. There will also be five in-person voting stations across the province – one in each of the five regions. While ballot locations have not been officially announced, it will be interesting to see how the party handles the norther region given both Brian Jean and Travis Toews call the north home for their home constituency associations. Given one is from Fort McMurray and the other Grande Prairie, it will be difficult to avoid any perceived advantage given that the ballot will likely be held in one of these two municipalities.
How the Field is Shaping Up
Recently, Leger conducted a poll on behalf of Post Media to gather data to find where Albertan’s are with respect to this slate of UCP leadership candidates. Of the respondents who said they would vote for the United Conservatives if an election were held today, a clear trio of front-runners can be identified. Those three are Danielle Smith (22%), Brian Jean (20%), and Travis Toews (15%).
Outside of those three, not one candidate earned greater than 2% of support in the poll (31% indicated “I don’t know”).
While Travis Toews brings the largest collection of sitting MLA endorsements to the campaign, that internal support has not yet translated to popular support amongst UCP members. While polling is never exact, it gives a general barometer into how voters are feeling at a given point in time. Although it is surprising to see Smith taking an early lead in the race, it is also somewhat expected given that her campaign has been the driving messaging that has been picked up on by media, members, and other candidates as well.
When looking at this and other polling, it is of critical importance to remember that this race is not first past the post – it is preferential balloting.
Assuming in a hypothetical world where these percentages are exactly what we see come October 6th, all we know for sure is that no candidate will surpass the 50% threshold required to win the leadership on the first ballot. The question then becomes how do the votes of the last-place finisher get reallocated?
“After the first vote is counted, if no candidate receives more than 50% then the candidate receiving the least number of votes will be dropped from the contest and the ballots will be recalculated based on the next choices from the dropped candidate’s ballots. This process will be repeated until a candidate receives over 50%.”
So, this simply means that anyone who wants to win this race will need to court supplemental support from the other camps. It is incredibly difficult to know exactly how the votes will be distributed until the day of, but one thing this writer feels confident in saying is this race will likely go at least four or five rounds deep given the relatively lower levels of support we see from the other four candidates.
On the question of what is the most important quality for the new leader, there is little surprise the clear-cut front runner is “a clear plan to get Alberta’s economy on track and growing” at 42%. While there is less consensus for the next three points, there was still considerable support for rebuilding healthcare and education (21%), a “commitment to conservative values of freedom and respect” (18%), and a plan to “defeat Rachel Notley and the NDP” (14%).