Understanding the Three By-Elections with Three Different End Games
On June 23rd, residents of three ridings will head back to the polls to fill the vacancies in the Alberta Legislature. The newly elected MLAs will join their colleagues in Edmonton when the Legislature returns in October for what will also (likely) mark the start of a new session with a Speech from the Throne.
And if rumours are to be believed, these new MLAs could be seeking re-election before 2027.
While both the United Conservatives and New Democrats are going into these by-elections with the same goal of winning as many seats as possible, these races will have very different sub-goals and theories that the parties will be testing in advance of what could be an early election call next year.
For this article, we will focus on the key themes of each by-election race and some of the objectives the UCP and NDP will be hoping to accomplish in the ridings.
Edmonton-Strathcona
NDP*: Naheed Nenshi
UCP: Darby Crouch
In politics, there are no sure things. Just look at the recent federal election results in Carleton. But in Alberta, the closest thing to a slam dunk is that the Alberta NDP will win in Edmonton-Strathcona.
The seat has been held by the New Democrats since 1997 and has been home to two party leaders, Raj Pannu and Rachel Notley. On June 23rd, the party will try to secure the victory for a third-party leader to hold the seat – Naheed Nenshi.
For the NDP, the goal is simple – win by as large of a margin as possible.
In the 2023 general election, Rachel Notley earned 79.7 per cent of the popular vote with a high-water mark of 82.4% earned in 2015. For Nenshi and his team, they will want to see Notley numbers when the ballots are counted.
For the UCP, they will have a different focus. Of course, every political party’s main objective is to win every race, but Edmonton-Strathcona will be a place the party experiments with messaging and seeing what sticks against the new leader of the NDP.
In the communications put out by candidate Darby Crouch, this strategy is evident. There is clear testing of the waters with certain angles of attack. For example, her messaging has focused on Nenshi not living in Edmonton and his history as Calgary Mayor. She has also put out communications on the recent push to restrict materials in school libraries.
Edmonton-Ellerslie
NDP*: Gurtej Singh Brar
UCP: Naresh Bhardwaj
While Edmonton-Ellerslie has been an NDP seat for a decade now, it is not in the same category of “safe” as other ridings in the capital. Former MLA Rod Loyola won the seat during the Orange Wave of 2015 before resigning to run in the recent federal election. His successor, Gurtej Singh Brar, will be running against the last conservative to hold the seat – Naresh Bhardwaj.
Of the three by-elections, Ellerslie is shaping up to be the closest race (and perhaps the most important from a future-election standpoint).
On the New Democrat side of the aisle, the party’s goal is simply to hold onto the seat and prevent the UCP from penetrating the city boundaries once again. But there is a challenge for the NDP in Ellerslie that the UCP does not have – volunteer resources.
To be more specific, the biggest challenge for the NDP candidate in Ellerslie is attracting party supporters in the city to support his campaign. With the party leader running in central Edmonton and the recent loss of former federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh in the federal election, volunteers will be eager to go support Nenshi in Strathcona. This could present a unique challenge in trying to attract volunteers for Brar in Ellerslie.
For the UCP, this presents the single-best opportunity to build momentum in Edmonton leading up to the next election (whenever that is held). They are running a candidate that is known in the community that also brings experience as an associate minister when the Progressive Conservatives were still in power.
It will still be an uphill battle for the UCP, but the party will be looking to this riding as a barometer of support in some of the “less safe” seats for the NDP in Edmonton. The UCP can form government without a single Edmonton seat (as they currently do), but any seat they can take away from the NDP in their base region makes the election math that much harder for the New Democrats to overcome.
Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills
UCP*: Tara Sawyer
NDP: Bev Toews
Republican: Cameron Davies
If Edmonton-Strathcona is the safest NDP seat in the province, Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills is one of the safest conservative seats in the province. Outside of a short period when the former Olds-Didsbury riding was held by the Western Canada Concept party in 1982, the seat has always belonged to a conservative party.
What makes this by-election interesting is that the only riding to elect the first openly pro-Alberta-separation MLA will once again have a pro-separation candidate running when independence advocates are getting louder.
And make no mistake, the Republicans have made it abundantly clear they are running on a separatism platform. On their website, the home page says “our party is at the forefront advocating for Alberta independence. Should the Alberta government hold a binding referendum prior to 2027, we will work together to ensure a result in favour of Alberta’s independence. As part of our efforts, we are pre-organizing to ensure a successful referendum result.”
While it is expected that the UCP will indeed come out of this race victorious, the question will be how much support can the Republicans take away from the governing party? Premier Danielle Smith has publicly indicated her desire to stop a new party from popping up like we see in Quebec, but that has happened.
The UCP’s goal is to hold the riding and to extinguish as much support for the Republicans as possible so they are unable to build momentum.
For the NDP, there will be two goals to pursue.
First, the party will have the opportunity to test new ways of reaching out to rural ridings they traditionally struggle in come general election time. As the UCP will do in Edmonton-Strathcona, the NDP should be using this by-election to see what communications and strategies work in rural Alberta and find ways to build support outside of the cities leading up to the next election.
Second, the New Democrats could find ways to use the separatism wedge issue to hurt the UCP’s campaign without ceding ground to the separatist Republicans.
According to recent public polling from Janet Brown, UCP members are split on the subject with 54% saying they would vote for separation from Canada while 39% would vote against.
In contrast, 98% of NDP voters have said they would vote against separation – effectively a unanimous result.
If the NDP can find ways to use the separatism wedge to hurt the UCP without giving momentum to the Republicans (and separatists more generally), they could use that as an effective tool come general election time – whenever that happens.
As a vote split leading to an NDP victory is unlikely, the key result to watch here will be how much the UCP win by.
