In Alberta, was a loss a win and a win a loss?
The aftermath of yesterday’s Alberta’s provincial election will have a long term impact on Canadian politics.
In the very raw aftermath of Alberta's provincial election, it strikes me that there may have been a parable to be had for Rachel Notley, leader of Alberta's New Democratic Party, in the provincial election that was held in Ontario last year.
In the lead-up to that election, a politically left-leaning friend posited that a re-elected Progressive Conservative government was a foregone conclusion. Their reasoning? The New Democratic Party likes to keep on leaders that lose elections.
It turned out that my friend's prediction was correct. That election resulted in Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath's fourth election loss. While she consolidated the left-of-centre vote from a flaccid provincial Liberal party in some areas, she lost support to the Progressive Conservative party in others. Some, like my friend, were left wondering what the election outcome would have been had Howarth made way for fresh blood after her third loss in 2018.
If Rachel Notley was concerned about a similar fate befalling her, she didn't let on in the speech she gave last night that conceded her party's defeat in yesterday's Alberta provincial election. Despite the loss, she intimated she would continue as party leader. Additionally, her defenders spun the seats her party regained in Calgary after losing them to the UCP in the 2019 provincial election as a win. But at the end of the day, Notley lost an election that, by most accounts, was, in theory, hers to lose.
That meant that United Conservative Party leader Danielle Smith led her party to a healthy-sized majority government victory, albeit while losing about a dozen seats compared to the party's 2019 election outcome. Preliminary results suggested that much like Ontario's Horwath, in this election, Notley mainly seemed to have succeeded in making gains by consolidating existing left-of-centre votes that previously went to the Alberta Party (172k votes in 2019 vs. 13K votes this year), as opposed to persuading UCP voters to jump ship.
But if there are similar lessons to be divined by the freshly re-elected Premier Danielle Smith, they will likely come as she makes difficult phone calls to several high-profile UCP cabinet ministers who lost their seats and to other incumbents who clung on by the narrowest of margins.
But before that, Smith - and the Canadian media establishment - should begin by giving herself a well-deserved pat on the back for pulling off a political miracle - knitting back together a highly fractious caucus and party membership that had turfed former Premier Jason Kenney as its leader only a few months ago.
Since her election as party leader last fall, Smith managed to motivate a caucus that had been exhausted by a breakneck legislation calendar set by the former Premier, led a cabinet weary from COVID politics and internal infighting through a budget, built an election platform, all while soothing a membership and volunteer base that strongly felt that the party's former upper echelon had stopped listening to them. This accomplishment was no small feat, one that I'm not sure anyone else could have pulled off in the very short runway between Kenney's ouster and yesterday's general election. Despite the speculative moanings of various internal malcontents (and columnists for whom the UCP's internal unrest of the last two years has presented easy fodder for content), the majority Smith won yesterday that resulted from her efforts should be enough to keep any serious threat to her party leadership at bay through the next election.
But Smith will also undoubtedly have to conduct a post-mortem as to why the margin of victory in several critical Calgary area seats was so slim, and why she lost incumbent cabinet ministers in the region to the NDP. Some reasons will be less thorny to address than others. For example, Notley's decimation of the Alberta Liberal Party and the Alberta Party means that in the future, the UCP will likely have to contend with a two-party reality, with no split of left-of-centre voters, political organizers, and donors. And with a majority mandate under her belt, Smith may be finally able to constructively address her team's barely hidden sore spot - the electoral impact of the electorate's lingering discontent with the party's previous boss.
But other issues will require more reflection. Winning in Alberta's diverse and increasingly socially progressive urban areas will require the UCP to govern in a way that earns the trust of voters fresh off of watching two years of party infighting and a leadership race that, putting it mildly, devolved into somewhat less than mainstream urban policy terrain. Smith will have to do this without straying too far from the UCP's governing principles, all while bringing these urban voters together with the rural voters are largely responsible for handing her a majority mandate. She'll also have to find a way to either bring on side or cauterize political operatives rooting for her failure.
Meanwhile, for Notley to survive as Alberta NDP leader, she will have to bank on Smith failing on all these fronts while hoping that her party ignores the fact that Notley did just lose an eminently winnable election. (She will also have to hope that big left-wing names like Naheed Nenshi and Heather McPherson don't have designs on her job).
But Smith has also managed possibly the biggest redemption story in Canadian political history, as she returned as Premier ten years after a major election loss as leader of Alberta's now-defunct Wildrose Party. It would be naïve - and really arrogant - for any politico to suggest that she hasn’t learned some hard-fought lessons. In turn, it would be equally as naïve to be convinced that Smith doesn’t have the capacity to address the issues she now will face as Premier.
Perhaps most importantly, Smith now has four years of having the advantage of being Premier and the levers of power that accompany a majority government on her horizon. Conversely, Notley is confined to the opposition benches.
And that's why - in spite of what other writers will be trying to spin to you today - in politics, a win is a win, and a loss is a loss. So everything else considered equal, advantage Smith.
Onwards, onto whatever the next four years (or so) will bring.