Alberta's new riding map skews Lethbridge, Banff, Calgary seats toward UCP, voter data suggests
Danielle Smith's MLAs approved panel's controversial boundary plan over NDP protests
Alberta’s newly approved political boundary map would tip the Canmore-Banff riding into the United Conservative Party’s win column, pad the governing party’s lead in some Calgary seats and put a UCP-held Lethbridge seat much farther out of contention.
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map → skew → contention
That’s according to a CBC News data analysis that compares how Albertans voted in the 2023 provincial election to the riding layout the UCP-dominated legislature approved Wednesday for the 2027 election.
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legislature → accord → election
While the new boundary changes do not put an NDP victory out of reach, it doesn't make it any less of a “gerrymander,” said Feodor Snagovsky, a University of Alberta political scientist.
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Snagovsky → put → Alberta
“The thing about gerrymandering is that it doesn’t have to be this widespread, salamander, American-style thing that totally rigs all election outcomes,” Snagovsky said.
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Snagovsky → have → outcomes
“All it has to be is putting your thumb on the scale and making it more difficult for the other party to succeed.”
The UCP has defended itself against gerrymandering accusations by saying the new map was not drawn by politicians themselves, but rather recommended by an independent advisory panel, composed of a cabinet-appointed former judge, two UCP appointees and two NDP appointees.
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map → have → judge
But the opposition NDP have argued this was a highly unorthodox process that allowed Premier Danielle Smith’s party to discard the initial commission’s riding plan and replace it with something more favourable to them.
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party → argue → them
If the last election’s votes were replicated on the advisory panel map that the UCP adopted, 50 ridings would be won by the UCP and 41 by the NDP, based on this analysis.
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ridings → replicate → analysis
That’s a narrower gap than the 49-to-38 seat victory achieved by UCP in the last election.
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That → ’ → election
Premier Danielle Smith used this point in question period Wednesday to dispute NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi’s accusations the new map amounts to partisan meddling.
“If his conspiracy theory is that someone gerrymandered the advisory panel's maps to benefit the UCP, then they failed miserably,” she said.
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she → use → UCP
However, the advisory panel's map would produce a bigger victory than would be produced if MLAs accepted the original boundary commission’s map last spring, instead of rejecting it in favour of a second version that aimed to restore two rural ridings proposed for the chopping block and create a 91-riding map.
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that → produce → map
That discarded map would have produced a five-seat victory for the United Conservatives over the New Democrats, 47 to 42 on an 89-seat map.
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map → discard → map
In addition to restoring rural seats in central and northern Alberta, the new boundary panel altered the first commission’s Canmore-Banff riding by adding small communities on the Cowboy Trail; fused parts of rural Rocky View County with three west-end Calgary seats; and converted Lethbridge’s two urban seats into one city-only riding and three rural-urban hybrids, with slices of Lethbridge and massive swaths of southern Alberta.
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panel → restore → Alberta
The NDP would have won back that Banff seat by 10.5 percentage points with April’s boundary commission maps, according to CBC News’ transposition of 2023 results by each voting station onto the riding boundaries drawn (then redrawn) this year.
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NDP → win → boundaries
But the newly approved map would flip that seat, giving the UCP a narrow victory margin of 0.7 percentage points.
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map → approve → points
While the controversial redrawing of Lethbridge wouldn’t lead to any seats switching hands — the NDP currently hold one Lethbridge seat, the UCP the other — it does make it much harder for the NDP to win two seats in the south’s biggest city, and makes the new seat titled “Lethbridge” more competitive between the two parties.
What would have been a 10.8-point NDP victory in Lethbridge-West using the rejected maps becomes a win of half that size in the redrawn Lethbridge seat.
And while the UCP would have held the Lethbridge-East seat with a 1.7-point margin using April’s map, they win each of Lethbridge’s three rural hybrid seats by at least 20.6 percentage points, based on the current seats.
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they → lead → seats
Electoral boundary commissions are tasked with organizing their work around certain factors, including “communities of interest,” referring to groups of people who share certain traits.
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who → task → traits
Snagovsky feels there’s a case to be made that someone living in rural Taber, population 10,000, might disagree that they’re part of a community of interest with someone in Lethbridge, which includes 100,000 people living 50 kilometres away.
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which → feel → people
“If you're not doing it based around that, then what are you doing?” Snagovsky said.
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Snagovsky → do → what
The majority of the panel argued southern Alberta was united economically around the agricultural and food processing industries, something they said transcended the boundaries of the city of Lethbridge itself.
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they → argue → Lethbridge
In Calgary, the effect of adding a few thousand residents of hamlets Springbank and Bearspaw into neighbouring city ridings is comparatively smaller than the changes to Banff and Lethbridge seats.
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effect → add → seats
But in every case, it improves UCP fortunes.
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it → improve → fortunes
A UCP minister was re-elected in Calgary-North West last time by a mere 0.6-point margin, or 143 votes — and the rejected boundary commission kept that map in place.
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commission → re → place
But that UCP margin grows to 1.8 percentage points or 463 votes in the redrawn Calgary-North West-Bearspaw, according to CBC News’ data transposition.
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margin → grow → transposition
The UCP would have won Calgary-Bow and Calgary-West by larger margins under the old maps, but those leads grow by a few hundred votes in each case.
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leads → win → case
The majority of the new panel says they chose to remove those hamlet communities from the commission’s proposed Cochrane-Springbank riding and insert them into Calgary because their acreages and rural residences have stronger connections to the 1.5-million person city next door than to the town north of them.
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acreages → say → them
This transposition based on the 2023 election results may or may not be replicated in next October’s provincial elections.
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transposition → base → elections
In the Calgary-Shaw byelection in September, the NDP won when votes swung 17 percentage points in their direction (compared to 2023).
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votes → win → 2023
If the whole next election followed Calgary-Shaw’s trajectory, the NDP could win government on either the rejected commission’s map or the approved panel’s map.
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NDP → follow → map
The NDP and UCP were tied for provincial support in the lead-up to the separation referendum, according to a poll conducted in September by Janet Brown Opinion Research for CBC News.
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NDP → tie → News
A tight contest could make some of these tweaks and small partisan advantages in modified ridings even more consequential, according to data scientist and pollster John Santos.
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some → make → Santos
“When you take safe seats for one party, and then you make them marginal or even flip them to the other party, well, that’s exactly why this alternative map has led to accusations of gerrymandering,” said Santos, who works with Brown’s Calgary-based firm.
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who → take → firm
The initial boundary commission’s chair had recommended striking a new advisory panel if MLAs disapproved of the commission maps and wanted to restore its two eliminated rural districts.
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MLAs → recommend → districts
However, he recommended against altering any ridings south of Airdrie, which the second panel did with its changes in Banff, Calgary and Lethbridge.
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panel → recommend → Banff
The second panel’s minority members argued that the panel’s map was unfair and unconstitutional.
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map → argue → ?
The majority called such protests “sanctimonious” and incorrect.
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majority → call → protests
The New Democrats have threatened to challenge the ridings in court.
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Democrats → threaten → court
No individual or party would be able to file a lawsuit until the new ridings are officially put into force.
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ridings → file → force
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