The merger of the provincial Progressive Conservative and Wildrose parties into the United Conservative Party has worked; Alberta’s conservative vote is no longer split.
In the two byelection votes last week, the new United Conservative Party MLAs, Devin Dreeshen in Innisfail-Sylvan Lake and Laila Goodridge in Fort McMurray-Conklin, won with the combined vote of the Progressive Conservative and Wildrose party candidates in the 2015 general election.
Dreeshen gained 81.76 per cent of the popular vote in the Innisfail constituency and Goodridge garnered 65.9 per cent of the vote in Fort McMurray.
The byelections set the table for the general election, scheduled for March 2019.
The election will be decided in the capital region, Calgary, Red Deer, Medicine Hat and Lethbridge. The NDP holds most of its 53 seats in these areas.
Constituency redistribution is a wash.
The consolidation of 16 rural ridings and the addition of one each in Airdrie, Calgary and Edmonton affects an equal number of NDP and UPC seats.
At worst, in the byelections the UPC just held seats they already had and conventional wisdom is not to make much of byelections
However, unless the UCP falls victim to a bitter election campaign, it is poised to form the government.
Alberta is still in the hands of the conservative voter majority who coalesced around Ernest Manning 76 years ago, transferred their allegiance to Peter Lougheed 47 years ago, sent conservative politicians on a time out in 2015, and are now ready to give government back.
By Thursday’s numbers, combined with UPC Leader Jason Kenny’s commanding byelection victory in Calgary-Lougheed in December, a conservative restoration to government is eight months away, with the current NDP government consigned to history as an interregnum.
The NDP will form an official Opposition at least as strong as the UCP is today, but it will be the Opposition.
Alberta will continue to have an essentially two-party legislature because the dream of an alternative centrist party is dying.
The Alberta Party is a failed coup d’état.
Aided and abetted by Progressive Conservatives who didn’t like the UPC, Mandel pushed Greg Clark out of the party’s leadership.
But if Mandel is the answer, Albertans apparently don’t know the question.
To be sure, the Alberta Party candidate Abigail Douglass was parachuted into Innisfail-Sylvan Lake, but Fayad Sid is an established Fort McMurray businessman. They both had vigorous campaigns but ran a distant third behind the NDP.
The Alberta Liberal Party is moribund.
Liberal parachute candidates in both ridings each had only one per cent of the vote, and their combined voters -- all 137 of them -- could fit in a small meeting room.
Liberal Leader David Khan is running in Calgary-Mountain View, which will be vacated by another Liberal, Dr. David Swann.
If the New Democrats snatch that riding from the Liberals, the party is done.
The election is now in Jason Kenney’s hands.
Rachel Notley is a formidable opponent, but the minority of potential voters who vote are conservative.
Frank Dabbs is a veteran political and business journalist and author.
