Tonight, the United Conservative Party will announce its new leader and Alberta’s 19th prime minister.
About four months after the leadership contest began, one of the seven nominees was named the winner.
By the August 12th deadline, nearly 124,000 people had purchased or renewed UCP memberships and were eligible to vote. Party members have been voting by mail since early September.
As of Monday night, about 82,000 members (66% of all members) had cast their votes, said UCP sources familiar with the leadership race.
Members can vote in person at five polling places across the state this morning.
The party announced Thursday afternoon that the results of the first poll had been postponed to 7:30 p.m.
Originally, the first results were expected around 6pm at the BMO Center in Calgary.
You can watch the live results and victory speeches here starting at 7:30 PM MT. Vassy Kapelos is hosting a special edition of his Power & Politics on the CBC News Network from his BMO Center in Calgary starting at 3pm MT.
The nominee is Leela Aheer, MLA and former Minister of Culture. Brian Jean, former leader of the Wild Rose party and MLA. Todd Loewen, Independent MLA and former UCP caucus chairman. MLA and former Minister of Transport and Social Services Rajan Sawhney. MLA and former Minister of Child Services Rebecca Schultz. Former Treasurer Travis Toews at the MLA. Another former Wild Rose leader, Daniel Smith.
The poll asks members to rank their preferred leader, numbered from 1 to 7.
If one candidate receives 50 percent or more of the votes on the first ballot, that candidate assumes leadership.
If no candidate receives a majority of votes on the first ballot, the candidate with the fewest votes is removed from the ballot and the vote is reassigned to the voter’s second choice.
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The party repeats this process until one of the candidates wins a majority of votes.
Leadership race results hard to poll, experts say
UCP called a leadership race in May, following a spring leadership review in which Prime Minister Jason Kenny received support from 51.4% of members. Kenny said he didn’t have enough support to continue as leader, and promised to resign if the members elected a new leader.
Internal polls leaked from several campaigns suggest dissident candidate Smith is the frontrunner, with Kenny-ally-aligned Toos in second place.
Lisa Young, a professor of political science at the University of Calgary, said it was difficult to do polls accurately during party leadership elections because only party members could vote. I asked
The reason Young believes Smith is the favorite is because all the contenders act as if she’s the one to get.
Previous leadership elections have yielded unexpected winners in ranked votes. Ed Stelmach became Alberta’s premier after an upset victory in his 2006 leadership election for the Progressive Conservative Party. Allison Redford became the leader and premier of PC in 2011 after winning a ranked vote.
Calgary-based independent pollster Janet Brown said the UCP’s leadership election rules are different and are more likely to lead to grassroots leaders than moderate consensus winners. The deadline for purchasing memberships in time to vote was, for one, much earlier.
“It’s easy to attract people who feel emotional about an issue, isn’t it?” she said in an interview last week. “It’s easier to sell memberships to them. It’s harder to sell memberships to people who are more sober.”
The UCP was formed in 2017 by the merger of the Progressive Conservative Party and the Wild Rose Party into a new larger coalition.
The new leader will be tasked with what some believe led to Kenny’s downfall – to keep the party united. said to bring
She said libertarian UCP members, outraged by the pandemic’s public health restrictions and believing that the Kenny administration had failed to effectively resist federal policies, felt disenfranchised in Toews’ victory, saying the top We believe their concerns about Daun’s leadership will remain unaddressed.
Young said it could prompt some MLAs who tried to oust Kenny to leave the caucuses.
Smith has campaigned for the introduction of a controversial sovereignty law that he said would allow Alberta to refuse to accept federal laws or court decisions. If she can propose coordinated legislation that her MLA can agree to, she might be able to put the tent together, Young said.
Some UCP MLAs have said they cannot vote in favor of the aforementioned Alberta Sovereignty Act, which could create a crisis of confidence, but Mr. Not published.
Mr Brown’s poll found that inflation, health care and education are the issues Albertans care most about right now, but these were not the focus of the leadership campaign.
She said it would lead to a disconnect between voters and the UCP, and Rachel Notley and the NDP could be the winners of the next state elections.
“Today, the idea of reliable and stable leadership looks more favorable to Alberta than the circus UCP,” said Brown.