The stunning electoral landslide that propelled the New Democrats to power in Alberta this week was the product of two decades of demographic change and a shift in political attitudes that have seen Albertans draw much closer in outlook to the rest of Canada.
Alberta has been the fastest growing province for much of that period, often expanding at two or three times the national average. It is also Canada's youngest province, with a median age about four years younger than the rest of the country, the highest birth rate and the smallest proportion of seniors. As it has prospered economically, it has attracted young, highly educated Canadians from every other province at an unparalleled rate.
University graduates living in Alberta are roughly twice as likely to have matriculated in another province, proof of its drawing power. And like the rest of the country, it has grown increasingly urban. All of those factors – youth, education, urbanization – would be expected to create a more politically progressive society, given established patterns elsewhere in Canada.
On Tuesday, Rachel Notley's NDP captured at least 53 of the province's 87 seats, sweeping metropolitan Edmonton, half of Calgary and most Alberta's urban ridings.
Faron Ellis, who teaches politics at Lethbridge College, has been studying the changing political attitudes in Alberta with public survey data that focuses on issues such as same-sex marriage, abortion and assisted suicide. He said there’s no longer much difference between Alberta and the rest of Canada.
“I often kill a lot of headlines for reporters when I say ‘We’re not that different,’” Prof. Ellis said. “What our data does is shatter the stereotype of Alberta being the Bible belt, for lack of a better term.
“Not only is Alberta not that stereotypically social conservative province but it is increasingly like the rest of the country.”
Susan McDaniel, a demographer at the University of Lethbridge, described Tuesday’s election result as “a convergence of the demographic and the political.”
“I’m quite convinced that, because this is a landslide, all kinds of people voted NDP who hadn’t voted NDP before in every demographic, all across the province,” Prof. McDaniel said.
“Here in Alberta I don’t think this is the shock that it is for people in other parts of the country. The big cities have two progressive mayors and that’s where most of the people live.”
(Related: Gary Mason: An NDP victory changes everything Canadians think about Alberta)
And while the province’s changing demographics played a role in the election, so did a feeling that it was time for a change.
In Wei’s Western Wear in downtown Red Deer, the store’s proprietor, Chung Mah, is relaxed about the end of the Tory dynasty.
Mr. Mah’s father founded this business six decades ago, after he had moved here from China. Red Deer, a city of close to 100,000 halfway between Edmonton and Calgary, had elected only Progressive Conservatives going back to 1971, but this time returned New Democrats to the legislature. Mr. Mah is a long-time PC voter and voted PC on Tuesday. But he’s feeling fine about an NDP government.
“Albertans finally got pissed off enough,” says Mr. Mah, 54. There are racks of cowboy boots on one wall and cowboy hats at the entrance. Oil has ticked back to about $60 a barrel. Business is pretty good. There are prophecies of impending ruin under the NDP from some quarters – oil industry types – on Facebook and the radio, but Mr. Mah isn’t buying it.
“No. The NDP are still Albertans. They might do things we don’t all agree with. I don’t think they can do a lot wrong. They have the best interests of all Albertans.”
A couple blocks away is a shoe-and-clothing store owned by Lorna Watkinson-Zimmer and her husband, Dennis. “We’re pumped here,” said Ms. Watkinson-Zimmer. Customers have danced little jigs of celebration on entering. “To go completely orange is just amazing.”
Ms. Watkinson-Zimmer, 67, was recruited to run for the perennially last-place NDP in Red Deer South in 2012. There was no party infrastructure. She worked to build a base and cracked 10 per cent of the vote. This time the NDP, under union leader and Safeway cashier Barb Miller, won. Ms. Watkinson-Zimmer is elated. And she’s convinced premier-designate Notley will be able at the reins.
“She’s not going to pound like a wild horse,” says Ms. Watkinson-Zimmer. “She’s going to be methodical.”
Tony Coulson, a vice-president at Environics Research, says there are three distinct population groupings in Alberta. Edmonton, where the NDP first gained momentum and swept every seat in the metropolitan area, has a progressive, diverse population that cares about inequality and believes the government can have a positive impact in people’s lives, he said. Calgary is a cosmopolitan, global city that values its immigrant population and international business connections. And then there is rural Alberta and its smaller cities, which more closely resemble some of the Alberta stereotypes, where people tend be more conservative, religious, and wary of government, according to the survey data.
“It used to be that when we looked at Alberta relative to other provinces there was a distance in values and outlook but that has really narrowed over time,” Mr. Coulson said.
The shift became apparent for him around 2006, he said, when Calgary and Edmonton jumped way up in the census measures of ethnic diversity. Nearly a quarter of Edmontonians belong to a visible minority; and the proportion is slightly higher in Calgary.
This week in Calgary, which was considered the key to an NDP victory, Chima Nkemdirim was eating lunch near City Hall. Mr. Nkemdirim was born in Calgary in 1971, the year the first PC premier Peter Lougheed was elected, beginning 44 years of unbroken one-party rule. Mr. Nkemdirim’s mother, a nurse from Ghana, and his father, a climatologist from Nigeria, met in Toronto in the late 1960s. The family came to Calgary, says Mr. Nkemdirim, “for the idea of some place new, to create something.”
(Related: Understanding Alberta’s history of one-party rule)
Mr. Nkemdirim, a lawyer, is Mayor Naheed Nenshi’s chief of staff. Mr. Nkemdirim is as deeply entwined in the new Alberta as anyone in the province.
“This election changes everything,” Mr. Nkemdirim says. “I didn’t believe it. Nobody believed it. I knew, intellectually, this is what should happen – but I didn’t believe it.”
He had been on the phone, the day before, with an oil executive, who was frantic. The executive wanted Ms. Notley’s phone number, to dissuade her from a royalty review. Mr. Nkemdirim had not yet met Ms. Notley. He didn’t have her number. “It’s not going to be who you know. It’s a fundamental change. It’s going to be refreshing for Alberta.”
Alexandra Mann, a lawyer, is one of many who came to Alberta from elsewhere. She grew up in downtown Toronto and went to Dalhousie University in Halifax before returning home to study law at Osgoode Hall. Then, suddenly, in 2011, she was a Calgarian, moving west with her husband. At first, there was an apprehension about the city, that it was a home of rednecks. “My fears,” she says, “were not well founded.”
Back east, she typically voted NDP. She did so again on Tuesday in Alberta.
“The PC government didn’t align with my values,” Ms. Mann, 32, said. “I’m still in disbelief it happened. There’s hope. Democracy needs change. After 44 years, we just have to let somebody else try.”
On Edmonton’s main downtown drag, Cristiane Tassinari pulls a shot of espresso on an Italian-made machine at the end of the lunch-hour rush. After moving to Alberta’s capital city from Brazil, she recently opened a café on Jasper Avenue with her Alberta-born husband. She’s part of a wave of 60,000 who have moved to Edmonton in the past two years.
“Being in power for 44 years is really a long time. I feel that people were eager for a change,” Ms. Tassinari said.
She said she’s pleased with the change in government. Throughout the campaign she served a number of NDP staffers who worked in the party’s nearby headquarters. As a newcomer to Alberta, she didn’t feel any special attachment to the long-ruling PCs or the province’s political traditions.
“When I moved here I liked how things were working; the system in Alberta is certainly better than what I was used to,” she said. “But I never have had any loyalty to the PCs. I just don’t think they have the right perspective on things.”
Ms. Tassinari supported Brazil’s current leftist President before moving to Canada. But Ms. Tassinari says she’s a realist on what left-wing parties can achieve after many promises were made to fix that country’s health and education systems and little was delivered.
As the NDP prepares to form government, its strategists vow that their party will reflect “Prairie pragmatism” and won’t overpromise.
While Ms. Tassinari might have brought some of her early political leanings with her, Prof. Ellis said he believes newcomers are more likely to adapt to Alberta than the other way around.
“People tend to be assimilated into the Alberta political culture rather than change it,” Prof. Ellis said.
Born in Edmonton, John Brennan has watched as the province’s political culture has changed around him. The strategic adviser to Edmonton’s Mayor Don Iveson, Mr. Brennan says Alberta’s two largest cities are leading the way.
“This city once was a small Prairie town, but it’s been growing in spurts my entire life. It’s incredibly multicultural now,” Mr. Brennan said. “That growth has really changed the demographics here. That’s now reflected in the mayors of those cities and the new premier and government they’ve elected.”
Alberta’s newly elected political class has long rejected the province’s label as a conservative fortress. Mr. Brennan begins to name the cities with mayors who identify as progressive: Calgary, Edmonton, Red Deer, Fort McMurray, Grande Prairie.
“While there were a lot of reasons for what you saw on Tuesday, the demographics have been changing for a long time. It didn’t just flip overnight,” he said.