Alberta provincial electoral districts
Alberta provincial electoral districts are currently single member ridings that each elect one member to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. There are 87 districts fixed in law in Alberta.
Contents
History[edit]
The original twenty five districts were drawn up by Liberal Member of Parliament Frank Oliver prior to the first general election of 1905. The original boundaries were widely regarded as being gerrymandered to favor the Alberta Liberal Party. Every boundary redistribution since 1905 has been based on the original boundaries, with districts being split or merged.
From 1905 to 1926 with only a few exceptions each district elected a single member on the First Past the Post system. Calgary and Edmonton as well as Medicine Hat were elected on a plurality block vote, where each voter had as many votes as candidates were elected.
There have also been a couple of cases where members were elected at large, and did not represent any districts.
From 1926 to 1955 members in Calgary and Edmonton were elected in Single Transferable Vote super ridings that had five to seven members. Outside of the two cities one member was elected under the optional system, with vote transfer taking place only if one candidate had less than 50% of the vote. There were no district changes between 1926 and 1940.
With Alberta in a population boom in the fifties and Calgary and Edmonton growing, single transferable vote was becoming too complicated, with vote counting taking days before any results could be announced. In 1959 the "super-ridings" were broken up and the voting system was made standard across the province.
In 1977 Elections Alberta was created to independently oversee election laws. After the Alberta Court of Appeal struck down the boundaries used for the 1993 election,[1] semi-independent boundary commissions were set up to tweak the boundaries to population changes that occurred after every census. Committees are composed of a neutral judge, two members appointed by the governing party, and two members appointed by the official opposition.
As is the case with nearly every other Canadian jurisdiction, the number of districts has not increased in proportion to the population. Prior to the 1986 election the number of districts was fixed by law at 83 thus any change to that number would have to be enacted by the legislature. Even though the population has increased by more than 40% since 1986, the number of districts did not change until 2010. The 2012 election saw the number increase to 87.
Naming conventions[edit]
Like the federal districts in Alberta, urban ridings traditionally begin with the city name. This has generally applied where an urban area is divided and joined with rural areas, such as Grande Prairie-Wapiti and Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche. Notable exceptions are Cypress-Medicine Hat and Brooks-Medicine Hat, which follow the convention in other rural areas of listing communities in alphabetical order (another exception being Vermilion-Lloydminster-Wainwright).
Unlike federal practice, Alberta uses hyphens to join all name elements. This is true for electoral districts named for multiple communities as well as urban districts (where the city name is followed by a direction, a neighbourhood, a landmark, or the name of a historical politician). For example, compare the provincial Fort McMurray-Conklin with the federal Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, where the em dash is used instead of the hyphen to join names of separate communities. Also compare the provincial Edmonton-Strathcona with the federal Edmonton Strathcona, where a space indicates that Strathcona is a neighbourhood of Edmonton.
Current districts named for individuals include several premiers:
- Calgary-Klein for Ralph Klein,
- Calgary-Lougheed for Peter Lougheed,
- Edmonton-Manning for Ernest Manning, and
- Edmonton-Rutherford for Alexander Rutherford.
Three are named for former party leaders:
- Calgary-Shaw for former Liberal leader Joseph Tweed Shaw,
- Dunvegan-Central Peace-Notley for former NDP leader Grant Notley, and
- Edmonton-Decore for former Liberal leader and Edmonton mayor Laurence Decore.
In addition, Edmonton-McClung is named for suffragette and MLA Nellie McClung. The abolished riding of Edmonton-Roper was named for CCF leader Elmer Roper.
List of provincial electoral districts[edit]
Current districts[edit]
Name | Created | MLA | Party | Population (2016) | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Calgary-Acadia | 2012 | Tyler Shandro | United Conservative | 48,966 | |
2 | Calgary-Beddington | 2019 | Josephine Pon | United Conservative | 50,220 | |
3 | Calgary-Bow | 1971 | Demetrios Nicolaides | United Conservative | 51,358 | |
4 | Calgary-Buffalo | 1971 | Joe Ceci | New Democrat | 49,907 | |
5 | Calgary-Cross | 1993 | Mickey Amery | United Conservative | 50,634 | |
6 | Calgary-Currie | 1971 | Nicholas Milliken | United Conservative | 48,403 | |
7 | Calgary-East | 1963* | Peter Singh | United Conservative | 50,838 | |
8 | Calgary-Edgemont | 2019 | Prasad Panda | United Conservative | 50,803 | |
9 | Calgary-Elbow | 1971 | Doug Schweitzer | United Conservative | 48,618 | |
10 | Calgary-Falconridge | 2019 | Devinder Toor | United Conservative | 52,688 | |
11 | Calgary-Fish Creek | 1979 | Richard Gotfried | United Conservative | 47,691 | |
12 | Calgary-Foothills | 1971 | Jason Luan | United Conservative | 45,715 | |
13 | Calgary-Glenmore | 1959 | Whitney Issik | United Conservative | 49,543 | |
14 | Calgary-Hays | 2004 | Ric McIver | United Conservative | 50,782 | |
15 | Calgary-Klein | 2012 | Jeremy Nixon | United Conservative | 50,338 | |
16 | Calgary-Lougheed | 1993 | Jason Kenney | United Conservative | 42,956 | |
17 | Calgary-McCall | 1971 | Irfan Sabir | New Democrat | 48,735 | |
18 | Calgary-Mountain View | 1971 | Kathleen Ganley | New Democrat | 49,442 | |
19 | Calgary-North | 1957* | Muhammad Yaseen | United Conservative | 39,120 | |
20 | Calgary-North East | 1959* | Rajan Sawhney | United Conservative | 40,366 | |
21 | Calgary-North West | 1979 | Sonya Savage | United Conservative | 48,766 | |
22 | Calgary-Peigan | 2019 | Tanya Fir | United Conservative | 45,810 | |
23 | Calgary-Shaw | 1986 | Rebecca Schulz | United Conservative | 45,169 | |
24 | Calgary-South East | 1959* | Matt Jones | United Conservative | 40,309 | |
25 | Calgary-Varsity | 1993 | Jason Copping | United Conservative | 45,742 | |
26 | Calgary-West | 1959 | Mike Ellis | United Conservative | 46,266 | |
27 | Edmonton-Beverly-Clareview | 1997 | Deron Bilous | New Democrat | 46,496 | |
28 | Edmonton-Castle Downs | 1997 | Nicole Goehring | New Democrat | 46,112 | |
29 | Edmonton-City Centre | 2019 | David Shepherd | New Democrat | 47,715 | |
30 | Edmonton-Decore | 2004 | Chris Nielsen | New Democrat | 48,927 | |
31 | Edmonton-Ellerslie | 1993 | Rod Loyola | New Democrat | 48,024 | |
32 | Edmonton-Glenora | 1971 | Sarah Hoffman | New Democrat | 45,519 | |
33 | Edmonton-Gold Bar | 1971 | Marlin Schmidt | New Democrat | 45,446 | |
34 | Edmonton-Highlands-Norwood | 2004 | Janis Irwin | New Democrat | 43,550 | |
35 | Edmonton-Manning | 1993 | Heather Sweet | New Democrat | 48,376 | |
36 | Edmonton-McClung | 1993 | Lorne Dach | New Democrat | 44,625 | |
37 | Edmonton-Meadows | 2019 | Jasvir Deol | New Democrat | 51,776 | |
38 | Edmonton-Mill Woods | 1979 | Christina Gray | New Democrat | 50,265 | |
39 | Edmonton-North West | 1959* | David Eggen | New Democrat | 45,523 | |
40 | Edmonton-Riverview | 1997 | Lori Sigurdson | New Democrat | 45,214 | |
41 | Edmonton-Rutherford | 1993 | Richard Feehan | New Democrat | 47,353 | |
42 | Edmonton-South | 1917* | Thomas Dang | New Democrat | 45,801 | |
43 | Edmonton-South West | 2012 | Kaycee Madu | United Conservative | 45,901 | |
44 | Edmonton-Strathcona | 1971 | Rachel Notley | New Democrat | 46,578 | |
45 | Edmonton-West Henday | 2019 | Jon Carson | New Democrat | 43,046 | |
46 | Edmonton-Whitemud | 1971 | Rakhi Pancholi | New Democrat | 46,833 | |
47 | Airdrie-Cochrane | 2019 | Peter Guthrie | United Conservative | 51,170 | |
48 | Airdrie-East | 2019 | Angela Pitt | United Conservative | 49,978 | |
49 | Athabasca-Barrhead-Westlock | 2019 | Glenn van Dijken | United Conservative | 46,920 | |
50 | Banff-Kananaskis | 2019 | Miranda Rosin | United Conservative | 46,824 | |
51 | Bonnyville-Cold Lake-St. Paul | 2019 | Dave Hanson | United Conservative | 53,809 | |
52 | Brooks-Medicine Hat | 2019 | Michaela Glasgo | United Conservative | 51,070 | |
53 | Camrose | 1921* | Jackie Lovely | United Conservative | 44,082 | |
54 | Cardston-Siksika | 2019 | Joseph Schow | United Conservative | 42,655 | |
55 | Central Peace-Notley | 2019 | Todd Loewen | United Conservative | 28,993 | |
56 | Chestermere-Strathmore | 2019 | Leela Aheer | United Conservative | 48,203 | |
57 | Cypress-Medicine Hat | 1993 | Drew Barnes | United Conservative | 50,109 | |
58 | Drayton Valley-Devon | 2012 | Mark Smith | United Conservative | 46,637 | |
59 | Drumheller-Stettler | 2004 | Nate Horner | United Conservative | 41,535 | |
60 | Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche | 2019 | Laila Goodridge | United Conservative | 44,166 | |
61 | Fort McMurray-Wood Buffalo | 2004 | Tany Yao | United Conservative | 41,420 | |
62 | Fort Saskatchewan-Vegreville | 2004 | Jackie Armstrong-Homeniuk | United Conservative | 52,141 | |
63 | Grande Prairie | 1930* | Tracy Allard | United Conservative | 46,343 | |
64 | Grande Prairie-Wapiti | 1993 | Travis Toews | United Conservative | 48,481 | |
65 | Highwood | 1971 | RJ Sigurdson | United Conservative | 48,813 | |
66 | Innisfail-Sylvan Lake | 1993 | Devin Dreeshen | United Conservative | 46,717 | |
67 | Lac Ste. Anne-Parkland | 2019 | Shane Getson | United Conservative | 46,546 | |
68 | Lacombe-Ponoka | 2004 | Ron Orr | United Conservative | 44,898 | |
69 | Leduc-Beaumont | 2012 | Brad Rutherford | United Conservative | 48,337 | |
70 | Lesser Slave Lake | 1971 | Pat Rehn | United Conservative | 27,818 | |
71 | Lethbridge-East | 1971 | Nathan Neudorf | United Conservative | 46,204 | |
72 | Lethbridge-West | 1971 | Shannon Phillips | New Democrat | 46,525 | |
73 | Livingstone-Macleod | 1997 | Roger Reid | United Conservative | 48,120 | |
74 | Maskwacis-Wetaskiwin | 2019 | Rick Wilson | United Conservative | 43,798 | |
75 | Morinville-St. Albert | 2019 | Dale Nally | United Conservative | 50,225 | |
76 | Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills | 1997 | Nathan Cooper | United Conservative | 49,418 | |
77 | Peace River | 1905 | Dan Williams | United Conservative | 39,974 | |
78 | Red Deer-North | 1986 | Adriana LaGrange | United Conservative | 47,672 | |
79 | Red Deer-South | 1986 | Jason Stephan | United Conservative | 52,743 | |
80 | Rimbey-Rocky Mountain House-Sundre | 2012 | Jason Nixon | United Conservative | 45,138 | |
81 | Sherwood Park | 1986 | Jordan Walker | United Conservative | 45,992 | |
82 | Spruce Grove-Stony Plain | 2019 | Searle Turton | United Conservative | 51,267 | |
83 | St. Albert | 1905 | Marie Renaud | New Democrat | 47,745 | |
84 | Strathcona-Sherwood Park | 2012 | Nate Glubish | United Conservative | 47,853 | |
85 | Taber-Warner | 1963* | Grant Hunter | United Conservative | 42,625 | |
86 | Vermilion-Lloydminster-Wainwright | 2019 | Garth Rowswell | United Conservative | 46,042 | |
87 | West Yellowhead | 1986 | Martin Long | United Conservative | 50,604 |
Districts prior to 2019 election[edit]
* District has been abolished and re-established.
Historical provincial electoral districts[edit]
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ Stinson, Douglas (July 1, 1999). "Knowing Where to Draw the Line - Alberta Views - The Magazine for Engaged Citizens". albertaviews.ca. Retrieved 2018-05-31.
- ^ "Alberta Finance, 2011 Census" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2015-12-14.
- ^ "Alberta Finance, 2011 Census" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2015-12-14.
- ^ "Alberta Electoral Boundaries Commission: Stats". Archived from the original on 2017-01-08. Retrieved 2017-01-13.