The “Redmonton” party is no more: Alberta's NDP base has moved to Calgary

You don't have to go back to 2012 or four elections ago to find a time when the Alberta NDP barely registered in Calgary.

Sure, they fielded candidates, but none of them did any door-knocking or campaigning. They averaged less than five percent of the vote in Alberta's largest city in 2012.

It was a party focused on Edmonton for decades because its leaders lived there and it was the only seat in Alberta that had a real seat.

Times have changed. Calgary has changed. The New Democrats have certainly changed, especially as they look outside Rachel Notley for a new leader.

The Alberta NDP is now the dominant party in Calgary.

Calgarians make up nearly half of the party's membership ahead of June's leadership vote, according to ridings of 85,144 party members. That compares to a quarter of members in Edmonton, with the rest outside the two largest cities.

There have been rumblings among party insiders that the party's center of gravity will shift, especially with the star candidacy of former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi, who joined the opposition party this spring in a leadership bid.

But this is a galactic realignment. Calgary NDP members outnumber Edmontonians two to one, 39,240 to 21,253.

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That regional awkwardness of the NDP membership could bode well for the hopes of widely recognized front-runners Nenshi and Calgary MP and former cabinet minister Kathleen Ganley. In addition, it means fewer Edmontonians support the leadership proposals of local MPs Sarah Hoffman and Jodi Kalahu Stonehouse, which would allow them to step up to succeed.

The New Democrats may also be encouraged by the new size of their base in the city, which was a key battleground in the last election. There are currently more NDP members in Calgary than UCP members who won the leadership vote in 2022 – despite Daniel Smith's party having more members across the province.

“He says a lot of people are really excited to be in Calgary,” Ganley said. His riding of Calgary-Mountain View has 3,501 NDP members, the most in Alberta and counting. The UCP had its strongest rural riding yet in 2022.

In fact, the six ridings with the most NDP members are all in Calgary, followed by Notley's Edmonton-Strathcona in seventh.

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Ganley's leadership campaign used geocoding with addresses from an updated NDP active member database to provide geographic data. This was reported by CBC News.

Party membership has more than quintupled since January, when Notley announced he would step down after a new leader was elected. Party insiders said the membership base was evenly split between Edmonton, Calgary and the rest of Alberta before leadership campaigns began recruiting new members.

The NDP has struggled to make inroads outside of the big cities, and this membership data largely reflects that. The party sold fewer than 300 members in 11 rural or small central ridings, including several ridings the NDP won in northwestern Alberta when Notley's party formed government in 2015.

But outside of Edmonton and Calgary, there's another interesting shift in the party's support. Only outside.

The enthusiasm for this NDP leadership contest appears to have spread from Calgary and into backwater communities that have no history of voting New Democrat.

The five ridings surrounding Calgary, including Banff-Kananaskis, which is currently represented by the NDP, have more party members than party members. Seven Suburban ridings around Edmonton, all of which voted New Democrat in the 2015 election.

Airdrie-Cochrane, which the party lost by 23 percentage points in 2023, now boasts more NDP members than Edmonton-area St. Albert, where the party has won three straight elections.

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Over the past few years, Notley and his team have been organizing hard in Calgary, trying to win back more support after the city's near-annihilation in the 2019 election. Ahead of the 2023 vote, many Edmonton MPs aren't expecting much competition in their ridings, regularly knocking on doors in the southern city.

The party won all 20 seats in Edmonton and 14 of Calgary's 26 seats in the last election.

Is there complacency in the capital in the progressive enclave nicknamed Redmonton? Some of the party's longest-held seats, Edmonton-Beverley-Clareview and Edmonton-Northwest, have only about 500 members each. In rural conservative strongholds like Red Deer-South and Innisfail-Sylvan Lake, New Democrats hold more cards.

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The numbers show the leadership campaign's emphasis on recruiting members in Calgary, said Deron Bilus, who served three terms as Edmonton-Beverley-Clareview MLA before stepping down last year.

But it could also spell some trouble for the party to retain its political stronghold, especially if the next leader is the NDP's first in Calgary.

“This transfer of most of the members from Edmonton means that NDs have to do more work here,” Bilus said.

There may also be a change in the party's political vision based on Alberta's corporate culture city rather than a government city. Since becoming premier, Notley has tried to move the party closer to the center, and the move toward Calgary could continue that trend, Bilus said.

Ganley's team was unable to locate the listed addresses of 221 NDP members, meaning 0.3 per cent of the total members could not be assigned to any name in that section.