🇨🇦 Alberta ridings I'm watching on federal election night in Canada

It's Election Day so don't forget to vote!

A snowy day on Parliament Hill in Ottawa (source: Dave Cournoyer)

It’s Election Day in Canada and the polls are open from 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. in Alberta. If you aren’t one of the 815,131 Albertans who voted in the Advance Polls, then be sure to find your voting station and cast a ballot today.

While voters in most of Alberta’s 37 federal electoral districts are expected to elect their local Conservative Party candidate tonight, there are a few ridings that are expected to be competitive. Here are a few Alberta ridings I will be watching closely tonight:

Three non-Conservative incumbents

Calgary McKnight: If George Chahal is re-elected tonight he will become the first Liberal MP to ever be re-elected in Calgary (thanks to CBC’s Jason Markusoff for unearthing this astonishing fact). Chahal’s main challenger is Conservative Dalwinder Gill.

Edmonton Griesbach: New Democrat Blake Desjarlais defeated two-term Conservative MP Kerry Diotte in 2021. This year’s election is a rematch between the two candidates but Mark Carney’s red wave means that Liberal candidate Patrick Lennox could be a bigger factor in this election.

Edmonton Strathcona: NDP MP Heather McPherson was re-elected with 60.31 percent of the vote in 2021, making this the strongest NDP voting riding in Canada. McPherson’s chances of re-election are considered likely but will this remain the safest NDP seat in Canada?

Competitive seats with no incumbents

Edmonton Centre: Liberal MP Randy Boissonnault’s last minute departure triggered a shuffle of Liberal candidates in the provincial capital city that resulted in previously nominated Edmonton Strathcona Liberal Eleanor Olszewski running in Centre instead. Olszewski’s main opponents in this contest are Conservative Sayid Ahmed (who defeated former Conservative MP James Cumming in a nomination vote) and former public school trustee Trisha Estabrooks.

Calgary Confederation: The Conservatives and Liberals both scrambled to replace candidates at the last minute with the retirement of Conservative MP Len Webber and departure of Liberal Thomas Keeper. That created a brand new and very interesting race with the Conservatives naming former United Conservative Party MLA Jeremy Nixon and the Liberals choosing University of Calgary vice-president and The Strategists Podcast co-host Corey Hogan as their candidates. Hogan’s campaign has tried to leverage Nixon’s connections to Premier Danielle Smith, who’s UCP did not do well in this part of Calgary in the last provincial election, by framing this as a Smith vs. Carney campaign in their literature.

Edmonton Southeast: Edmonton Mayor Amarjeet Sohi jumped back into federal politics and is facing Conservative Jagsharan Singh Mahal. This is a new riding that includes much of the area of Mill Woods that Sohi represented as an MP from 2015 to 2019 and as a City Councillor from 2007 to 2015.

Calgary Skyview: Making up most of the north part of the riding that Chahal won in 2021, this race is likely between Liberal Hafeez Malik and Conservative Amanpreet Gill. Rajesh Angral, who placed a strong second in the 2023 election as the Alberta NDP candidate in Calgary-North, is running for the federal NDP.

Other ridings to watch

Here are a few more things I will be watching tonight:

• The strongest Conservative riding in 2021 was Battle River—Crowfoot, with Damien Kurek earning 71.3 percent of the vote. I’ll be watching closely to see which of Alberta’s rural ridings has the strongest Conservative support in 2025. I’ll also be watching to see how far, if any at all, Carney’s red wave splashes into Alberta’s rural ridings.

• If the Liberals do better than expected in Alberta, then keep your eye on the results in Calgary Centre, Edmonton Manning, Edmonton Northwest, Edmonton Riverbend and Edmonton West.

• How well does Independent candidate Rod Loyola do in Edmonton Gateway? Loyola was the NDP MLA for Edmonton-Ellerslie from 2015 to 2025 and was briefly the federal Liberal candidate in this riding before his nomination was revoked. He’s repurposed his red lawn signs for his Independent campaign, something the Liberal Party disapproves of.

• I expect Conservative MP Rachael Thomas will be re-elected in Lethbridge but I will still be keeping an eye on how well Liberal Chris Spearman does. Spearman was Mayor of Lethbridge from 2013 to 2021 and has been a vocal critic of the UCP government’s efforts to allow open pit coal mining in the Eastern Slopes of the Rocky Mountains.

• Spanning from Grande Cache in the north to Kananaskis in the south, the new Yellowhead riding is massive. While most voters in this riding will vote Conservative, I will be watching to see if mountain communities like Canmore, Banff, and Jasper continue their trend of voting Liberal or NDP.

• Esquimalt–Saanich–Sooke is not in Alberta (it’s on Vancouver Island) but it’s where former Alberta MLA Stephanie McLean is running as a Liberal candidate. McLean was the NDP MLA for Calgary-Varsity from 2015 to 2019 and Minister of Service Alberta and Status of Women from 2016 to 2018.

More election analysis

I joined the Progress Report Podcast last week to discuss the federal election in Alberta and I have been invited to join CBC Radio’s Alberta at Noon call-in show tomorrow to talk about the federal election results.

Look for an update tomorrow morning in which I am planning to share some initial thoughts and analysis about the vote results in Alberta and across Canada.

I am also excited to be recording a new episode of the Daveberta Podcast tomorrow where we plan to dive into the election results and what they mean for Alberta politics. Daveberta Podcast episodes are available exclusively for paid subscribers, so sign up if you’d like to listen.

Thank you to everyone who has read and subscribed to Daveberta during the federal election campaign. If you like what you’re reading here, feel free to share it with a friend or colleague, and if you have any feedback please send me an email or leave a comment.

Thanks again,

Dave