Alberta - Final Report Boundaries Transposition

With the final report out, I can finally do this... wait what do you mean there's a "commission minority proposals" section?

Oh boy.

So, good news: the Final Report of the 2025/26 Alberta Boundaries Commission is out. The commission has done a swell job of fixing their interim report to create a solid set of 89 constituencies (up two from current) which are drawn relatively equally - though the majority of the commission decided to backtrack on eliminating one of the northern remote seats, and the imbalance between urban seats and rural seats will remain.

That being said, the numbers are still heading towards a good balance: 49 seats (55% of all) in this map would be held between Calgary and Edmonton alone, up from 46 (53%) prior, with another 10 seats for CMA seats bringing the total up to 66%, about on par for where it should be (compare to Saskatchewan, where Regina/Saskatoon carry only 42% of ridings, but are well over 50% of the population).

As before with the interim maps, I’ve done a transposition of the 2023 election results onto the new boundaries. You can see it in two formats: the table directly below here, or on this nifty map I made on Atlas.co.

The final seat count based on the commission majority’s map is 48 United Conservatives (-1) and 41 New Democrats. (+3)

Because of the massive polling districts used by Elections Alberta in 2023 this transposition is not perfect, but is as close as I can get it. Feel free to point out any obvious makes of course, and if you want a copyable format you can download from this GSheet. I will add 2019 and 2015 transpositions at a later date… probably.

See the map version of the transposition and new boundaries here.

Yes, the UCP is Trying to Gerrymander the Boundaries

Let’s discuss the unpleasantness unfortunately contained in this report a bit further down: a blatant attempt to rig the boundaries by Danielle Smith’s chosen commission members.

I won’t get into too much technical detail, but suffice to say that some of my circle’s worst fears about how far Smith and the UCP might go to hold onto power are continuing to be realized. The commission’s two UCP-appointed members have gone out of their way to object in a normally cross-partisan exercise to the majority’s (the two NDP members plus the non-partisan chair) maps, claiming that the rural ridings were ‘mangled’ and the majority ‘privileges’ population parity and urban-rural divides.

Keep in mind that as I show you a series of some of the worst boundary draws I’ve ever seen. I will do another post soon with a transposition of these boundaries as well, but in the meantime some highlights:

Commission Minority’s Calgary Massacre

I can’t begin to describe how evil this is, and there is so much worse out there. Unlike the commission majority, which was forced to draw two urban-rural ridings (Calgary West-Elbow Valley and Calgary-Glenmore-Tsuut’ina) because they had little choice with the population balances, the minority members have drawn 6 urban-rural stretch boundaries plus two Calgary-to-Airdrie seats and one Calgary-to-Chestermere seat. For folks outside Alberta, this would be akin to drawing a seat from Toronto to Bolton, Montréal to Vaudreuil, or Surrey to Abbotsford. It is freggin’ bonkers.

Red Deer and Lethbridge - Drawn and Quartered

I really can’t begin to point to how blatantly bad this is. The minority commissioners, in their wisdom, have been following up on supposed advice that what these cities really want is to be cut up like pizza slices and served on a platter to the UCP. The NDP would have no chance at winning these seats, which is the point of course: whatever protestations they have about wanting to ‘expand identity’ or whatever are nonsense.

The inspiration for this travesty is the 1997-2015 Saskatchewan boundaries, where Regina and Saskatoon were drawn in a similar style, with four seats taking up parts of these cities each and diluting progressive votes in the urban areas with rural voters. It wasn’t considered a gerrymander at the time, in fact it was supported by the NDP MPs of the era who believed it would promote some sort of shared urban-rural identity… but it ended up backfiring spectacularly, of course, as the partisan divide grew. UCP members are not stupid and knows what they are doing here.

We’ll see what happens next. The report now goes to the Legislature, which has a final say on whether to implement them or not. The commission majority noted that they’ve felt very pressured to get this right while being handicapped by the decision to limit seat growth to 89 seats rather than 91 - something that may also come into play. Keep an eye out I guess.