The Would-Be Alberta Gerrymander

Well, it’s as bad as I thought it’d be.

As mentioned in my prior post on the Alberta boundaries commission report, I have done a transposition of the commission minority’s (aka UCP members) very blatant, very obviously gerrymandered cheater map done by cheats. Apologies for the editorializing, but this bothers me immensely.

Lets get into numbers. Before we do so, a note that because of the lack of clarity on the maps, both the images and the descriptions, I did have to make some guesses, and for a broad swath of rural ridings where the result would not fundamentally change I simply didn’t do the transposition - call me lazy. I’m pretty confident in the numbers overall, but some grace if there’s a mistake.

First, let’s check the updated seat tally. With the commission majority’s recommended maps, we had 48 UCP vs 41 NDP, 15 of which were highly competitive (within 10%) - 11 of those being in Calgary.

Under the UCP commissioner’s proposed boundaries, that would switch to 57 UCP vs 32 NDP, with only 11 competitive ridings - 8 of which are in Calgary. Chart below:

In general, this map has the following effect compared to the recommended, non-gerrymandered maps:

Narrow NDP seats: 5→1
Strong NDP seats: 11→12
Solid NDP seats: 18→17

It is a complete decimation of marginal seats across Calgary and, of course, Lethbridge, while snatching an extra seat in Edmonton. Whereas before the NDP only needed a 5% swing to win power in the province, they would now need closer to 12-15%.

Its hard to describe how utterly evil a choice it would be to put these seats in, not simply because of the partisan advantage it gives themselves, but also how much it carves up municipalities in the province - diluting effective local representation almost everywhere… except of course Danielle Smith’s Brooks-Medicine Hat constituency, which has zero changes in either report. :)

I’ve included a map layer in my Atlas.Co map of the commission boundaries, which you can view here.

Happy Easter, everyone.