Alberta, like the rest of Canada, has several parties vying for office every time a new election rolls around, though only two made any serious impact yesterday.
Like 2019, only the NDP and the UCP won seats in the provincial Legislature following yesterdays heavily contested election, at time of publication.
However, candidates from the several other parties, along with independents, still managed to receive tens-of-thousands of votes across the province.
In Lethbridge, the Alberta Party ran a candidate in the west riding, Braham Luddu, and the Liberal Party ran one candidate in each local riding, Pat Chizek in the west and Helen McMenamin in the east.
No other party had a candidate on the ballot in Lethbridge for this election.
While results were not entirely clear at time of publication, the Lethbridge-West riding was trending in favour of NDP candidate Shannon Phillips, so the Lethbridge Herald has projected her victory.
Meanwhile, the Lethbridge-East constituency was too close to call, though it was trending in favour of UCP candidate Nathan Neudorf.
That said, the 2023 election saw under 1,500 votes for candidates outside of the UCP or NDP in both Lethbridge ridings, as of 11:45p.m.
Compared to 2019, when over 4,000 ballots were cast for candidates who were not with the UCP or NDP in both Lethbridge ridings.
With the pre-election polls having shown a tight race in Lethbridge, many voters appear to have entrusted their vote with either the NDP or UCP.
Furthermore, there were fewer options for voters in Lethbridge this time around, with the Alberta Party and the Alberta Independence Party failing to have candidates in the east riding and the AIP not showing in the west riding either.
The AIP now goes by the Independence Party of Alberta, though they still chose to not seat a candidate in either Lethbridge riding.
Some voters also felt rather unenthusiastic about the options in Lethbridge this election.
Vanessa Rogers, a voter in Lethbridge-West, says the campaigns seen in this election were not optimal.
“All of the ads this year were just attack ads,” said Rogers. “Nobody was talking about their platform.”
She says she still felt the need to vote, even though she did not necessarily want to vote for any of the available options.
“I just didn’t want to vote for anybody because they were acting like toddlers,” said Rogers.
Furthermore, she says the poor campaigns made it more difficult to understand the platforms of the candidates.
“It was harder to sit down and figure out where they stand on their platforms because they weren’t actively giving that message,” said Rogers.
Even so, she says voting is important and it is worthwhile, even if the candidates are less than perfect.
However, she also says a lot of people she knows had no plan to cast a ballot this year because of the unsavoury campaigning.
“It blew my mind how many people, even this go around, weren’t planning to vote because they were just sick of the attack ads,” said Rogers.
The polling stations closed at 8:00p.m. last night, and results began seeping in slowly around twenty minutes later.
Several outlets began calling a UCP majority government around 11:00p.m.
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