FILDEBRANDT: UCP win in Olds is an ambiguous result for Alberta independence

In the safest of UCP and NDP seats, by-election results come with few surprises. NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi won in Rachel Notley's vacated seat of Edmonton-Strathcona. It was the safest NDP seat in Alberta, and it remains so. In nearby Edmonton-Ellerslie, the NDP stronghold remained orange as Gurtej Singh replaced outgoing Marxist-Leninist Rod Loyola. If there were to be any surprises, it was to be in the Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills race to replace outgoing UCP Speaker Nathan Cooper. There, upstart Republican Party Leader Cam Davies was hoping for a repeat of a 1982 by-election in that same constituency that saw the Alberta nationalist Gordon Kesler of the Western Canada Concept Party win. .Beyond voting for an Alberta independence candidate in 1982, the riding elected Wildrose MLAs in 2012 and 2015, and has been a bedrock of the UCP since 2019. If an openly nationalist candidate was going to upset the UCP's applecart, it would be in Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills.It didn't happen.The 75% scored by the UCP's Nathan Cooper in 2023 dropped to 61% for Tara Sawyer in Monday night's by-election, with those lost votes going to Republican Cam Davies. He scored nearly 18%, running just behind the NDP's 20%.The Republicans were unlikely to win the seat, but they needed to beat out the NDP for second place to claim a contextual win and to prove that they were a real threat to the UCP..On one hand, it's not a bad result for a party that is only a few months old.On the other hand, it validates Alberta Premier Danielle Smith's strategy of keeping the independence movement an intramural affair, tucked safely within the embrace of the UCP. Nationalists disappointed at the Republicans' showing can take solace from the fact that many independence supporters voted for the UCP.Alberta's conservative voters have vote-splitting PTSD after the NDP's surprise win in 2015. No matter how overwhelmingly conservative a rural constituency may be, and how impossible an NDP win is even with multiple conservative candidates, voters are too scared to risk "splitting the vote..." It may not be logical, but conservative voters are mentally scarred after the 2015 experience..Nonetheless, the UCP should take notice and not be too self-satisfied with the result. The Republicans took a sizeable bite out of their vote, which came from their base.In the same constituency in 2008, the upstart Wildrose scored 21% to the Progressive Conservatives' 64%. Four years later — under Danielle Smith — the Wildrose flipped it with 57% of the vote.However much it lacks central leadership, Alberta's independence movement must carefully consider how it moves forward. As the Western Standard's Cory Morgan has often said, it might be most successful as a non-partisan movement pushing the UCP, rather than an explicitly partisan vehicle..But there is something to be said about having a party that can threaten the UCP electorally if it is not a welcoming home for nationalists. The Republicans could serve that purpose.The clearest result from this by-election however, is that Smith has managed — at least for now — to keep a large number of independence supporters within her camp.Keeping them there as Alberta moves toward an independence referendum next year will be her most challenging task.

FILDEBRANDT: UCP win in Olds is an ambiguous result for Alberta independence

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