Yesterday, the NDP’s Kyle Campbell won Calgary Shaw, putting himself well beyond recount territory. As the UCP vote collapsed, NDP leader Naheed Nenshi called the result an earthquake. He was not wrong.Sixteen thousand people voted. According to the unofficial count, Campbell got 7,461 of them, the UCP’s Mike Derry 6,879, the Progressive Tory Kyle Joseph 978 and the Liberal John Roggeveen 602. Also ran, was independent Rolly Ashdown with 82. Valid ballots: 16,002. Margin: 582. Turnout was in the high thirties on a list of about 42,300 – roughly three-fifths of 2023’s 63 percent.Official numbers land September 24. Do not wait on them to see the shape of the problem. Which is this….Calgary Shaw is not a wealthy south Calgary suburb discovering socialism. The NDP share barely moved: 42.7 percent in 2023, 46.6 percent tonight. Enough to win in the circumstances but not a political/cultural shift. In fact, Campbell took fewer raw votes than David Cloutier did three years ago.What happened is that the UCP vote collapsed – from 13,970 and 56 percent under Rebecca Schulz to 6,879 and 43 percent under Derry. That is the story.The people the UCP needed stayed home. Many I suspect were both UCP supporters and favourable to Alberta independence, and still sulking after Smith declared herself a federalist.Either that, or they parked with Kyle Joseph of Peter Guthrie’s party, which stands for little more than “conservative, but not Danielle Smith. And not too conservative, either.”.Smith, it should be understood, did not have much choice: you swear an oath to the Crown and then try to lead a caucus that contains both camps. Separatist conservatives heard betrayal and some of them sat on their hands. They did not however, become New Democrats. They just vanished.Moderate and patriotic voters – the embarrassed middle – heard instability and showed up to vote against the government that put the question on the ballot.The hard left was always going to show up..The new piece is that middle, a 6 percent leak to a party invented to soothe people who find Smith too much. For Joseph’s 978 votes would have closed the gap. Add them to Derry and the UCP is back in front. That is vote-splitting in the old Alberta style: not a conversion of Shaw, just another fracture of the right. Guthrie left caucus over health-care procurement, built a boutique protest label, and last night it did what boutique protest labels do. It elected an NDP MLA in a riding conservatives have held in 10 of 11 elections since 1986.What went wrong is referendum anxiety meeting people who think they are conservatives until an actual conservative is driving..Smith put a remain-or-start-the-separation-process question on the October 19 ballot after a large petition – more than 700,000 people out of an eligible voting population of 2.9 million Alberta voters. A judge declared it illegal, so the Cabinet settled for a referendum on whether to have a referendumDamned if she does, damned if she doesn’t. Choose independence and watch the federalist half walk. Choose Canada and watch the other half stay home. A lot of independence supporters seem to have believed a premier could be both the instrument of a rupture and the manager of a government. Shaw suggests they will punish her for being the second.Nenshi was mid-speech when the board flipped from Derry up several hundred to Campbell up several hundred. These were the advance polls being added in. They were the votes of people motivated enough to vote early. In a low-turnout byelection, the motivated win..Winning Shaw would not have settled October 19. Losing it does not bury the split either. If the referendum fails, the far right does not go back to sleep. You already have the beginnings of a Bloc-style vehicle – Drew Barnes’s Alberta First effort federally – and a provincial cousin in Guthrie’s operation. Carney in Ottawa poured fuel on it. Alberta gets called ungovernable because it contains two conservative tribes that will not share a tent the moment the tent has to choose a country.What the other side will say: Smith’s needed reforms in health and education? The never-boring Craig Chandler on the Derry campaign? New neighbourhoods full of people with no UCP habit? Some of that is true.Nenshi’s ground game? If you won, your ground game worked..But, it does not explain a 13-point drop in the UCP share while the NDP share holds. Homeowners and energy workers are still the plurality in Calgary Shaw. They did not all convert. Too many of them either stayed home or voted for a protest brand that cannot form a government and just helped one they like even less.The legislature math barely moves. The political math does. South Calgary is no longer a 15-point cushion. The UCP cannot afford 6 percent for a party that exists to be allergic to the premier. And the referendum is still five weeks away.If Shaw was an earthquake, the aftershocks are coming.
