Smaller political parties ponder future after dismal results in Alberta election

Alberta's smaller political parties are assessing their future after failing to elect any candidatess in the May 29 election.

The next legislature will have 48 members from the United Conservative Party, 38 from the Alberta NDP and one independent.

All other parties were shut out for the second election in a row. 

The Alberta Party and the Alberta Liberals saw sharp declines in their vote share. After running a full slate of candidates in 2019, the Alberta Party was only able to get 19 candidates on the ballot who received a total of 12,715 votes, compared to 171,988 four years ago. 

Albertans cast 18,474 votes for Liberal candidates in 2019. That dropped to 4,282 in 2023. Elections Alberta said 1,763,441 valid votes were cast in the election. 

Alberta Party leader Barry Morishita, who placed third in the riding of Brooks-Medicine Hat, is pondering the future of the party and his own leadership. He says he plans to take the summer to make a decision about whether he sticks around. 

"I took a significant financial hit doing this job and I'm not in a position to be able to do it forever," he said. 

"My age and my financial situation, all those things put together, I would think that it would be unlikely that I would be the leader in the four years from now."

Liberal leader John Roggeveen said he was disappointed the party was unable to get a candidate elected to the Alberta legislature. He said the Liberals need to change their approach. 

Roggeveen said the Liberals need to do more outreach to grow the party and perhaps find ways to co-operate with the Alberta Party and the Alberta Green Party. 

"I don't see things being much different four years from now than what they are now," he said. "Unless we can bring about some changes, we've got the same two parties in the legislature. "

Both Morishita and Roggeveen said they believe having a third party in the legislature would balance the polarization between the UCP and the NDP. 

Morishita said the board and membership need to make some decisions about the future of the Alberta Party, For instance, would they have the volunteers and money to compete in the next election or should they cooperate with or merge with the other small parties?

"There does have to be a change in strategy about how we move forward and under what conditions," he said. "It's gonna be a tough couple of years for all the third parties, I think."