2024 Alberta NDP leadership election

[lilTommy]

Nenshi is considering running!!! https://calgaryherald.com/news/politics/naheed-nenshi-considering-bid-alberta-ndp-leadership

This is very exciting news. Hopefully he does indeed enter the race.

Since you're a New Democrat I don't understand your excitement at a provincial ND party being led by a person who has not been a New Democrat.

I've always liked Nenshi as a politician. Of course, I don't always agree with him, and he may not be a social democrat, but let's face it.. the NDP in Alberta is basically just a coalition of non-Conservatives these days. As long as it has a chance of winning, it should be trying to pick leaders who have the best chance of doing so.

To some extent, I wish UCP and NDP weren't the only options in Alberta politics and smaller parties (such as the Alberta Party) could gain some ground amongst the non-UCP vote.

It's interesting to see in Western Canada a polarization at the provincial levels now.
- BC (while polling is saying otherwise) has always been NDP vs Anti-NDP party (SoCred, BCLibs, United) The greens have always "been there" a goo 10%+ but never been a factor in seats, spoiler yes.
- Alberta was basically a one-party province but is very UCP vs NDP now. There really wasn't a clear anti-UCP choice till 2015, except in the 80s when the NDP then the LIBs took turns winning most of Edmonton. The anti-UCP voter has found a home with the NDP for the most part
- SASK has basically been NDP vs SP for decades, no sign that will change
- MAN is still basically NDP vs PC, where the LIBs used to bump up in seats when the NDP were out of office.

I think most of this started to happen post-1950's

[lilTommy]

Nenshi is considering running!!! https://calgaryherald.com/news/politics/naheed-nenshi-considering-bid-alberta-ndp-leadership

This is very exciting news. Hopefully he does indeed enter the race.

Since you're a New Democrat I don't understand your excitement at a provincial ND party being led by a person who has not been a New Democrat.

I've always liked Nenshi as a politician. Of course, I don't always agree with him, and he may not be a social democrat, but let's face it.. the NDP in Alberta is basically just a coalition of non-Conservatives these days. As long as it has a chance of winning, it should be trying to pick leaders who have the best chance of doing so.

To some extent, I wish UCP and NDP weren't the only options in Alberta politics and smaller parties (such as the Alberta Party) could gain some ground amongst the non-UCP vote.

It's interesting to see in Western Canada a polarization at the provincial levels now.
- BC (while polling is saying otherwise) has always been NDP vs Anti-NDP party (SoCred, BCLibs, United) The greens have always "been there" a goo 10%+ but never been a factor in seats, spoiler yes.
- Alberta was basically a one-party province but is very UCP vs NDP now. There really wasn't a clear anti-UCP choice till 2015, except in the 80s when the NDP then the LIBs took turns winning most of Edmonton. The anti-UCP voter has found a home with the NDP for the most part
- SASK has basically been NDP vs SP for decades, no sign that will change
- MAN is still basically NDP vs PC, where the LIBs used to bump up in seats when the NDP were out of office.

I think most of this started to happen post-1950's

for getting Yukon

The Yukon is interesting; the three parties (Yukon, Liberals, NDP) are all fairly strong, all three parties have about 30% or more (YK at 39%) from the last election, and all have decent seat counts (NDP at 3 is not representing the over 28% of the vote they took).
But historically all three parties are competitive. Within the last 30 years or so all three parties have formed the government.

[lilTommy]

Keep in mind that the BC Liberals (aka BC United) are a relatively recent major party that only really came to life in 1990s - and for many years it truly was a coalition of federal Liberals and federal Tories united to beat the NDP. But in recent years the Liberal wing of the provincial party has really faded away and at the same time the federal Liberals have moved to the left (compared to the Chretien/Martin years) - so it makes sense that a federal Liberal in BC would now feel totally alienated by BC United - and the fact that they have shed the BC Liberal name compounds that problem

This has basically the case in BC since 1941; an official Liberal/PC coalition until 52 when they ran separate and then the SoCreds won. From then till 96 the SoCreds were the defacto anti-NDP coalition party. Now were back to the days when the right is split, just in two not three

[lilTommy]

In actual leadership race news, Edmonton-Whitemud MLA Rakhi Pancholi officially entered the race today with this (in my opinion) pretty well-done announcement video.

So two of the three frontrunner that were identified have announced as official candidates; Ganley and Pancholi, Calgary vs Edmonton (lol). AND rumours of Nenshi. Do we think Hoffman will join the race? any other names bubbling up?
Do we have a sense of the positions, policies, leanings of Ganley and Pancholi?

[lilTommy]

Not exactly a surprise, but the three MLAs who were backing Pancholi have all moved their endorsements to Nenshi. Nenshi now has the support of 9 sitting MLAs, compared to 8 for Ganley, 4 for Hoffman, and 2 for Calahoo Stonehouse.

Any hint if Hoffman or Calahoo Stonehouse will step aside?
It looks like it will come down to Nenshi and Ganley, for either one, this would be the first NDP leader to represent a Calgary seat... ever (Nenshi running in Calgary is a safe assumption)