Alberta’s 2023 official election results have been released and two seats were determined by 100 or less votes.
This election saw a record-breaking number of advanced voters – 758,640 Albertans cast their vote during one of the five advance voting days. More than one in five, or 21.9 per cent, of the advance voters took advantage of the “vote anywhere” option.
The 2023 election saw a 59.5 per cent voter turnout, that is 1,777,321 Albertans. This was a decrease in voter turnout from the 2019 election. In 2019, 67.5 per cent of Albertans voted, making this year’s election an eight per cent drop.
Two electoral divisions had their seat determined by 100 or less votes. The two divisions were Calgary-Acadia with Diana Batten, NDP, and Tyler Shandro, UCP, and Calgary-Glenmore with Nagwan Al-Guneid, NDP, and Whitney Issik, UCP.
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Both Batten and Al-Guneid gained ballot totals in the official recount, when compared to the unofficial election night results. Batten came out with 25 more votes than Shandro in the official results, and Al-Guneid had 42 more votes than Issik.
Voter turnout in those two “battleground Calgary” ridings were higher than the provincial average, with 70.2 per cent of voters casting their ballot in Calgary-Glenmore and 64.3 per cent in Calgary-Acadia.
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In the 2023 election, there were 11,576 “spoiled” or rejected ballots, accounting for 0.65 per cent of the total votes cast. To compare, in the 2019 election, there were 8,970 rejected ballots, making up 0.47 per cent of total votes cast.
With the official results, the seat numbers did not change.
The UCP will form a majority government with at least 48 MLAs and the NDP will form the Official Opposition with 38 MLAs. Jennifer Johnson, who ran for a time under the UCP flag before transphobic comments were made public, is expected to sit as an independent at the start of the legislative session.
All candidates have till June 16 to apply for a judicial recount.
To view the official results, visit the Elections Alberta website.
–with files from Adam Toy, Global News
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