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1993 Alberta general election
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The 1993 Alberta general election was held on June 15, 1993, to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. The Conservative government was re-elected, taking 51 seats out of 83 (61 percent of the seats) but only having support of 45 percent of voters.
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It is notable because it was seen by some as a contest between the former mayors of Calgary and Edmonton, Ralph Klein and Laurence Decore, respectively.
Until the government's defeat in 2015, this election was the closest the Progressive Conservatives came to losing since coming to power in 1971.
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Background
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In 1992, the Liberal Party was led by Laurence Decore, a former mayor of Edmonton. Despite being the smallest of the three parties in the legislature, the Liberals made major gains by shifting to the political right and criticizing the Conservatives' fiscal responsibility, the province's rapidly rising debt, and the government's involvement in the private sector which resulted in some companies defaulting on government loans.
In September 1992, Don Getty resigned as provincial premier and leader of the Progressive Conservative Party, after polls showed that he would not win re-election, with the party's image being hurt by a perceived lack of fiscal responsibility, the in-fighting that resulted from an attempt to force a leadership review after Getty was defeated in his own riding at the previous election, and a backlash to the unpopular federal Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney. The party membership elected Environment Minister and former Calgary mayor Ralph Klein to succeed Getty. Klein campaigned for the leadership in part by making arguments similar to Decore's. He favoured a near-immediate balancing of the provincial budget and rapid debt repayment thereafter, and declared his government "out of the business of business". By the time Klein dropped the writs, his party had regained the lead on polls.
The election was fought on a new series of electoral boundaries based on the census of 1991, drawn by a committee composed only of Progressive Conservative MLAs led by Bob Bogle, with no input from opposition parties. The new electoral map drew criticism from the Alberta Court of Appeal in 1994 because the committee gave no justification for creating four districts well below average population, one of which was Bogle's own riding of Taber-Warner.[1]
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Campaign
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During the general election campaign, Klein promoted the significant changes that he had made during his time of Premier, distancing the Conservatives from Getty's past administration. Decore, facing a Premier with whom he agreed on many issues, argued that the Progressive Conservative party had no moral authority left on the issues on which Klein was campaigning.[2]
There were several televised debates, however viewership was low since it coincided with the 1993 Stanley Cup Finals.
The campaign coincided with a leadership election for the federal Progressive Conservatives, after Mulroney announced his resignation as party leader earlier in the year. Vancouver-based MP and cabinet member Kim Campbell quickly became the firm favourite to win, revitalizing the party's flagging popularity in the west, and meaning that Mulroney's unpopularity no longer proved a millstone for the provincial Progressive Conservatives. Campbell would be elected as federal party leader two days before polling day in Alberta, giving the provincial party a last-minute boost; she would, ironically, lead the federal party to a crushing defeat that saw them completely wiped out in Western Canada during the federal election later that year.
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Election
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Klein's efforts were seen as successful in reinvigorating the Conservatives from certain defeat just under a year earlier. Ending up, they retained a solid majority in the legislature for its seventh consecutive term in government. The Conservatives actually managed to increase their share of the popular vote marginally, although they lost eight seats in the legislature since the vote was not as evenly split as it had been four years earlier. Notably, the PC's were shut out of Edmonton for the first time since 1963, but managed to make gains in Klein's hometown of Calgary where they won all but three seats.
The Liberals capitalized on the stagnant PC vote and the collapse of the New Democratic Party vote from 26% to 11%. As opposition to the PC government coalesced around Decore and the Liberals, they won almost 40% of the popular vote and 32 seats in the legislature, including every seat in Edmonton. They formed what was the largest opposition caucus in Alberta history, eventually succeeded by Rachel Notley’s New Democratic Party opposition after the 2023 election. To the surprise of many, Decore stepped down as Liberal leader not long after the election, supposedly being pressured to resign by party insiders who felt that he had missed the party's best chance in over 70 years to form government. Decore's decision was also motivated by two battles against cancer in the preceding three years, which had seriously affected his health; he would ultimately be diagnosed for a third time a few years later, and passed away in 1999.
Ray Martin's New Democrats, previously the official opposition, were shut out of the legislature altogether for the first time since 1967. All of their seats in Edmonton — including Martin's — were lost to the Liberals, due to the popularity of Decore there. Martin suggested that tactical voting was to blame as well, as the anti-PC vote consolidated around the Liberals.
The Social Credit Party, which had been largely moribund for the previous decade after governing the province from 1935 to 1971, would experience a minor comeback under new leader Randy Thorsteinson, who positioned the party as the de facto provincial branch of the Reform Party of Canada, which was led by Preston Manning, son of former Alberta premier Ernest Manning, and enjoying considerable support in Western Canada. Campbell's election as leader of the federal Progressive Conservatives would see them enjoy a temporary resurgence of popularity that stalled Reform's, and thereby Social Credit's momentum, though the 2.4% of the popular vote earned by the latter was credited for bringing them back from the verge of extinction.
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Results
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Overall voter turnout was 60.21%.[3]
Overall results
Detailed results
Notes:
* Party did not nominate candidates in the previous election.
x – less than 0.005% of the popular vote
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Results by riding
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See also
References
Further reading
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