The Naheed Nenshi-led Alberta NDP will face its first test at the ballot box today.
The party is looking to retain its seat in Lethbridge-West in a byelection on Wednesday, the first since Nenshi became party leader in June. Voters will choose between former Lethbridge city councillor Rob Miyashiro for the NDP, current city councillor John Middleton-Hope for the UCP and power engineer Layton Veverka for the Alberta Party.
Lethbridge-West has not had a representative in the legislature since former NDP MLA Shannon Phillips resigned in June. Phillips held the seat since 2015, when she won as part of the orange wave that brought the NDP to power.
The NDP has put forward former two-term city councillor Rob Miyashiro to run in her place in the riding. Miyashiro previously ran for the NDP in last year’s general election, losing in the Lethbridge-East riding to current affordability and utilities minister Nathan Neudorf.
The university of Lethbridge campus and Scenic Drive photographed from the London Road area of Lethbridge Alta. on May 3 2023. (Ose Irete/CBC)
A Miyashiro win would reaffirm the NDP’s voice in the legislature as the Official Opposition, argues University of Lethbridge political science professor Lars Hallstrom.
“The question is really one around where will the voice of the community ultimately land, and what is the voice of that community?” Hallstrom said. “The last two elections, it’s been pretty clear, especially in the last election, that it lands more in the line of the NDP.”
Former city councillor Rob Miyashiro poses for a photo after a press conference in Lethbridge, Alta. announcing his intent to run for the Alberta NDP nomination for Lethbridge West. (Ose Irete/CBC)
But despite recent results in the riding, Hallstrom notes political history shows there could be more conservative supporters in Lethbridge-West than the NDP anticipates, as the Progressive Conservatives held the riding since the 1970s, before Phillips’s win.
Advanced voting turnout down
Preliminary advanced voter turnout figures in Lethbridge-West showed 6,669 or 18 per cent of eligible voters cast their vote early. The figure is down from the 28.3 per cent that cast advance votes in the riding ahead of the 2023 election.
After a quiet campaign period, Hallstrom said he expects the byelection to be a tight race. But he noted that the change he’s seen in the city in the last 30 years, as it’s grown and become more diverse, means it would be incorrect to expect it to mirror the political leanings of other Alberta ridings outside of the province’s urban centres of Calgary and Edmonton.
“It’s quite a different place even though it looks the same on the surface, and that reality is not always one of the rural west as is maybe conventionally stereotyped,” Hallstrom said.
Voting locations will be open in Lethbridge-West from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.