Breaking down the Alberta NDP's failed 2023 election campaign

Notley came so, so close, but her 2023 campaign was doomed to fail

Rachel Notley has won more elections as an NDP leader than as a conservative leader, but a conservative leader she is determined to be.

The 2023 Alberta election was a battle of two right-wing parties, just as it was in 2019. Instead of running on traditional NDP strengths such as social justice, improved public services, or even restoring the cuts made by her right-wing opponents, Notley ran to show Albertans who the real conservatives are. This plan was doomed to fail.

The same strategy helped the UCP sweep Notley out of the premier’s office in 2019. No amount of pro-pipeline propaganda would convince Albertans that Notley supported the oil and gas industry more than Jason Kenney, but the NDP tried it anyway. And then they tried it again.

Many observers and NDP supporters consider this latest attempt a success. The difficult thing for me to reconcile is that, relatively speaking, it was. The NDP really did almost win a close fight! It is hard to rob the stalwarts of their silver-lining with tight results in their favour, but NDP supporters would do well to beware false consolation.

Second place counts for nothing in politics. That’s the beauty of first past the post. Unfortunately for us, the Alberta NDP buried their core social democratic values only to get smacked around by politicians who believe hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin cure COVID. If you sacrifice your values and win, you can fairly ask if there is a point to winning, but at least you won. If you sacrifice your values and lose, well, why try at all? As independent journalist Jeremy Appel wrote, “You don’t get to claim moral victory when your goal was to win at all costs.”

Winning at all costs is what compelled Notley, for example, to abandon rural Alberta. Some fine New Democrats worked their asses off in rural ridings, but the central campaign overwhelmingly focused on battleground Calgary. Of course, the election was won and lost in Calgary, as any reasonable person knows, but the NDP would not have needed an Edmonton-Calgary sweep if they had made serious long-term investments in rural-ish seats like Morinville—St. Albert, Fort Sask.—Vegreville, Lesser Slave Lake, and Lethbridge—East. The last eight years could have been spent making in-roads; the last eight years were not spent making in-roads.

Consider, for a moment, the irony of convincing yourself to run a conservative campaign while ignoring the most traditionally conservative regions of the province. This contradiction exposes Notley’s triangulations for what they are. In a way, it is a representation of everything wrong with the party under her leadership.

Regardless, was Notley’s showing strong because she moulded the NDP into a conservative juggernaut or because she lives in a two-party state and ran against the worst candidate for premier ever? Indeed, who could possibly say?

Labour activist Trevor Zimmerman shared some compelling evidence with me. Abacus Data polled Albertans on who they planned to vote for and then asked those same Albertans who they would vote for if Smith were not UCP leader. The Alberta NDP’s popularity collapsed by 10 per cent with a Smithless UCP. This disastrous result is within a margin of error of the support Notley received when she ran a conservative campaign in 2019 and is, remarkably, worse than when she ran a progressive campaign in 2015.

This evidence suggests the NDP did not win their competitive vote-share because of their right-wing platform and endorsements from former Progressive Conservative Ministers, but because they capitalized on a despicable UCP leader whose notoriety dwarfs that of Jason Kenney.

Attacking Danielle Smith was the NDP’s only clear strategy, mirroring their previously successful teardown of Kenney’s character, but they could not even do that right.

Large NDP signs read: “Danielle Smith - What will she do next?” The signs portrayed Smith alongside a lightning cloud and a weather vane, the intended message clear. But much smaller UCP signs soon appeared astride them to answer this question. One such response exclaimed with glee: “Lower your taxes!”

Any communications professional, seasoned campaign manager, or lawyer—of which the NDP has many—will stop you from asking a question you don’t already know the answer to, and this is exactly why. You would expect Notley’s campaign strategists to show a bit more competency in a race they called, once again, the most important election in Alberta’s history.

This is a historic race Notley has now lost to Jason Kenney and Danielle Smith.

Unlike Pheidippides’ legendary Marathon, Notley leisurely jogged through the river valley. She ran a safe, uninspired campaign lacking focus and purpose, once again failing to deliver a mythology to believe in, a vision worth fighting for, a platform worth defending. The campaign was stillborn; it would have failed to deliver regardless of its ideological nature.

Notley did pitch a few good ideas—such as coverage for prescription birth control—but these announcements were just that, announcements. The NDP forgot they needed a compelling narrative and relentless message discipline to keep their platform in Albertans’ minds for more than a day. Notley needed her message, whatever it was, to stick, and you don’t accomplish that with a haphazard barrage of flaccid policies. This is simply not how you run a serious modern campaign.

The party leader herself was also incompetent. Rachel Notley is, undeniably, the Alberta NDP’s most important asset. Her name alone lends credibility to the NDP in a province irreparably hostile to the party brand. This greatest strength will become their greatest weakness whenever she retires, which she did not announce even after losing to Danielle Smith. Nevertheless, Notley’s charisma and moxie have noticeably suffered since forming government in 2015. If her advisors tried to remedy this, they failed, and that was no more apparent than during the leader’s debate.

Notley won the 2015 election in the debate, but she tanked in 2023 against Smith. In 2015, she made clear points and masterfully roasted her opponents, like when she scolded Jim Prentice for talking-down to a donor (Brian Jean) and graciously handled Prentice’s infamous “I know math is difficult” blunder. Against Smith, Notley was out-messaged and, ironically, too practiced for her own good. In other words, she sounded more like a flip-flopping political lawyer than the fiery, down-to-earth rural girl that Albertans elected premier.

These are all avoidable mistakes. These are all lessons the NDP should have learned from defeat in 2019 as well as victory in 2015. This is the most puzzling aspect of their incompetence. Notley and her party insiders are not stupid or ignorant, they just seem actively determined to learn the wrong lessons.

The NDP should have devoted their efforts to mobilizing their base, proposing change that challenged the status quo, and taking cues from grassroots voices. Instead, they tried to convince Albertans they were the morally-paragon, rule-abiding management class of conservative technocrats who deserve to govern. Real inspiring stuff.

You are fully entitled to ask, dear reader, why you should heed my opinion on such matters. Would a more leftist or populist campaign have led to victory? Perhaps, but probably not. Has the NDP really lost its way, or is their pragmatic, conservative approach reasonable? Don’t take my word for it. Instead, ask the Rachel Notley of yesterday, the leader who won in 2015.

Jim Prentice’s final, desperate pitch to win the 2015 election was a boardroom press conference with his corporate backers. They begged Albertans to keep their heads: think of us poor rich people, take pity on our chequebooks and, for everyone’s sake, don’t you dare vote NDP. One of those monstrous capitalists, Ashif Mawji, said he would stop donating to the Stollery Children’s Hospital if the NDP won.

This gambit showed just how out of touch the PCs had become. Voters felt insulted by the Prentice Team—not for the first time that campaign—and rallied around Rachel Notley. However, in 2018, Notley and her Economics and Trade Minister, Deron Bilous, embraced Mawji’s support and hauled him onstage to announce a forgettable Silicon Valley business initiative.

It is difficult to think of a more succinct indictment of the NDP’s rightward shift while in power—aside from, of course, the multi-billion-dollar Trans Mountain Pipeline debacle. By 2023, it is now Notley’s NDP, not Smith’s UCP, that parades endorsements from PC has-beens to convince Albertans they are a trustworthy, electable party.

In 2015, Rachel Notley ran on raising the corporate tax rate to make the rich and powerful pay their fair share, an action Kenney’s government swiftly reversed. In 2023, Rachel Notley promised to raise the corporate tax rate again, but to a rate not only lower than she previously implemented, but lower than Doug Ford’s in Ontario and Scott Moe’s in Saskatchewan. She advertised this fact as if it were a good thing.

Some perennial bores, as well as some good friends, blame the lost campaign on this corporate tax announcement. Nonsense. As the Abacus data shows, the only reason the NDP was even close was because of Smith’s unpopularity. Furthermore, imagine the populist appeal of taking Alberta back from the elites and using their treasure hordes to pay for health care and education. That’s what the Notley from 2015 understood, harnessed, and has now forgotten.

The problem with the corporate tax rate announcement was that it was an announcement. It should have been a supporting speaking note, the “making the rich and powerful pay their fair share,” response to “how are you paying for this?”

It is worth noting that the 12% corporate tax rate Notley enforced while premier was lower than the rate under former premier Ralph Klein.

Notley also promised to eliminate the small business tax completely. These two contradictory tax policies were announced just days apart and may have been the most bizarre moment of the campaign. It was as if Notley’s team did not realize that the complicated nuances of lowering a business tax with one hand and increasing a different business tax with the other would cause severe cognitive-dissonance in voters, even staunch supporters.

Many 2023 voters shunned the UCP because of their promise to fire thousands of health care workers, but the NDP refused to commit to bring back lost services. This cost them a few votes, especially with health care workers whose jobs were already slashed by the UCP. Just as many public sector workers found it difficult to vote for the NDP because of Notley’s government record.

Ironically, Notley refused to run on her record, and very obviously did so in attempt to appease the wrong base. She did not want to remind conservative voters of why they kicked her out of the premier’s office in the first place, but also did nothing to console those who had abandoned the NDP for good-faith reasons.

One NDP Member of the Legislative Assembly—someone I like and believe has good intentions—asked me why certain union leaders appeared hostile to the NDP in 2019 and 2023. I told them, as gently as possible, that their NDP government forced public sector workers to take 0% wage increases, while the UCP government, eventually, raised their wages. I’m not sure this MLA knew how to respond, but it’s the truth. You try convincing public sector workers to vote NDP when it’s the UCP who gave them raises—that conversation is not a good time.

2015 Notley would have made a more compelling pitch to these voters, but 2023 Notley failed to address one of the things her progressive base hates most about the UCP: contempt for public services and the Albertans who provide those services, including health care and education.

It is, however, difficult to say what Notley could have done to win this thing. One week later, the consensus seems to be that the NDP has momentum regardless of their defeat. I do not believe this is the case. Notley should have mopped the floor with Danielle Smith, and to fall short in this election, of all elections, means it is only downhill from here. The NDP ran a safe campaign, with a popular leader, against one of the most unpopular governments and leaders ever… and they lost. This is their ceiling.

If Notley were open to running a campaign more to my liking, here’s a few ideas I’d recommend: abolish paid parking at hospitals; slash cell phone bills by promising a provincially operated telecom service; announce a province-wide transit plan, including making up for lost Greyhound services in rural Alberta; connect with workers and ignore business owners; care less about what your opposition does—care more about what Albertans need; in short, return to the left-wing populism that elected Tommy Douglas, whom you claim to revere.

It’s not much, but it’s a start. It’s also a solid foundation for anyone wishing to challenge Notley in the unlikely event she loses a leadership review, or in the more likely event she steps away during this term.

If you’re an MLA, party activist, or NDP staffer, feel free to steal my ideas. Take them! They are yours to use for the betterment of our province, no credit required. Just please, whether you take them or not, meditate on your failures, clean house, and do some real politics.