When the votes were tallied in Alberta on election night, they added up to a sweeping NDP victory that cracked more than four decades of Conservative dominance in the province.
Here’s a look at the historic victory, by the numbers:
54 —The number of seats the NDP won in Tuesday’s election, according to unofficial results from Elections Alberta on Wednesday morning. That’s enough seats to secure a majority in the province’s 87-seat legislature. Historically, the NDP has never held more than 16 seats in Alberta. In the last government, they held only four.
1971 – The last year Alberta had a non-Conservative premier. Harry E. Strom and his Social Credit Party were in power for the first half of 1971, but Conservative candidate E. Peter Lougheed defeated Strom’s party and won a majority in that year’s August election. After that, Conservatives dominated Alberta politics for nearly 44 years.
10 – The number of seats now held by the Progressive Conservative party. Until Tuesday’s election, the PCs commanded the legislature with 70 of the 87 seats. Now, they’ve slipped to third. The Wildrose won 21 seats Tuesday, earning the party official Opposition status.
41 – The percentage of voters who marked NDP on their ballot, according to unofficial results from Elections Alberta that also showed the Wildrose party attracted 24 per cent of the vote, while the PCs garnered 28 per cent.
2008 – The year NDP leader Rachel Notley was first elected into the Alberta legislature. Notley, 51, was born into a political family. Her father, Grant, helped found the Alberta NDP, and won the party’s first seat in Alberta in 1971. He died in a plane crash in 1984, when his daughter was only 20. Notley studied political science and law and worked as a labour lawyer before running for the NDP in 2008 and launching her provincial politics career.
233 – The number of days Jim Prentice led the Alberta Progressive Conservatives. Prentice inherited the party from scandal-plagued Alison Redford, and led the province during a time of falling oil prices and economic uncertainty. On Tuesday, he announced he is stepping down from his role as party-leader and MLA, despite winning his seat in Calgary-Foothills.
235,410 – The record-breaking number of voters who showed up to advanced polls in the province. On Wednesday morning, unofficial tallies from Elections Alberta showed that a total of more than 1,480,000 Albertans voted in the election.
With files from The Canadian Press
