In the Vermilion-Lloydminster-Wainwright constituency where voters had six choices on the ballot, the UCP’s Garth Rowswell is being returned for a second stint as MLA with 13,071 votes.
The Elections Alberta website also indicates that the five other candidates in the May 29 Alberta vote received the following:
- NDP – Dawn Flaata – 3,097
- Alberta Party – Darrell Dunn – 475
- Wildrose Loyalty Coalition – Danny Hozack – 459
- Independent – Matthew Powell – 354
- Green Party – Tigra-Lee Campbell – 146
Rowswell reiterates that he is learning a lot about the health file, and that along with affordability when it comes to utilities and how carbon credits and the carbon tax fits into that equation will be the issues that he looks forward to continuing to work on.
“I’ve learned a lot over these four years and during the campaign. And specifically in Lloydminster – there are some real issues there that we have got to try to figure out. That border creates a lot of problems for a lot of things and people will put quite a bit of pressure on me to get things accomplished. So, there’s still some work to do there,” Rowswell says, adding he looks forward to “digging in with (local) municipal governments” to work collaboratively with the province on the work that was started in his first term as MLA.
Darrell Dunn who ran for the Alberta Party quipped that the ‘beauty contest’ is over and while there’s a winner – the real work begins.
Turning to the numbers he says in 2019, 25,074 votes were cast for a turnout of 79.8 per cent according to Elections Alberta, however, on Monday night – 17,602 votes were cast.
In 2019 – 19,768 voted UCP and 2490 for the NDP. On Monday, just 13,071 votes were cast for the UCP and 3,097 for the NDP.
Dunn says he does not have a clear answer to explain the reason for voters not turning out.
“There obviously was about 30 per cent of the voters in the riding that just didn’t vote. That surprised me because if you look at other ridings, certainly in the cities and various other ridings, the average voting population in a riding is roughly the 25-30,000 mark – and a lot of other ridings were at that 25,000. So, for whatever reason, voters in Vermilion-Lloydminster-Wainwright did not show up.”
Meanwhile, as the dust continues to settle on the day after the May 29 Alberta vote, the UCP will form government with 49 seats to the NDP’s 38 out of the available 87 ridings. While the UCP is leading or elected in 49 ridings, this is down by 11 compared to the 60 seats it held prior to the elections.
The Elections Alberta website also shows that the UCP took 52.59 per cent of the popular vote to the NDP’s 44.02 per cent. This equates to 776,238 votes for the NDP compared to 927,453 votes for the UCP.
Some 2.8 million people in Alberta were registered to vote for 15 parties listed on the ballot and the unofficial turnout was 62.39 per cent.
