Edmonton voters wanted change, action on affordability, Conservative candidates say
Successful Conservative candidates say hard work, meeting voters' needs helped campaigns succeed
Conservative candidates who won in Edmonton ridings on election night say voters were looking for change and were concerned about affordability and crime in Canada.
The party's candidates won seven of Edmonton's nine ridings, re-electing four incumbents, flipping Edmonton Griesbach, which was previously held by the NDP, and electing two newcomers, Billy Morin and Jagsharan Singh Mahal, in Edmonton Northwest and Edmonton Southeast.
The NDP's Heather McPherson decisively held her Edmonton Strathcona riding while Liberal candidate Eleanor Olszewski won Edmonton Centre in a tighter race against Conservative challenger Sayid Ahmed and the NDP's Trisha Estabrooks.
"From what we saw here in Edmonton Riverbend, it was things like crime and affordability, where life hasn't got better on those two files for the last 10 years, so people wanted to see that change," said Matt Jeneroux, who was re-elected as a Conservative MP.
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Fellow Conservatives Ziad Aboultaif and Kerry Diotte, who won the Edmonton Manning and Edmonton Griesbach ridings, said their campaign teams worked hard to earn voters' support.
Aboultaif said his campaigners logged 12-14-hour days and Diotte, who represented the riding from 2015–2021 and served as an Edmonton city councillor for three years from 2010–2013, said he had never had so many volunteers.
Both candidates said affordability was important to the residents in their ridings.
"Edmontonians are worried about the future of this country," Aboultaif said at his watch party Monday night.
"They worry about the daily cost of living, the carbon tax, the high taxation."
Diotte said Monday he believed concerns about "meat and potatoes issues," like affordability, energy and reducing crime, tipped the race in his favour.
Chaldeans Mensah, a political science professor at MacEwan University, said local Conservative candidates consistently stuck to the party platform, emphasizing issues like affordability and crime.
He said while Conservatives have historically dominated in Alberta, the first-past-the-post electoral system doesn't reflect the diversity of opinions in a city like Edmonton, where there are many Liberal and NDP supporters as well.
"The opposition isn't organized around a single party," he said.
Vote-splitting may have helped Diotte win in Edmonton Griesbach, where the NDP and Liberals received more than half of the vote share, but it does not appear to have been as much of a factor in other ridings.
In Edmonton Southeast, had Liberal candidate Amarjeet Sohi also received all of the votes for the NDP's Harpreet Grewal, that still would not have been enough to beat Conservative Jagsharan Singh Mahal, who received more than half of all votes.
Mensah said he thinks Mahal benefited from Edmontonians' disgruntlement about crime in the city and local housing affordability.
"He's not personally to blame for those issues, but I think he bore the brunt of the discontent," he said.
With files from Anne Levasseur, Travis McEwan and Natasha Riebe