Cardston over Calgary: Takeaways big and small(town) from the UCP's new membership list

Small-town and rural Alberta had a disproportionate amount of sway in determining whether Premier Jason Kenney would stay or leave as United Conservative Party leader — and now, the identity of his successor largely lies in the hands of folks in Rimbey, Strathmore and Three Hills, too.

Alberta's governing party announced this week that 123,915 Albertans have registered as members and can vote in the party's members-only leadership election in October, confirming earlier CBC reporting.

This tells us that, while the candidates' membership sales more than doubled the party's size since Kenney's May leadership review, only 3.5 per cent of the eligible Alberta population will select the province's next premier.

Candidates had all raced to register new members before the Aug. 12 deadline. But afterwards, no contender was boasting publicly about their sales performance, unlike Pierre Poilievre's mighty claim in the federal Conservative race that he'd sold more than 300,000 new memberships out of the 675,000 total.

To get a finer-grained sense of what this contest's voter base looks like, CBC has obtained data showing where in Alberta these UCP members live, broken down by provincial riding. It signals strength for some candidates — there's a reason why Danielle Smith is widely considered the frontrunner — potential trouble for others, and offers clarity on who gets to write this next chapter of Alberta's ever-turbulent political history.

(Note for the sticklers; these figures total only 123,905, as 10 members in the party's spreadsheet were listed as "unknown" ridings.)

As the map above shows, the UCP leadership contest is a much bigger deal in southern and central Alberta than it is in the rest of the province.

The five ridings with the most UCP memberships (and eight of the top 10) are all located south of Red Deer.

Add those ridings together and that's 22,190 party members, or 18 per cent of the whole UCP base. That's more members than in all 20 Edmonton ridings put together.

Smith, who hails from the southern town of High River, is perceived by most Conservatives to be strongest in the south and central parts of Alberta, while main rivals Travis Toews and Brian Jean have bases in northwest and northeast Alberta, respectively.

Although Calgary and Edmonton represent more than half of Alberta's population, the big cities only hold 41 per cent of the governing party's members as of August. (And for every one capital city UCPer, there are nearly three Calgary members.)

The urban/non-urban split is roughly the same as in the spring member list, which means that counties and smaller towns remain quite overrepresented. But it also means the disparity did not increase after Smith and other candidates barnstormed the countryside's summer BBQs and small rodeos.

Just like the NDP-versus-UCP splits, the urban United Conservatives skew more moderate than their country-mouse relatives, so expect more votes in Cardston–Siksika and Taber–Warner for Smith than, say, Calgary's Rebecca Schulz (whose riding's member count ranks 30th out of 87 ridings). And expect the inverse in central Calgary or Edmonton.

But Calgary may prove somewhat of a Smith stronghold, too. She's held many of the best-attended events in city and small-town halls alike, and don't discount the number of hardline anti-Ottawa or vaccine-skeptical urban residents who crave Smith's messages.