Riches, linguistics and electoral districts: Peer through Alberta's demographic kaleidoscope
CBC
Alberta is generally a rich province but some areas are far less wealthy than others.
It's primarily an English-speaking province but, in some neighbourhoods, most people speak another language at home.
It's a relatively young province but some communities teem with kids while others have few children.
These demographic differences are to be expected in such a vast and diverse place. What daily life looks like in Alberta can vary quite a bit, depending on where you live. The politics of the province also can also look quite different, depending on where you vote.
Some neighbourhoods are currently awash in NDP orange signs; others are seas of UCP blue. The former tends to be in more urban areas, the latter rural. But not always. Even that strong predictor of voter behaviour is not perfect, though it can be useful.
Other demographic details — like income and age and education — are also correlated with how people tend to vote, in aggregate, but of course don't predict how any given individual will cast a ballot.
"It would be overly simplistic to say how people vote depends on who they are, socially," said Melanee Thomas, a political scientist with the University of Calgary. "But I don't think you can understand how somebody votes without understanding that social location."
Politicians pay close attention to demographics, she says, because the data can help them tailor their message to particular audiences and decide where it's most effective to expend precious campaign resources. For the rest of us, understanding these demographic differences can also be useful.
It can remind us that our own daily experiences, as normal as they seem to us, are not universal.
The four interactive maps below break down some of the major demographics across all of Alberta's 87 electoral districts.
The data comes from the Government of Alberta, and is based on results from the 2021 federal census.
You can explore the data for yourself by scrolling your mouse over or tapping on a district.
In Calgary, about 20 per cent of residents primarily speak a language other than English at home, according to the census results.
But they are not evenly distributed throughout the city. They tend to live in the northern half of Calgary.
The Rachel Notley government's consumer carbon tax wound up becoming a weapon the UCP wielded to drum the Alberta NDP out of office. But that levy-and-repayment program, and the wide-ranging "climate leadership plan" around it, also stood as the NDP's boldest, provincial-reputation-altering move in their single-term tenure.