Alberta New Democratic Party
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Alberta New Democratic Party
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| Active provincial party | |
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| Leader | Rachel Notley |
| President | Peggy Wright |
| Founded | 1 August 1932 (as Alberta CCF) |
| Headquarters | Suite 201 10544 114 Street Edmonton, AlbertaCoordinates: 53°32′56″N 113°31′05″W / 53.5488°N 113.5181°W |
| Ideology | Social democracy |
| Political position | Centre-left |
| National affiliation | New Democratic Party |
| Colours | Orange, green |
| Seats in Legislature |
55 / 87
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| Website | |
| Official website | |
The Alberta New Democratic Party or Alberta NDP is a social-democratic political party in Alberta, Canada, which succeeded the Alberta section of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and the even earlier Alberta wing of the Canadian Labour Party and the United Farmers of Alberta. From the mid-1980s to 2004, the party abbreviated its name as the "New Democrats" (ND).
The party achieved Official Opposition status in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta from 1986 to 1993. It was swept out of the legislature in 1993 and spent the next two decades in the political wilderness. While it managed to get back into the legislature in 1997, it never won more than four seats. Its time on the fringe of Alberta politics ended in the 2015 provincial election, when it won 54 of the 87 seats in the legislature to form the government of Alberta for the first time. Until 2015, Alberta had been the only province in western Canada--the party's birthplace--where the NDP had never governed at the provincial level.
The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) was founded in Calgary on 1 August 1932 but organised in fits and starts in Alberta due to lack of support from the United Farmers of Alberta (UFA, which was the governing party in Alberta), and from the Labour Party, which had both sitting MPs and MLAs at the time. While most UFA Members of Parliament, led by William Irvine, supported the CCF and ran for re-election (unsuccessfully) in the 1935 federal election as CCF candidates, the bulk of UFA leaders and members were ambivalent to the new party. The CCF did not run candidates under its name in the 1935 provincial election because of its ties with the UFA and the Labour Party. The UFA lost all its seats in the election and fell into disarray. Federally, eight of the UFA Members of Parliament in the House of Commons of Canada ran as UFA-CCF candidates in the 1935 federal election - and were all defeated largely because of their association with the unpopular UFA government and the not-unrelated popularity of William Aberhart's radical Social Credit movement. In 1936, William Irvine, a CCF founder and defeated UFA Member of Parliament, was elected the Alberta CCF's first president. In 1937, the UFA decided to leave electoral politics entirely and, in 1938, the CCF committed itself to run candidates in the next provincial and elections setting up local riding clubs for that purpose. In 1939, former UFA/CCF MLA Chester Ronning became the Alberta CCF's first leader in the 1940 provincial election but despite winning 11% of the vote the party did not win any seats in the Alberta Legislature - the CCF had not garnered the support of the UFA's conservative supporters or put a dent in support for the agrarian populism of the Social Credit Party of Alberta.
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