NDP Takes Calgary-Shaw in Narrow By-Election Upset
The Alberta NDP declared victory in the Calgary-Shaw by-election on Monday, September 14, 2026, based on unofficial results The Globe and Mail.
As of late Monday, NDP candidate Kyle Campbell led with 7,461 votes, ahead of United Conservative Party candidate Mike Derry with 6,879 votes. The margin was 582 votes CBC. Progressive Tory candidate Kyle Joseph placed third with 978 votes. Liberal John Roggeveen followed with 602 votes. Independent Rolly Ashdown finished with 82 votes. Five candidates contested the seat.
Calgary-Shaw is a south Calgary constituency created in 1986. It has been a longtime Conservative stronghold. The NDP has carried it only once before, in 2015, as part of the orange wave that brought Rachel Notley to government.
The by-election was called after former United Conservative cabinet minister Rebecca Schulz resigned in May. Schulz served as environment minister from 2023 to the end of 2025.
Elections Alberta administered the vote under standard provincial rules. Nominations closed at 2:00 p.m. on August 27, 2026 Elections Alberta. Advance voting ran Tuesday, September 8 to Saturday, September 12. Electors were required to prove identity and current physical address. Unofficial results were posted to results.elections.ab.ca after voting closed on election day. An official count is scheduled for Sept. 24.
Premier Danielle Smith congratulated Campbell on Monday. She said her government would work with him to meet the needs of his constituency. Campbell, a fourth-generation Albertan, was officially nominated to carry the Alberta NDP banner in June Alberta NDP.
The broader context here is one that practitioners will recognize at once. By-elections test organisation more than brand. Motivation, identification and pull matter disproportionately when the writ is confined to a single constituency. A win in territory the other party has held for decades does not predict a general election outcome. It does affect morale, volunteer recruitment and donor confidence in the months that follow, and it forces constituency associations on both sides to re-examine assumptions about who votes and why.
Looking at what this means for the Legislature, caution is warranted until Sept. 24. A declared win on unofficial figures is not yet a certified result, and a margin of several hundred votes keeps attention on the official count and the handling of special ballots. For strategists in both major parties, the operational lessons will be in the poll-by-poll breakdown. That includes where the NDP found efficiency in south Calgary, how UCP support held or softened relative to past performance in the same polls, and whether the presence of Progressive Tory and Liberal options on the ballot changed the arithmetic at the margins or simply gave disaffected voters a place to park a protest.
