Riches, linguistics and electoral districts: Peer through Alberta's demographic kaleidoscope

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.

Explore the demographics

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.

In four northern constituencies, non-English speakers make up at least a third of residents. And in one, Calgary-Bhullar-McCall, they are the majority.

The southern half of the city, by contrast, tends to be more English-language-dominant. Calgary-Fish Creek is home to the highest proportion of primarily English speakers, at 94 per cent.

In Edmonton, meanwhile, the north-south linguistic differences are largely reversed.

Explore the map above and you'll see it's the southern part of the capital city where people tend to speak languages other than English.

Edmonton-Ellerslie, Edmonton-Meadows and Edmonton-South have the highest proportions of residents who primarily speak another language at home.

People living in the southern half of Edmonton also tend to have higher incomes and more college diplomas and university degrees.

Outside of the major cities, the demographics look quite different: English is more dominant, incomes tend to be lower, and completing post-secondary education is less common.

But again, these are general trends — not hard-and-fast rules.

One outlier in southern Alberta is Banff-Kananaskis.

Compared to other constituencies in the area, it has higher levels of post-secondary education — on par with many urban areas — and far higher housing prices.

The median home value in Banff-Kananaskis is nearly triple that of neighbouring Livingstone-Macleod.

Other outliers exist as well.

Taber-Warner and Cardston-Siksika each have 17 per cent of the population speaking a language other than English at home — nearly the same rate as in Calgary.

But unlike Calgary, where Mandarin, Cantonese, Punjabi and Tagalog are some of the most commonly spoken non-English languages, in these southern constituencies it's German.

Northern Alberta has its own outliers, as well — especially economically.  

Athabasca-Barrhead-Westlock has one of the lowest median household incomes in the province, at $76,000.

Fort McMurray-Wood Buffalo, meanwhile, has by far the highest, at $202,000.

That's a full $60,000 more than the next-highest electoral district, Calgary-West.

These factors are often correlated with political views, but it's not as simple as saying a person with a certain level of income or education or a particular linguistic background is going to vote for a certain party.

Different demographic dimensions are associated with different political leanings, and those dimensions can overlap.

Trying to sort out which dimensions are most dominant when it comes to how people will vote is "really complicated," says Thomas, the political scientist.

"Everybody has a multifaceted identity and, even for people with similar identities, parts of those identities are going to be salient or activated for some people in ways that they aren't for others," she said.

For example, consider doctors. They tend to have a high level of income, which is often associated with conservative voters. But they also have a high level of post-secondary education, which is often associated with progressive voters.

But that's just general political theory. In the specifics of Alberta's election, those things might go out the window entirely given the recent contract dispute between physicians and the government.

Which aspect of doctors' various demographic aspects will be most salient at the ballot box? These maps won't reveal that. Demographic data can tell us a lot but it can't tell us, with certainty, who's going to vote for whom in a given election.

What it can do is help us see how and why our fellow Albertans might experience life — and politics — differently than we do.

"It can be easy to fall into this us-versus-them," said Thomas.

"And so seeing that communities that are close by have some key differences that are politically significant — but they're still your neighbours, right? — that can help do this bridging, cross-cutting process that keeps politics from becoming explosive and hostile."

"I realize this is very Pollyanna of me," she added. "But, in theory, this should help."