Notley made Alberta NDP a winner and planted unlikely dream: winning again

For a sense of how colossal the Alberta NDP's debt is to Rachel Notley, consider this.

Their three best election results were in the three under her leadership, the party winning a combined 116 seats in those races. Across the 12 elections before that, the NDP won 51.

That's fewer than the number of MLAs elected under Notley's banner in 2015 alone, to make her premier.

She transformed a team that could fit comfortably in a sedan — or sometimes on a bicycle, with occasional handlebar-rider — into one that filled government's cabinet room. It's something she admits defied even her own expectations.

But in the two races since her victory, Notley failed to bring her NDP back to the mountaintop, against UCP leaders Jason Kenney and Danielle Smith.

No amount of consolation rhetoric like «largest opposition in Alberta history!» could erase the fact of those defeats, or the disappointment about them in her ranks. She cited her failure to win again as the key reason she'll step down as leader once a replacement is chosen (likely later in 2024).

The new New Democrats

But that bitterness in a way speaks to the success of what Notley built. The party that had long contented itself with a caucus of two or four MLAs had developed new expectations in the Notley era — expectations of winning.

In fact, she said in her announcement Tuesday that establishing the NDP as a powerful, victory-minded force in Alberta was likely her biggest accomplishment, and the reason she stayed on as leader after 2019's fall from power to fight again in 2023.

«Too many people were declaring that the Alberta NDP was done, and more importantly, that Alberta was destined to revert back to being a one-party, conservative state,» she told reporters. «And I knew that