Voters in Ponoka-Didsbury put 81.8 per cent of their support behind long-time Conservative MP Blaine Calkins.
Calkins is the Member of Parliament elect for this constituency after receiving over 56,000 votes out of the final total number of more than 68 and a half thousand valid votes.
The 76.02 per cent voter turnout in the Ponoka-Didsbury riding resulted just 3.1 per cent going to Grant Abraham of the United Party of Canada in third, and only 1.9 per cent for Larry Gratton of the People’s Party of Canada in fifth. The PPC had received over 12 per cent support while finishing third in both the Red Deer-Mountain View and Red Deer-Lacombe ridings in the 2021 general election.
Calkins breaks down why he thinks the Conservative Party of Canada received such strong support in the Ponoka-Didsbury constituency. He says “there was going to be two choices really on the ballot, you were either going to have a Liberal government or a Conservative government. So sensible people know those are the options they had to choose from and the Liberals have not been friendly for the last 10 years to the people of Alberta – especially the people of rural Alberta – and they’ve said so by putting their trust in the Conservative party to either form the government or hold the Liberal government to account.”
The NDP finished in second in the Ponoka-Didsbury riding with a little under 11 per cent support, while in fourth place was Zarnab Zafar of no affiliation with 2.4 per cent.
Calkins tied for the highest percentage of support in Alberta in this election along with fellow Conservative MP elect Damien Kurek who also garnered 81.8 per cent of the votes in the Battle River-Crowfoot constituency. Chris Warkentin of the Conservative Party of Canada was next in the province with 81.2 per cent support in the Grande Prairie riding.
The Liberals secured a minority government for Prime Minister elect Mark Carney by winning 169 seats out of the 343 available in this election. The Conservatives will be the official opposition with 144 – which is up by 24 from when Parliament dissolved back in March.
Albertans elected 34 Conservative candidates with the Liberals landing 2 seats in the province and the NDP had only 1.
