How the numbers are worked out

Status of the boundaries

Proposed, not law. The 91 ridings are the Independent Advisory Panel's map (Sessional Paper 637/2025-26, October 2026). On 4 November 2026 the Legislative Assembly agreed to Government Motion 45 (45 to 36), concurring in the panel's proposals and urging the Government to introduce a Bill. No such Bill had been introduced as of 11 November 2026.

The panel was split three to two. The map here is the majority's, which is the one the Assembly endorsed. The two members in the minority argued that the panel had no mandate to change anything in or south of Airdrie. The ridings they disputed are the ones most likely to change in the Bill or in court: the Springbank split, Bearspaw, north-east Calgary, the Lethbridge ridings that mix city and country, Banff-Canmore-Diamond Valley and Okotoks, and smaller changes to Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills and Blackfalds-Innisfail.

If a Bill is introduced and its lines differ from the panel's, this site will follow the Bill and say what changed.

Keeping the map up to date

The map is updated every week from now until election day. The page shows the date its data was built, and each number carries the date it rests on. This is what is checked, and when.

• The law. The Assembly's list of Bills is read every week while it sits. When a Bill that sets the ridings is introduced, the status line here changes that week. If the Bill's lines differ from the panel's, the map is redrawn from the Bill and the differences are listed on this page. When the Bill becomes law, "Proposed" on the map changes to "In law".
• Polls. Pollsters' releases are checked every week. A new poll that meets the rules under The poll average is added, and the average and the riding colours are worked out again.
• Current MLAs. The Assembly's member list is read every week, and after any resignation, by-election or change of caucus.
• Census and 2023 votes. These do not change. They are worked out again only if the boundaries change.

The boundaries could become law at short notice. Until this page says so, treat every line on the map as proposed.

The proposed boundaries

Source

The lines are digitized from the 91 riding maps in Appendix 8 of the panel's report (the high-resolution version of Sessional Paper 637/2025-26). Names, numbers, estimated populations and areas come from the report's Appendix 7. The official boundary files were tabled with the report on a USB drive (Sessional Paper 638/2025-26) and are not published online. If they become available they replace this file.

Method

1. The boundary, roads, township grid and labels are read from each report map as drawn lines, not as a picture.
2. Each map is placed on the ground. City maps are fitted to Statistics Canada's 2021 road network; rural maps are fitted to Alberta's township survey grid.
3. The ridings are then rebuilt from the 68,167 census blocks of 2021. A block goes whole to the riding that holds it. A block is cut along the digitized line only where two ridings each hold a real piece of it.

Accuracy

• City maps fit the road network to a median of 6 to 10 m; rural maps fit the township grid to 0.7 to 3.8 m. Each riding's own figure is in its panel.
• Neighbouring maps were fitted separately and agree along their shared borders to a median of 1.0 m (5.2 m at the 90th percentile).
• Every riding's area is between 0.978 and 1.044 of the area in the panel's table.
• 258 blocks are cut by a riding line. 31,309 people (0.7 % of Alberta) live in them and are shared between the two ridings by area.
• A check against official lines: about three quarters of the proposed lines reuse lines from the Electoral Boundaries Commission's March 2026 map, for which Elections Alberta made an official file. On those shared lines the digitized line sits a median of 8.1 m from the official one in Calgary, 7.5 m in Edmonton and 10.6 m elsewhere.
• Confidence is rated per riding: 82 high, 9 medium, none low. "Medium" marks a riding whose map agrees less closely with its neighbours' maps along their shared borders (about 3 to 9 m), or where more of its people live in cut blocks.

The file has no overlaps and no gaps, and its outline equals Statistics Canada's Alberta. That only shows the file is clean, because it is built from whole blocks. The figures above are the real tests of the lines.

Who lives here (census)

Source

Statistics Canada, 2021 Census of Population: the Census Profile for dissemination areas and the population counts for dissemination blocks. The figures are 2021 counts (income is for 2020). They are not current populations.

Method

• Population is the sum of the 2021 block counts in the riding. All 4,262,635 Albertans counted in 2021 are in exactly one riding.
• Other figures are published for dissemination areas, which are groups of blocks. An area wholly inside one riding is counted exactly. An area split between ridings is shared by where its people lived, block by block.
• Percentages are the riding's summed count over its summed total. Published percentages and medians of small areas are never averaged.
• Median age is worked out from the riding's summed five-year age groups.

Median household income is an estimate

A median cannot be added up, so it is worked out from the riding's summed household income groups. Tested on the current 87 ridings against the Government of Alberta's own profiles, this estimate ran about 2.5 % high on average (5.7 % at most). Read it as "about".

Fort McMurray-Wood Buffalo shows "$200,000+": more than half its households are in the census's top income group, which has no upper limit, so the median cannot be placed more exactly.

Lower coverage

Statistics Canada withholds some figures for small areas. A riding gets a "lower coverage" note when a figure rests on areas holding less than 90 % of its residents. One riding has it, Drumheller-Stettler, for income.

Accuracy

The same method was run on the current 87 ridings and compared with the Government of Alberta's census profiles for them. Population differed by a median of 0.03 % per riding, and by less than 2 % in every riding. Seniors, immigrants and visible minority shares differed by a median of about 0.1 percentage points.

The panel's estimated population

The panel's population for each riding is its own estimate for about 2024 to 2025, not a census count. Its Alberta total is 4,888,723, which is 14.7 % above the 2021 census, and its average riding has 53,722 people. The panel shows each riding against that average. Ridings with many new homes since 2021 show the largest gap between the two figures, for example Calgary-North East.

The population under a riding's name

A proposed riding shows the panel's estimate first, because it is the newer figure and the one the panel drew the lines to, with the 2021 census count beside it. A current riding shows its 2021 census count only: the panel made no estimate for the 87 ridings in use today, so the two tabs do not show the same kind of number.

2023 votes, redrawn

This is the 2023 general election counted again inside the proposed lines. It is the 2023 vote redrawn, not a forecast.

Source

Elections Alberta's official results for the 29 May 2023 general election, by voting place, and its 2023 voting-area map.

Method

• Election-day votes. Each voting place served known voting areas. Its votes go to the proposed ridings in proportion to where the 2021 population of those areas lived. Where the whole area is inside one riding, the votes are counted exactly.
• Advance, mobile and special ballots. These were counted for the whole old riding, not by area. Each party's votes are shared between the parts of the old riding in proportion to its own election-day votes in each part. Only the votes that could belong to another part count as estimated: all of a smaller part's share, and, for the largest part, as many votes as went to the other parts. An old riding 99 % inside one proposed riding is therefore about 1 % estimated there.

Across Alberta, 68.3 % of the 2023 votes are counted exactly and the rest are estimated. The share differs greatly by riding, so each panel says "X % of these votes are counted exactly, Y % estimated".

The range

The rule for advance votes was tested on 2023 itself: pairs of neighbouring old ridings were pooled, split again by the rule and compared with the real results. Where 44 % of votes were estimated (counted the same way as above), the margin was off by 1.05 points at the median and 4.14 points in the worst 5 % of cases. Each riding's range is its central figure plus or minus that error, scaled by how much of its vote is estimated, and widened to cover three other ways of sharing the votes. The scaling assumes the error shrinks in proportion for ridings with only a small estimated share; the test itself only had pairs near 44 %. The same scaling is used for election-day votes from voting areas cut by the new lines, which were not tested separately. It is not a statistical confidence interval.

A riding is too close to call when its range includes a lead for the other party, or when the ways of sharing the votes disagree on who led.

Result: UCP ahead in 50 ridings and NDP in 41, with 10 of the 91 too close to call. In 2023 on the real 87 ridings it was UCP 49, NDP 38.

The poll average

Which polls count

• Only polls whose figures were checked against the pollster's own release, or a news report of it where the release could not be found. Every poll in the table below links to that source.
• Only polls that ended in the last 120 days.
• Each pollster counts once, with its latest poll.
• All figures are shares of decided voters.

Weights

A newer poll counts for more: a poll's weight halves for every 30 days of age. A larger poll counts for more, in proportion to the square root of its sample, up to 2,000 people.

The average now

As of 11 Nov 2026: UCP 45.5 % (44.3 to 46.6), NDP 45.0 % (42.9 to 47.4), Tory 5.4 %. The UCP leads by 0.6 points (range −1.7 to +3.0): too close to call.

Regional figures (Calgary, Edmonton, rest of Alberta) use only the polls that publish them, which is fewer polls, so they are rougher.

The polls of 2026

A blank Tory figure means the pollster did not list the party separately. One poll of 2026 is left out because its pollster published no party figures (Angus Reid, 22 to 24 May).

If the polls were the vote

This answers one question: if Albertans voted today the way the polls say, and each riding moved the way its region has moved since 2023, who would lead in each proposed riding? It is a reading of today's polls, not a forecast of the 2027 election.

Method

1. Start from each riding's 2023 votes, redrawn.
2. Put each riding in a region: the Calgary metropolitan area, the Edmonton metropolitan area, or the rest of Alberta, by where most of its 2021 population lives. Five ridings straddle a region's edge and get a blend.
3. For each region, take the change in each party's share from 2023 to the polls now. Each poll's change is measured against the 2023 result of the same area that the pollster polled (city or metropolitan area). Where a pollster does not say which it used, the midpoint is taken and both readings are kept inside the range.
4. Add the region's change to every riding in it (uniform swing).
5. Shift all ridings by the same small amount so that they add up to the Alberta-wide poll average.

The range

A riding's range combines three things: the range of its 2023 votes redrawn; how much the region's polls disagree; and how far single ridings stray from their region's swing. The last was measured by running the same method from the 2019 election to the 2023 election, where the answer is known. Ridings missed by 4.0 margin points at the median and 11.6 points in the worst 5 % of cases (Calgary 7.6, Edmonton 7.0, rest of Alberta 14.6).

A riding is too close to call when its range includes a lead for the other party. Margins are written from the leader's side: "leads by 0.6 points (range −12.5 to +12.8)" means the other party could be ahead by as much as 12.5.

Result with the polls as of 11 Nov 2026: UCP ahead in 45 ridings and NDP in 46, with 28 of the 91 too close to call.

Current ridings and MLAs

The "Now" tab shows the 87 ridings in force today.

• Boundaries: Elections Alberta's file of the current electoral divisions.
• Population: the 2021 census count, added up from census blocks in the same way as for the proposed ridings (see Who lives here). Against the Government of Alberta's own census profiles for these ridings it differs by less than 2 % in every riding. It is not a current population.
• Last vote: Elections Alberta's official count for the 2023 general election, or for a later by-election where one was held. The margin is the winner's share minus the runner-up's share of valid votes. Turnout is Elections Alberta's figure.
• Member and party: the Legislative Assembly's member list as of 11 Nov 2026. A riding missing from that list is shown as vacant.
• Changes since the vote (a member who changed party, an expulsion, a resignation) are kept in a short list, each with its source, and shown as a note.

Seats on that date: UCP 46, NDP 39, Progressive Tory Party 1, vacant 1.

The member list changes without notice. The date above is when it was last read.

The Commission's map

Before the panel, the 2025-26 Electoral Boundaries Commission proposed 89 ridings in its final report of March 2026. The Assembly did not adopt it. That map is not shown on this site at present. Its official boundary file is used here only as a check on the accuracy of the proposed 91, described under The proposed boundaries.

Sources and credits

• Independent Advisory Panel on Electoral Boundaries, report to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta, October 2026 (Sessional Paper 637/2025-26).
• Adapted from Statistics Canada, 2021 Census of Population: Census Profile, boundary files, Road Network File and Geographic Attribute File, 2021. This does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada of this product.
• Government of Alberta, Alberta Township System and census profiles by electoral division. Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Alberta.
• Elections Alberta is the source of the official results and of the electoral division and voting area boundaries. The boundaries are simplified for display, the redrawn 2023 figures are this site's own estimates, and nothing here is an official version.
• Legislative Assembly of Alberta, member list, Votes and Proceedings.
• Each pollster's own published release, linked in the table above.
• Background map: OpenFreeMap, © OpenMapTiles, data from OpenStreetMap contributors.
• Aerial photos: Esri World Imagery (Esri, Vantor, Earthstar Geographics, and the GIS User Community).

None of these bodies endorses this site or its figures.