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Originally published on October 18, 2026 in issue 28 of Forward Weekly
After years of gathering bewilderment that anyone votes for Danielle Smith, I’m wary of predicting what might happen after the referendum on Oct. 19. After all, common sense dictated she’d never escape the talk radio gulag, given her nutty ideas and the way she threw her entire base under the bus during the infamous Wildrose Betrayal of 2014. Yet somehow, she survives.
So far, anyway. As R-Day approaches, Smith has somehow managed to pull off a rare political feat, namely, enraging pretty much everyone on the left and the right, the capper being that the most furious — the fervent separatists — are the ones who got her installed in the Premier’s chair to begin with. We live in strange times, indeed. In any event, none of the various post-referendum scenarios look particularly promising for Smith and, in fact, one or two of them could mean a rather swift end. But it’s a mess of her own making. There has been no set of values, no overarching vision. Just the procurement and retention of power through empowering some of the worst amongst us. But, bearing in mind the difficulty of predicting anything about someone whose connection to the truth is as situational as Smith’s, it’s at least an even bet she won’t be our premier a year from now.
But before considering the various post-referendum scenarios, it’s worth deconstructing what it is we’re actually voting on. The five immigration questions are a clumsy and disgraceful attempt to measure how much racism centrist conservative Albertans can withstand from extremist conservative Albertans, since Smith needs to knit the two together to remain in power. The four constitutional authority questions are there purely to generate ordnance for baiting Ottawa. And by now most people have seen through Question 10 for what it is, a way to appease the separatists (via wink wink messaging) and mollify the centre (by framing it as a ‘hearing all Albertans’ exercise).
Having said all that, the face value of these questions in isolation is not really what the referendum is about anymore — it’s Danielle Smith we’re voting on. Question 11 might as well be, “Do you believe that Premier Danielle Smith is an ethically empty vessel fillable only by power, and that in the interests of all Albertans she be removed from office as quickly as possible to prevent the province becoming even more of a pariah and laughing stock at home and abroad? ” We’ll know the answer to this unstated question according to the various plausible scenarios of the vote.
Anything under 20 percent will mean Smith’s tenure as Premier could be over in very short order. Such a number will tell us that only hardcore separatists voted for Option 2, meaning, centrist Albertans don’t trust her and neither do garden-variety western-alienation conservatives. We already know that large sections of the hardcore separatist wing feel betrayed. Smith will, of course, say she’s delighted Albertans want to build a stronger Alberta within a united Canada, but what else is she going to say? If the Option 2 number falls below 15 percent we can also anticipate calls for an investigation into electoral fraud from the extreme right. And although most scenarios include a leadership review triggered by the UCP riding associations early in the new year, it will happen speedily if this number prevails.
This scenario represents perhaps the only chance for Smith to survive long enough to make it to the provincial election next year, in that it’s the one fence she might be able to straddle. It gives the separatist-curious a big enough number to believe they were “heard,” but it also gives conservative federalists the mental wiggle room to say Smith steered us through a tricky situation. (Forgetting, of course, that she was the one who steered us into the situation in the first place.) This is also the best-case scenario for the right to not fracture into two separate parties again.
You might think this is just a variation on the 20–24 percent scenario, but in fact they are very different numbers, symbolically. Smith has gone on record as stating that she will not call a referendum if Option 2 loses, but she’s said lots of things in her career that she jettisoned the minute it suited her. (The claim she made as Wildrose leader that “there will be no more floor-crossings,” comes to mind.) But we must bear in mind that what she most wants out of this referendum is insight into her base — that is, the issues and level of support that could get her re-elected next fall. Nothing else matters, including Alberta’s reputation or Canadian sovereignty. In this scenario, it’s important to remember that even if they are furious with Smith right now, everyone who votes for Option 2 will still choose Smith over Naheed Nenshi in a provincial election. Which means the more the Option 2 crests 25 percent, the more Smith will be tempted to call a binding referendum to win back the extreme right.
If this number comes up, we have bigger problems than deciding whether to keep Danielle Smith around. Prepare for provincial and national turmoil, investigations into the referendum process, legal challenges, accusations of treason, Trump gloating or, worse, materially intervening. She might avoid a leadership review in this scenario, but she’d almost certainly get beaten in the next election, either straight up or because the right splinters again.
If the turnout is low (below 60 percent) and the separatists show strongly, that’s trouble for Alberta. If the turnout is high and the separatists still show strongly, that’s even worse. The best case for federalist Alberta is a very high turnout (over 70 percent) and a massive Option 1 tally (over 85 percent). Smith will be hoping for an adequate turnout (anywhere around 55 percent or better) coupled with a result (80 percent for Option 1) that allows her to frame it as a valid exercise in democratic governance. Based on Elections Alberta forecasting a record-setting 80 to 85 percent turnout, the first part of the prediction looks likely.
But even then — and even more in the case of very high turnout — there is a non-zero chance that the referendum process, as well as the calculation and dissemination of results, will be saddled with inefficiency, name-calling, accusations of vote stealing and voter suppression, and probably even lawsuits. Chaos, in other words. It could be November before we get official results, especially if there are allegations of voter irregularities and calls for recounts. If the separatists fall narrowly short of a symbolic number — 19.8 percent, for instance — expect a call for a ballot-by-ballot recount.
In every scenario, Danielle Smith will wake up on Oct. 20 (or whatever date the results are announced) with a few things to ponder.
If the numbers come in anywhere around 80–20, she will know that the vast majority of Albertans not only would not vote for her in an election, but that her centre-right/far-right coalition base has collapsed. She will know that she tried to ride two horses at the same time, as a fellow journalist characterized it, and she was bucked off of both. She will know that with the referendum out of the way, Mark Carney won’t play nice anymore. She will know that Jason Kenney and Thomas Lukaszuk are waiting to not catch her when she falls. And she will know that if the right splinters again (which is quite possible) both sides will (correctly) blame her.
The bottom line is that calling a binding referendum would be misguided, dishonest, self-serving, corrupt and entirely predictable. But remember, she’s not doing any of this because she cares what Albertans think; she’s just trying to find the combination of numbers that keeps her in power. What she actually believes is so elusive as to be almost irrelevant. She might be a closet separatist, she might be a fervent federalist, she might even believe Elvis is alive. All I know is she’d rather be Premier of an Alberta in Canada than a radio host in an independent Alberta.
I can’t pretend to have any insight into how Danielle Smith thinks, mostly because I don’t believe that’s how she processes information. And I don’t mean, snidely, that she doesn’t “think,” but that her desperate and never-ending quest for power and survival skews perception. A normal person would look at all this and probably try to find an exit strategy that didn’t destroy their party, then search for a post-politics lifeline of some sort: an ambassadorship, a Senate seat, something dignified and reputation-preserving. Smith, however, is not a normal person (neither are most other politicians, to be fair).
Having said all that, my best guess is that she will first try to frame the whole exercise as her way of honouring all Albertans and fighting for the interests of her province. When that doesn’t work, she will — set your watch to it — pick a major fight with Ottawa around the referendum questions that garnered the most support. When that doesn’t work, she’ll probably contest the inevitable leadership vote and frame her opponents as political opportunists and retreads. If she senses her support has completely dried up, she might even resign before a leadership review.
That is more or less what Ed Stelmach did in 2011, when he resigned ostensibly to prevent the tearing apart of his party under pressure from the far right, as represented by his finance minister Ted Morton and the emerging Wildrose Alliance led by, guess who, Danielle Smith.
It would be fittingly ironic if a split on the right was the end result of this referendum. Danielle Smith generated this referendum and unilaterally placed Question 10 on the ballot solely to consolidate her personal power, but the final result might just end up being the PCs and the Wildrose — under different names but for all intents and purposes the same parties — contesting the right-wing battle space all over again.
Except this time, it would happen without Danielle Smith. Though I’m sure she’ll have plenty of opinions to share on the radio.
Curtis Gillespie is an award-winning writer, editor and author of five books. He’s written for The New York Times, The Walrus, The Paris Review and others.
A note from Forward Weekly on opinion content: The opinions expressed in this feature article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Forward Weekly or its publisher, editors, staff, or affiliates.