Alberta’s referendum sees 1.3M votes cast in advance polls: elections body

More than a million Albertans have already voted in a referendum that asks fundamental questions about the province’s future, preliminary numbers show.

Elections Alberta says a total of 1,356,873 votes were cast between Oct. 13 and Oct. 17 through advance and special ballots. That’s compared to 809,988 votes cast at the same point during the 2023 provincial election campaign.

Broken down further, the agency says a total of 837,791 votes were cast at advance voting locations, with 519,082 special ballots mailed in.

By comparison, 758,637 advance votes were cast in 2023 and 51,351 special ballots. The agency notes special ballot totals from 2023 are “not directly comparable” to the referendum, as they weren’t available to all eligible electors and weren’t required to be received by mail.

There were a total of 3,148,343 eligible electors for the referendum, with the agency saying 43 per cent cast their ballot during the advance voting period. Only 27.5 per cent did so during the same period in the 2023 election.

A recent poll conducted exclusively for Global News by Ipsos shows proceeding to a binding vote on separation still draws little support.

The poll suggested seven in 10 Albertans planned to vote for Alberta to remain a province of Canada, holding steady from previous polling conducted last month.

The proportion of voters who said they would vote for Alberta to begin the legal process of holding a binding referendum on separation increased three percentage points from September to 23 per cent.

That support is highest among men (27 per cent), those aged 35 to 54 (27 per cent) and those living outside Calgary and Edmonton (29 per cent).

Premier Danielle Smith has said that if voting goes the way polling suggests, she expects everyone to accept it and move on. Leaders of the independence movement contest that.

While separation is one of the questions on the ballot, nine others are related to immigration and the constitution.

A previous poll conducted for Global News in September found a strong majority (76 per cent) of Albertans were aware there were several questions in the upcoming referendum. Eighty-one per cent of Albertans said they planned to vote in the referendum with, 62 per cent saying they will vote on all 10 questions.

How do I watch the results?

Global News will have in-depth team coverage on both broadcast and streaming online.

Anchors Dallas Flexhaug and Carole Anne Devaney will be joined by veteran political reporter and Ottawa bureau chief David Akin for results analysis, along with insights from a political panel hosted by anchor Blake Lough, and reporters on the ground.

From 8 p.m. MT to midnight, our Decision Alberta Referendum 2026 coverage will air on Globalnews.ca, as well as on YouTube and our Global TV app that is available on streaming services Prime Video, Apple TV, Roku, and select smart TVs.

Starting at 9 p.m., the special will also begin airing live on all Global News stations in Alberta.

—with files from Global News’ Rachel Morgan, Jace Maki and Karen Bartko

The precision of Ipsos polls containing online data is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the overall poll of 801 Albertans is accurate to within +/- 4.2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, had all adult Alberta residents been polled. The credibility interval will be wider among subsets of the population. All sample surveys and polls may be subject to other sources of error, including, but not limited to coverage error, and measurement error.