Alberta, 2026.No voters list.
Public Interest Alberta ran a province-wide campaign in Alberta's 2026 referendum without a list of voters. We used past election results to show its canvassers where to knock, and briefed it on the coverage at six every morning.
- 2023 NON-VOTERS BACK IN WORKED RIDINGS
- 1 in 4
- POLLS WORKED FROM OUR MAP
- 311
- REMAIN, PROVINCE-WIDE, ON QUESTION 10
- 74.95%
No list to knock from.
On October 19, 2026, Albertans voted on ten questions, the last of them whether Alberta stays in Canada. Public Interest Alberta's campaign, “Vote No. Vote Remain”, asked for no on the first nine and remain on the tenth.
A campaign usually starts from the voters list: who lives where, door by door. Referendum campaigns don't get one. And after a privacy breach involving a separatist group, the province cut even the political parties' lists back to a head count for each voting area in September.
So the campaign couldn't look up a supporter's door. It had to know which neighbourhoods were worth the walk, across 87 ridings and 4,904 voting areas, with five days of advance voting and one election day.
The campaign: albertareferendum2026.org (opens in a new tab)- Ridings
- 87
- Voting areas
- 4,904
Where to knock, and what's being said.
Our campaign platform began as a map of Alberta's 87 ridings. For the referendum we put it to two jobs: telling canvassers where to go, and telling the campaign what was being said. Public Interest Alberta's staff and their labour partners worked from the same platform.
- /01
Where is a knock worth the most?
With no list, past election results were the next best thing. We laid them over the referendum's 4,904 voting areas and graded every one from A to E by how many votes a canvass there could pull for our side. Ridings with no top-graded areas still got their best fifth, so no crew was handed an empty map.
- /02
Where do volunteers go before election day?
Albertans could vote at any advance poll in their own riding from October 13 to 17. For each of those days we mapped which areas to knock on foot, which to drive to and which to cover with a leaflet, ready to print riding by riding.
- /03
Where do they go on election day?
On election day everyone votes at an assigned place. We grouped the province's 1,401 election-day voting places into 394 zones, none more than 50 kilometres across, each with its target areas in order.
- /04
What's being said?
A briefing landed at six every morning: newspapers, websites and talk radio, with transcripts, plus social media and ads. We also watched every registered third-party advertiser in the referendum, 55 of them by August.
311 polls worked. One in four 2023 non-voters came back.
Albertans voted to stay. Remain took 74.95% on Question 10 and won 85 of 87 ridings, on a 70.4% turnout, the highest since at least 1975. Our final forecast, run on voting day, was 73.3%. Questions 1 to 9 split: Yes won five and No won four.
Five groups picked 311 polls on our map, across 26 ridings, most of them graded A. In the 23 worked ridings with complete counts, turnout rose from 61% in 2023 to 71%: 79,900 more votes, and one in four of the people who had sat out the last election.
Over the campaign our monitoring read 64,650 news items and posts and 92,405 radio and TV clips from 31 stations, tracked 1,619 Meta ads and 856 radio and TV airings, and sent 67 morning briefings.
“We moved the needle — 20 points in some cases!”
- Elections Alberta, 2026 referendum voting places and voting areas (data of October 4, 2026), and past provincial general election results by voting location.
- Our targeting counts, province snapshot built October 18, 2026. Counts only; no voter-level data.
- Elections Alberta, official referendum results, October 29, 2026, and 2023 provincial general election results and electors by riding.
- Our pick board, media monitoring and ad tracking records, August 4 to October 19, 2026. Counts only.
- Voters list rules: Court of King's Bench decision of October 8, 2026, as reported by Global News on October 9, 2026.
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Tell us what you're up against, when it's decided and what you need to accomplish.