The election in Edmonton-West turned out to be a two woman race between the Liberal incumbent, Justice Minister Anne McLellan, and Canadian Alliance challenger, Betty Unger. As she has done twice previously in 1993 and 1997, Mrs. McLellan eked out a narrow win of some 733 votes. The preliminary results are displayed in the table below and compared to the results of 1997.
| Year | Liberal | Alliance | PC | NDP | Oth | Valid | Rej | Total | EOL | % | |||||
| 2000 | 21978 | 21245 | 3009 | 2895 | 548 | 49675 | 169 | 49844 | 83372 | 59.8 | |||||
| % | 44.24 | 42.77 | 6.06 | 5.83 | 1.10 | 100.00 | |||||||||
| 1997 | 17802 | 16392 | 2919 | 3386 | 475 | 40974 | 130 | 41104 | 75513 | 54.4 | |||||
| % | 43.45 | 40.01 | 7.12 | 8.26 | 1.16 | 100.00 |
An analysis of this table indicates the following:
(1) In addition to an increase of 7859 elegible voters, voter turnout increased by 5.4% to 59.8% or 49,844. (This was lower than the 65-67% turnouts in Edmonton-Southeast, Edmonton-Southwest and Edmonton-Strathcona, but slightly higher than Edmonton-CentreEast and Edmonton-North.)
(2) Although the Alliance vote increased by 4853, this was insufficient to overcome the Liberal increase of 4176 votes.
(3) The NDP vote decreased by 2.43% corresponding to 1207 votes. One would expect that these votes went to the Libersls.
(4) Although the PC vote increased marginally by 90 votes, their percentage dropped by 1.06% or 526 votes. It is not clear how these votes split between the Liberals and the Alliance.
The preliminary poll by poll results for the Edmonton-West constituency for the Nov. 27, 2000 election compared to the June2, 1997 election are presented in the following 3 tables:
Edmonton-West: Nov. 27, 2000
Edmonton-West: June 2, 1997
Difference (Nov. 27, 2000 - June 2, 1997)
A detailed analysis by the people directly involved in the campaign would be required to extract voter information from each poll. Nevertheless, a cursory examination seems to indicate that the Canadian Alliance was particularly strong in the residential areas to the west of the constituency, whereas the Liberals were particularly strong in the apartment highrise areas in the inner core of the city.
This polarisation, evident in the 1997 election, seems to have increased in the 2000 election.