How Alberta’s Independence Side Let Washington Become the Question

Albertans voted heavily Monday to remain a province of Canada, rejecting a proposal to begin the legal process toward a binding vote on independence. With 4,021 of 5,586 voting places reporting early Tuesday, Elections Alberta’s unofficial count showed 1,303,955 votes for remaining and 415,693 for starting the process, about 76 percent to 24 percent. Official results are due October 29.

The option led in only one of Alberta’s 87 electoral divisions, Central Peace-Notley in the province’s northwest, with about 51 percent. It ran near 47 percent in Drumheller-Stettler and Taber-Warner and was weakest in the cities, at about 17 percent across Calgary and 14 percent across Edmonton.

The loss came down to three things: the independence side began well behind and never closed the gap, it was outworked on the ground in the final weeks, and it let the vote become a question about the United States instead of a question about Alberta.

Starting behind

Independence never led in Alberta. An Ipsos poll taken in January found about 29 percent of Albertans would vote to begin separating, and only 15 to 16 percent kept that support after being asked to weigh the possible downsides. The Angus Reid Institute put the referendum option at 35 percent in May, when Premier Danielle Smith announced the question herself, and at 34 percent days before the vote.

Texas Nationalist Movement President Daniel Miller warned of that position after Scotland’s 2014 referendum. Scotland’s independence side, he wrote then, entered its campaign with about a third of voters behind it and “deep in a hole.” The lesson he drew: “Independence is too important to risk a loss because we are impatient.”

The question itself added weight. Smith’s government wrote it, and some separatists derided it as “a weak-kneed plan to make a plan,” The Canadian Press reported. Half of Albertans, 51 percent, told Angus Reid in May they found the official question confusing. Asked a plain stay-or-leave question, the leave side dropped from 35 percent to 30 percent.

The ground game

The independence side’s best-documented organizing was the petition drive. Stay Free Alberta says more than 7,000 volunteer canvassers carried its petition across the province, and Elections Alberta verified 222,597 signatures against a requirement of 177,732.

Money came in early. Let Alberta Decide, the main registered campaign for the referendum option, had raised $484,988 by early September, while the Globe and Mail described the effort to keep Alberta in Canada as cash-strapped and disorganized. Monte Solberg, a former federal cabinet minister on the remain side, told the paper, “We’re a long ways behind the separatists.” Forever Canadian organizer Thomas Lukaszuk said then that roughly 300,000 people had signed up for his group’s messages and that it had handed out about 45,000 lawn signs.

Then the other side organized. A week before the vote, the Alberta New Democratic Party said it had more than 15,000 volunteers knocking doors and phoning. Smith’s government put $4 million into advertising urging a vote for “a strong and sovereign Alberta within a united Canada.”

The independence campaigns published no comparable volunteer, door or turnout figures for the referendum itself. The remain side made up its late start and then passed them.

Washington became the question

The larger problem was not who knocked on doors. It was what the vote came to mean.

Leaders of the Alberta Prosperity Project met State Department staff in Washington three times in 2025, according to NBC News. Dennis Modry, one of the group’s founders, said the talks covered border security, pensions, taxes, debt and “the process for converting to U.S. currency.” The White House said “no support or commitments were conveyed,” and a senior State Department official called them staff-level meetings with no principals involved.

In January, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said of Alberta, “I think we should let them come down into the U.S.” Smith’s office answered that “the overwhelming majority of Albertans are not interested in becoming a U.S. State.” President Donald Trump has called Canada “a country that should be a state” since early 2025, and Washington’s 50 percent tariffs on Canadian goods took effect in August, in the middle of the campaign.

The pro-Canada side used it. University of Alberta political scientist Jared Wesley said that “a lot of federalist organizations are running ads that feature Donald Trump very prominently.” Prime Minister Mark Carney, at a rally in Calgary four days before the vote, said, “Some outside our borders are working to break us so they can own us.” He did not name the United States.

The polling shows what that did. In the Ipsos survey, 70 percent of Alberta’s most committed separatists said they would consider joining the United States instead of becoming independent. A Vox Pop Labs experiment published in October found that “connecting Trump to the separatist movement reduces intentions to vote for separatism,” lowering separatist vote intention by 5.4 percentage points among respondents shown that link and asked how other Albertans view Trump. Wesley said some Albertans who might have voted for the option to send a message to Ottawa were “withholding that support because they worry about what message a divided Canada sends to the United States.”

The Scotland lesson

Miller drew the same lesson from Scotland in 2014. The Yes campaign’s extensive white paper, he wrote, turned the vote into “less of a referendum on independence and more of a referendum on the governance of the SNP,” the Scottish National Party. And he warned about the company a campaign keeps: “you cannot afford to let your bedfellows become the topic of discussion.” Texans, he wrote, “cannot and will not secure independence by becoming yoked to individuals and organizations” for whom independence is only a “plan B.”

Alberta’s independence side let its bedfellows become the topic. For a share of its own supporters, independence was the plan B, and joining the United States was the plan A. Its opponents only had to point at Washington.

Miller’s last lesson from Scotland was that a loss is not the end. Let Alberta Decide co-chair Keith Wilson said Monday night, “I think we’ve won,” because the vote forced “a serious, adult discussion.” Scotland lost in 2014, and its first minister has said it will vote again in 2028.

A movement for self-government wins when the question is who governs, and Albertans were asked, in effect, which capital they would rather answer to. Texas independence is a case for Texans governing Texas.