Rachel Notley officially running for premier in next provincial election

No, you didn’t time travel back to 2015.

Rachel Notley has once again announced her plans to run for premier of Alberta in a Facebook post on Thursday morning.

The leader of the NDP, the official opposition party in Alberta, had been premier of the province for four years before losing the 2019 election to Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party.

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Notley stuck around in the Alberta Legislature, however, and now hopes to win her position back in the next election, which will be held sometime before 2024.

“I’m running to be Premier again in 2023,” she wrote in the Facebook post.

“There’s so much opportunity in Alberta and there’s so much frustration with the current Government. Alberta’s greatest resource is its people and I’m going to fight for all of them.”

While the NDP won just 24 seats to the UCP’s 63 in 2019, a recent poll shows that the next election may be a little closer.

An Angus Reid Institute poll found that the Alberta NDP and UCP were tied in vote intention at 38% as of September 1, with much of the centre-of-right vote being split by the UCP, the Alberta Party (9%) and the Alberta Independence Party (7%).

Angus Reid Institute

It may be another three years before Notley and Kenney face off again, though with Kenney’s approval rating on the decline since being elected, we may see another provincial election called before the 2023 deadline.