Article content

Albertans dumped out their wallets in 2019 to finance the campaign efforts of the two political parties now dominating provincial headlines.

In the year of a bitter-fought provincial election, the victorious United Conservative Party and its constituency associations rustled $7.37 million from more than 29,000 donors, according to numbers filed with Elections Alberta.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or UCP fundraising hits $7.37 million in 2019, NDP smashes donor record Back to video

“We were elated with our donor database and how much we were able to grow it over the years,” party executive director Brad Tennant said in a Thursday interview.

The party, which was born in 2017 from a merger of the Progressive Conservative and Wildrose parties, pulled in about 7.6 per cent more than the $6.85 million raised in 2018.

New Democrats doubled their number of donors between 2018 and 2019, party data show. In 2019, the party collected more than $5.5 million from 21,000 Albertans.

“I’m actually really speechless about it,” NDP provincial secretary Brandon Stevens said Thursday. “I think what the numbers show for us is that the NDP and Rachel Notley really are the alternative to the UCP.”