On election night in May, 2023, Danielle Smith’s senior advisers gathered in a suite at Calgary’s Fairmont Palliser hotel to watch Alberta’s results roll in.

Ms. Smith was facing her first election as premier and leader of the United Conservative Party, positions she’d clinched during a leadership race seven months earlier. The dozen or so people in the room included seasoned political operatives: Marshall Smith, her chief of staff, and Rob Anderson, the executive director of the Premier’s Office.

Ms. Smith stopped by the suite, but otherwise spent most of the evening watching the returns elsewhere with her husband.