Alberta election

Jason Markusoff: With Kenney holding a commanding lead, Notley’s NDP is plotting a bare-knuckle campaign. No one’s coming out on top.

The final results of Alberta’s provincial election are in: the Progressive Conservatives of Premier Alison Redford have maintained their decades-long grip on power by winning a strong majority (61 seats out of 87) in the Alberta legislature. The Wildrose Party, pegged by poll after poll as the likely election victor, captured just 17. The Liberals, led by Raj Sherman, came up with five seats, while the NDP took four.

NDP leader Brian Mason’s first words on reaching the podium? “The phone booth just doubled!”

The PCs carried 61 of 87 seats

Alberta’s Progressive Conservative government has defied pollsters, winning a surprisingly overwhelming majority in an election that had been widely expected to bring about an end to their 41 years of power. With about half the polls reporting provincewide, Alison Redford’s PCs, who had been running seven to ten points behind the Wildrose Party until the final weekend, took 44 per cent of the popular vote and were on pace to take about 60 seats. Danielle Smith’s Wildrose movement fell victim to strategic “progressive” voting for the PCs, earning just 34 per cent of the vote and garnering just over 20 seats. The Liberal vote, 29 per cent in 2008, collapsed to 9% as leader Raj Sherman fell behind in his own Edmonton-Meadowlark seat. Four New Democrats have been elected or are leading in Edmonton.

It’s voting day in Alberta, and the entire country is watching.

Under the circumstances, the election is nearly impossible to handicap

The message of a third-party video making the rounds is ‘Vote PC, even if you don’t want to’

A controversial pastor running for Alberta’s Wildrose Party dominated news in that province again Monday after his leader doubled down in her support of him and audio clips from two of his sermons were released on YouTube.

A year-old blog post by a preacher and Wildrose candidate lit up the Alberta election trail Sunday, prompting renewed charges from opponents that the upstart party is more extreme than it lets on. Musing on the Lady Gaga song ‘Born This Way,’ which preaches tolerance, David Allan Hunsperger wrote that: “You can live the way you were born, and if you die the way you were born, then you will suffer the rest of eternity in the lake of fire, hell, a place of eternal suffering.”

The leaders of Alberta’s four main political parties faced off Thursday in the lone debate in what has already been dubbed that province’s most important election in a generation. Wildrose leader Danielle Smith continues to lead most polls and looks likely, if not certain, to topple the 40-year-old Progressive Conservative dynasty. On Thursday, Smith acted the front runner she is, teaming up at times with the New Democrats Brian Mason and Liberal Raj Sherman to rough up Tory premier Alison Redford.

Elections are made up of a lot of little things—and this one is pretty amusing