Alberta Election Results: A Predicted PC Majority Government

That prediction was made by Global News at 8:21 pm and not 10 minutes later, Stelmach made his victory thank you speech from his campaign headquarters. There is something fundamentally wrong with an electorate that absolutely refuses to attempt to change the political situation in this province, where we've been held hostage by these Conservatives for what seems like (and practically is) forever.

Now it's just a matter of watching for the gains and losses. I'll post the final numbers when they're up.

Local coverage:

CTV Calgary
CBC Calgary
QR 77 Radio
Global Calgary
Calgary Herald
Calgary Sun

Update:

Wow. Political scientist Keith Brownsey just had an angry fit on CFCN asking what CTV was thinking predicting a majority Conservative government when only a few votes were in from a handful of ridings. (We're talking single-digit vote counts here.) Quite the display of outrage! The anchors tried to rationalize their methodology but part of it is based on pre-election predictions. Hardly measurable in any solid way. Of course, everybody and their dog figured that the Cons would win, but Brownsey had a point ie. how about waiting until some actual real numbers are in?

Unofficial Results: (10:50 pm)

PC 73
LIB 8
NDP 2
WAP 0
Green 0
Other 0

2004 numbers by comparison:

PC 61
LIB 17
NDP 4
AAP 1
Others 0

Voter turnout was pathetic.

Urban ~43%
Rural ~39%

The leaders of the PC, Liberal and NDP parties all retained their seats. The WAP leader lost to the PC candidate by 39 votes.
 

Alberta Votes

It's election day here and I'll be posting the results (in a separate thread) as they come in this evening. I haven't made it out to vote yet. Just got home from the dentist's office (where she did a fabulous job!) and I'm waiting for the freezing to wear off. (If you need a referral to a good dentist in north Calgary, let me know by e-mail.)

Anyway, polls say there are ~45% undecided voters here and many Cons are not all that impressed by Fast Eddie Stelmach, so this could be interesting. Disgruntled Cons will likely just stay home instead of switching parties and our turnout is so low to begin with that there could be a shift in Alberta's political scene as a result. It may not be enough to take the majority from the Conservatives, but any gains made by the left-leaning parties is a net positive. There are also thousands of new Alberta voters who've moved here from other provinces to take advantage of the boom. That phenomenon didn't affect Conservative support during the last boom but that's no predictor of how things might turn out this time.

If you're an Albertan, get out there and vote. (Election info/polling locations here.)

We've lived under the thumb of these Cons for decades and it's long past time that that changed. Enough is enough!

Update:

The election results thread is here.