LeopardsAteMyFace

Coin flip. It's going to depend a lot on how much sentiment has swung against Smith. I have hope, because she's burned a lot of bridges in the last couple years, but it's honestly going to be too close to call either way. A lot of the people who could have made a difference at the ballot box have just fled at this point. I don't necessarily blame them, if I weren't tied down with golden handcuffs I'd have considered walking away too.

Add to that our population has nearly doubled in the last 20 years, and not all of it for the good. We've got a lot of American immigrants, as well as people who have washed out of polite society in other provinces and decided to dig holes for the oil companies for food and meth money. Alberta always had a bit of a conservative tilt, but not by that much until our reputation as "Canadian Texas" made a whole lot of the worst people in the country decide to settle here. It hasn't been all bad, and there's been some good people who moved in too, but on balance we have a lot of people who don't have deep roots, don't care about our communities, and never knew that once upon a time this was union country, home of the NDP, the Federated Co-operatives corp, and other iconic Canadian institutions that are now called "Leftist."

Add to that all our media corps out here are run by Post Media, which in turn is owned by Blackrock. Powers from outside the province have spent a lot of time and money to control the narrative in these parts. It's not hopeless, not yet anyway, and there's enough of us left that grew up in North America's finest education system that see the UCP for the scavengers and parasites they are, but I won't lie it's going to be a close fight and every inch of help we can get matters.