The most conservative province in Canada - Alberta - returned the Progressive Conservative party to government on Monday, April 23, with a majority win. The so-far-to-the-right-it-was-almost-in-Saskatchewan Wild Rose party was shown the power of the ballot box, gaining only 17 seats in the 87 seat legislature (the PCs won 61 seats, the centrist Liberals won four seats (down from eight in the last legislature) and the leftist New Democratic Party more than doubled its seat count jumping from two seats to five.

Wild Rose - dubbed the Canadian version of the American Tea Party lunacy - holds its seats in rural Alberta, and was completely shut out in Edmonton, the capital, and won only two seats in Calgary.  Alberta Liberals by and large voted strategically and cast ballots for the PCs to ensure that Wild Rose didn't gain power.

The interesting thing about this election was that Wild Rose conistently led in the polls, with between 40 and 44 per cent of committed voters telling pollsters that they would vote for the very right wing party. It's unlikely that all the polling companies were in error, so what happened in the last few days leading up to the election? Pundits speculate that (a) pollsters were not accessing people who do not have land lines and (b) the failure of the Wild Rose leader Danielle Smith to censure homophobic and racist comments by two of her candidates led to the collapse of Wild Rose.

Which raises an interesting point. With more and more people twittering, Facebooking, and otherwise using social media to an increasingly greater extent, pollsters are going to have to find a way to access the social media users in order to get accurate readings of the voters' inclinations.

In the meantime, Premier Alison Redford has carte blanche to implement her poicies for the next four years. Under her leadership the PCs have moved toward the centre, so the next four years are going to be interesting.

Dos, the Progressive Conservative party, which won this week's election in Alberta, is returning to power. The PCs have been in power in Alberta for 41 years! Albertans are loth to change governments. Prior to the PCs, the Social Credit party reigned supreme for forty or so years.