Greg Perry's editorial cartoon says it all visually, as the best kind of editorial cartoons do.
A man is reading his newspaper and the headline reads "Alberta NDP leads in election race: poll." Outside his window, a pig flies by.
It's to-the-point and hilarious.
And it's absolutely wrong.
The polls failed three years ago when they wrote off Alison Redford and the Conservatives, insisting the electorate had decided it was time to give Danielle Smith and the Wildrose party a chance. Instead, Redford led the Conservatives to victory, defying both the polls and pundits. Christy Clark pulled off a similar feat a year later here in B.C.
Many polls now show Rachel Notley and the Alberta NDP ahead of both the Conservatives and the Wildrose with election day just one week away. Longtime political watchers simply can't believe what they're seeing, so they're saying the polls have it wrong yet again and it simply can't happen that Alberta - ALBERTA! - would elect a provincial NDP government.
This is a province that has been under Conservative rule for 43 straight years, thanks to 12 consecutive election victories. Nothing could change, right?
B.C. residents know better. Except for three years in the 1970s, Social Credit ruled B.C. for 39 years until the fateful 1991 fall election, when it seemed certain that Mike Harcourt would lead the NDP to power and Social Credit leader Rita Johnston would form the opposition.
Except that's not exactly what happened.
Thanks to a powerful performance in the televised debate by the then largely unknown leader of the B.C. Liberals, Gordon Wilson, Social Credit was all but wiped out and the Liberals formed the Official Opposition with 17 seats.
If Notley pulls off the incredible upset for the NDP in Alberta next Tuesday, many will point back to the beating she laid on Conservative Premier Jim Prentice during last Thursday's one and only televised debate as the turning moment. She went toe-to-toe with Prentice, landed some great jabs ("maybe you should stop quoting your favourite economist and listen to what Albertans are saying"), and kept the other two party leaders, Brian Jean of the Wildrose and David Swann of the Liberals, on the sidelines.
The key moment, however, was a devastating self-inflicted wound by Prentice. Instead of making a pointed remark about the Alberta NDP having to revise its economic platform released at the start of the campaign because the numbers didn't add up, Prentice's snide "I know math is difficult" shot at Notley came across as arrogant at best and sexist at worst. #mathishard was trending shortly afterwards on Twitter, with many saying that single comment cost him the women's vote across the province.
Even before Prentice stuck his foot in his mouth, Notley looked like a sure bet to form the Official Opposition in Alberta by winning seats outside of Edmonton for the first time in the party's history. Now she's doing one better, working hard to convince Liberal supporters that she and the NDP are the place for left-leaning Albertans to park their vote and middle-of-the-road voters who've always supported the Conservatives that it's time for real change, not just a new Conservative leader.
Notley's background also speaks to Albertans. Raised in the northern Alberta town of Fairview, between Grande Prairie and Peace River, Notley is a lawyer specializing in workplace health and safety issues. She's also blessed to be the daughter of Grant Notley, who led the Alberta NDP from 1968 to 1984 and was an MLA for all but three of those years. She grew up with politics and elections. It also helps that older voters remember her dad as fondly in Alberta as the same generation of Canadian voters recall Ed Broadbent - that really good NDP leader that nobody ever voted for but, in hindsight, wished they had given him a chance.
Most significant of all, Alberta has changed. That flood of new residents to Alberta from elsewhere in Canada and around the world brought their cosmopolitan outlook with them and are not bound to political tradition. The proof materialized five years ago when Calgarians elected a 38-year-old Muslim, Naheed Nenshi, as their mayor. It was no fluke. He easily won re-election three years later.
Is Alberta ready for an NDP government? We'll find out next week but the better question might be, is the rest of Canada ready for an Alberta NDP government?
