If Jim Prentice wasn't so out of touch with Albertans, he would have proudly accepted his victory as MLA for Calgary-Foothills on Tuesday and defiantly remained leader of the Progressive Conservatives.
Instead, he abruptly quit, even while the votes were still being counted in his riding.
Good riddance to a fellow who clearly wanted the top job but didn't want to work for it, the epitome of an opportunistic politician with no interest in serving his west Calgary constituents because, in his view, the only job worthy of his time was being premier.
If Prentice's sense of entitlement hadn't blinded him to the possibility, he could have spent the next four years becoming the architect of the new-and-improved Alberta Conservatives, kicking the old guard, hangers-on and dead weight to the curb in favour of a united core of true blue Tories with loyalty to him alone.
Drilling deeper than just the seat count - 53 NDP, 21 Wildrose, 10 PC, 1 Liberal and 1 recount - shows the bedrock of Conservative support in Alberta remains sound while the foundation of the NDP and Wildrose sits on shakier ground.
Although the PCs finished third in the seat count, with just 10 MLAs, down from 61 when Prentice called the election, the Tories finished second in the popular vote. More than a quarter of Alberta voters - 28 per cent - cast a ballot for Prentice's Conservatives. Although the Wildrose took more than double the amount of seats as the Conservatives, they took three per cent less of the popular vote across the province, finishing third at 25 per cent. Even with all of the baggage of Alison Redford , "Grim Jim" Prentice telling Alberta voters to look in the mirror to find the source of the province's fiscal problems and more than four decades in power, the Conservatives were still the preferred choice for the majority of devoted right-of-centre voters, which account for more than half of all voters.
Wildrose leader Brian Jean did a commendable job during the campaign, a rookie fronting an inexperienced team on a shoestring budget, but the vulnerability of his party is clear for all to see. In all Alberta urban centres large enough to have a Western Hockey League team - Edmonton, Calgary, Red Deer, Lethbridge and Medicine Hat - Wildrose was shut out. In other words, the only widespread support Wildrose enjoys is in rural Alberta. Unless Jean can change that, he is the leader of the Alberta equivalent of the Bloc Quebecois. The road to the premier's chair goes through Edmonton and Calgary, not Taber and Valleyview.
It's only marginally better for Alberta premier-elect Rachel Notley and her NDP government. She will enjoy a majority in the legislature in Edmonton for the next four years with just 40 per cent of the popular vote. She should constantly remind herself and her caucus that six out of 10 Alberta voters cast a ballot for somebody else. That sober thought will keep her team sharp for the next four years and get them thinking about 2019 and the next election.
If Notley isn't looking that far ahead, her incredible win Tuesday will be an historical anomaly instead of a major transformation of the political landscape in Alberta. Like the Wildrose, the NDP's numbers are shallow, both provincially and on a riding-by-riding basis.
Except for the Edmonton ridings, every NDP win everywhere else in Alberta was the result of vote-splitting, where the Conservatives and the Wildrose finished second and third, and their combined votes were greater than the winning NDP candidate.
The "historic breakthrough" for the NDP in Calgary was razor thin. Five ridings in Cowtown were decided by 500 or fewer votes, three of them by 100 votes or less. Four of them went NDP and the fifth - Calgary-Glenmore - is yet to be decided because the NDP and PC candidates finished tied, with 7,015 votes each.
Ironically, the recipe for a second NDP win in 2019 in Alberta comes from the Stephen Harper cookbook. Federally, there are two main parties - the Liberals and the NDP - dividing the left-of-centre vote. Harper and the Conservatives own the right-wing vote and claim just enough moderates to win key ridings and control Parliament. An NDP dynasty is possible in Alberta if Notley can keep the Wildrose trapped in rural Alberta and the PCs bitterly divided and trapped by the yearning for the good old days, both parties healthy enough to cancel each other out to allow NDP candidates to come up the middle.
