Stelmach might suck, but Alberta is not in play federally

I posted this at the start of September. I see a Tory blogger wrote today that the Conservatives are in trouble federally in Alberta. Stelmach may suck and there might be some protest voting provincially and unhappy people answering telephone polls, but the shift that needs to occur for any Liberal breakthrough federally in Alberta is virtually impossible. The Tories have a better chance of converting Montreal. There may be polling data to suggest potential problems, but the margin of error when dissecting national polls regionally increases substantially.

Battleground Alberta

I recently had a Liberal loyalist post a comment on one of my "election metrics" blogs that apparently Alberta is in play. I can understand where he got his cup of kool-aid, because Iggy did once praise the tar sands in a speech. If he says it, Alberta will inevitably begin to flock to him like he is a modern age Pied Piper. Right? Let's say hypothetically that a catastrophic shift of 1 in every 4 Alberta Tories to the Liberals occurred (an extreme shift that would be virtually impossible without something like Ralph Klein endorsing Ignatieff). How many seats would the Tories lose? Two Edmonton seats. Here is an even funnier game, let's say the NDP folded in Alberta and their followers shifted en masse 100% to the Liberals. How many seats would the Tories lose? None. They would not lose a single seat if the Liberals absorbed 100% of the NDP vote in Alberta.

So when you see Liberal spokespeople commenting on blogs that suddenly Alberta is in play that is not an educated opinion. I really wonder who is running the numbers over at Liberal HQ. They can't believe that they have a chance at winning an election, and if they do, they are dumber than I ever would have imagined. I hope the Bloc and the NDP call their bluff.