It is all over but the voting and the counting.
A nine-month campaign for the Progressive Conservative leadership will end today, with the party electing both a new leader and the province’s next premier.
Polling locations will be open in St. Albert today at Servus Credit Union Place for the St. Albert constituency and at the Salvation Army headquarters on Liberton Drive for the Spruce Grove-Sturgeon-St. Albert constituency.
The polls will be open from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.
St. Albert Constituency Association president Randy Duguay said he is expecting a bigger turnout than the party saw on the first ballot.
“I think the campaign teams have certainly become more focused and they are working hard to differentiate themselves and I think people are really looking at the message each candidate has to make,” he said.
PC Alberta party president Bill Smith said there was an increase of about 10 per cent at the party’s advance polls on Tuesday. Whether that relates to bigger numbers today remains to be seen, he said.
“We will always hope there will be [higher turnout],” he said. “We were up a little bit in our advance polls, but that will be up to the candidates.”
Candidate Alison Redford, who took a break from the race after the death of her mother on Tuesday, said there is a lot of interest in her campaign and she is confident of a victory.
“The phones are ringing off the hook, there are a lot of people buying memberships. I think we have been really successful in terms of engaging people by talking about the issues that matter to them,” she said.
Redford was the second place candidate after the first vote on Sept. 17, with 19 per cent of the vote, following Gary Mar who had 41 per cent of the vote. Local MLA Doug Horner had 14 per cent of the vote.
The second vote uses a preferential ballot, with voters marking their first and second choices. If one candidate does not have 50 per cent of the vote after first choices are tallied, the third place candidate will be eliminated and the second choice selections from that candidate will be divided among the remaining candidates.
Horner said that despite Mar’s early lead, he believes the race is wide open tomorrow.
“I don’t think it is a forgone conclusion by any stretch of the imagination and I think we might be surprised by the result tomorrow,” he said.
He said interest in his campaign has soared over the last two weeks.
“There is an excitement in the air there is a great buzz in the campaign office there are lots of people phoning in,” he said.
Mar said that despite his early success he is not sitting on his hands for the second ballot.
“We are continuing to work hard, we have big work to do between now and tomorrow at 7 p.m. when the polls close,” he said.
Redford has said she will likely cast her second choice for Horner, because they share many of the same policies.
Horner and Mar have both remained largely mute on the issue. Mar said both of the other candidates would make fine premiers.
“There are no bad second choices on that ballot and we leave it up to the people who support me,” he said.
The Gazette will have results from tonight’s ballot online as soon as they are available at www.stalbertgazette.com, as well as full coverage in next Wednesday’s edition.
