I've been enjoying reading the comments of my University of Lethbridge colleague Professor Peter McCormick over on his blog at the Calgary Herald/Edmonton Journal Alberta Votes website.

There's always a lot of attention paid to the leaders' debate, but frequently they don't matter much. I think tonight's debate might be different. Since no one has caught fire and voters don't seem to be paying much attention, the leaders have a real opportunity here to turn this around. In addition, debates often make a difference when leaders perform significantly above or below expectations.

I've been waiting for some polling numbers and we finally have them, thanks to a National Post/Global TV poll done by Ipsos Reid. Basically, it shows the Conservatives well out in front, thanks to a commanding lead (46%) outside of Edmonton and Calgary.

Candidate nominations for the present general election in Alberta closed yesterday. The biggest news (again) is that Elections Alberta does not make it very friendly for people to use their data (A nice printable file, if not a downloadable spreadsheet file, would make the lives of people in the media a bit easier).
The New Democrats and the Progressive Conservatives are presenting candidates in all 83 ridings. The Liberals, surprisingly, are not running a candidate in Peace River. The Green Party has augmented its team to 79 for this election, up from 46 in 2004. They’ll be absent in Dunvegan-Central Peace, Peace River, Lac La Biche-St. Paul, and Whitecourt-Ste. Anne.

It seems entirely appropriate that we're in the midst of a provincial election on Family Day. Those of you who are really old (like me) will remember that Family Day originated duing the 1989 election campaign. Let's see if this sounds familiar....

NDP leader Brian Mason is proposing an end to corporate and union donations to political parties in Alberta. Mason is pitching this as something that would eliminate (or at least reduce) corruption in Alberta.

Ed Stelmach's first week during the campaign has been rocky, if the media coverage is any indication.
The start of the Alberta election should have been an opportunity to showcase the government's accomplishments in the last 12 months. Instead, Ed Stelmach got questions about the coinciding election date with the third anniversary of the Maythorpe killing of four RCMP officers. What was reported were speculations about insensitivity or incompetence.

I'm not ordinarily in agreement with Lorne Gunter, the political columnist from the Edmonton Journal, but I thought he diagnosed the election and the mood of the province correctly in a recent column.