Donut politics? The search for Alberta's centre

NDP wins majority government in Alberta.

Alberta'turning heads' at Parisclimate changeconference.

Liberals win first Calgary seats since 1968.

These are headlinesreal, honest to goodness news headlines from 2015.

Take a moment, read them again, and ask yourself how you would have responded if someone had predicted these events at this time last year.

Would you have laughed? Perhaps.

Would you have questioned the sanity of the person making the predictions? Likely.

Would you have doubted that such seismic changes in the accepted political truths of a place could happen so decisively, so quickly?Certainly.

Yet here we are, about to enter 2016 and the uncharted waters of political uncertaintyin a province traditionallyknown for being so predictable.

Of course, the question that is top of mind for many Albertans is whether all this is a permanentshift or an overcorrectionafter more than four decades of rule by one political party.

It's why you hear talk of uniting the right in political back rooms and barber shops across Alberta these days. Did Alberta rejectitsconservative roots, or was the conservative votesimply divided, allowing the socialist interlopers to storm the gates?

Wildrose merger

WildroseLeader Brian Jean is clear about what he thinks the answer is.

"We need one united right, small-c conservative party in Alberta and that's to ensure that the NDP don't get government again," he says.

Jean has a point. Rachel Notley'sNDP won their majority in May with about 40 per centof the vote.The combined Wildroseand Progressive Conservative vote was above 50 per cent, so, on the surface at least, it would seem that a united right could carry the day in 2019.

But is what's left of Alberta's PC dynasty really a right-wingparty that could merge easily withWildrose, until recentlya bitter rival?

Pollster Bruce Cameron isn't so sure, pointing out that the PCsfinished second in most races and arenow essentially a centrist urban party, while the Wildrose base is much more rural and right of centre.

"There is this big gap between that base of small-town rural Alberta and the more Progressive Conservative base that was there in the city," he says.

More urban

The fact is,like most places, Alberta is becoming more urbanand that means the pathto electoral success inevitablyruns through its cities.

But even in the cities, not everyone who voted for change might want quite as much as the NDP is promising,Mount Royal University political science professor Lori Williams says.

"A whole lot of people in Alberta are going to be looking for a moderate alternative, and that moderate, more centrist position is where voters across the country seem to flock," she says.

So the real fight for political supremacy in Alberta maytake place in the centre, not on the right, and it's ground Williamssays the PCs may be in the best position to hold.

"The PCs were decimated in the last election but the place they occupy on the political spectrum isn't occupied by anyone else."

For Alberta's new NDP government, that would mean that eschewing its moreleft-of-centre tendencies andsticking to the middle ground mightbe the key tosuccess in the coming year.

At the moment, areview of resource royalties,a promise to continue raising the minimum wage and a commitment to combatclimate change are all in play amidst a continuingdownturn in the energy industry.

How the NDP government handles those files in the next year could well determine its fortunes beyond 2016areality Premier Notley seems to grasp, as she has signaled she may be open to slowing the pace of change.

"What I am going to be focussing on is the issues," she said recently. "We know that regardless of what happens with the price of oil six months out, that 2016 is probably going to be tougherbefore it gets better."

A tough year ahead

That's a good bet, according to Calgary-basedenergy economist Judith Dwarkin,who sees the price of oil for next year continuing to hover between $40 and$50perbarrel.

"It's going to be tough sledding,I guess, to use a Christmas phrase, through the first half at least," she says.

That's aneconomic climate that Bruce Cameron saysisn't ideal for the NDP's promisedchanges to royalties and the minimum wage.

"If they show some degree of flexibility and pragmatism onthose two, then I think thatthey may have a chance to form a longer-formgovernment beyond even this first term," he says.

In the end, pragmatic, not conservative, may betheword thatbestdescribesmost Albertans, who seemcommitted more to doing what works, than to adhering slavishly to one ideology or another.

It's a position, of course, that tends to liein the centre of the political spectrum, which,for now at least, remains largely vacated in Alberta.

The political party that can find a way to lay claim to that abandoned political real estate could well be the big winner in 2016 and beyond.

CBC Calgary's special focus on life in our city during the downturn. A look at Calgary's culture, identity and what it means to be Calgarian. Read more stories from the series atCalgary at a Crossroads.