You read that right.
PC went from 70 to 10 seats in an 81 seat parliament
Screen shot Wikipedia, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0

If Canada has a Texas, it is the province of Alberta, which is very much a Petro-Feudal state.

For the past 43 years, the Progressive Conservative (PC) party, Canada’s mainstream conservative party, has been the majority, and for over 30 years before that, the right wing populist Alberta Social Credit Party held the majority.

In yesterday’s election, the PC was turfed out, and the liberal New Democratic Party (NDP), the most liberal of Canada’s 4 mainstream parties, won, and the PC was completely crushed.

This is a stunning result:

The NDP has won a majority in Alberta by toppling the Progressive Conservative colossus that has dominated the province for more than four decades.

The party under leader Rachel Notley swept all 19 seats in Edmonton on Tuesday and made inroads in previously barren NDP territory in Calgary and Lethbridge.

The Wildrose party appeared poised to take second place and form the official Opposition, while Premier Jim Prentice and his PCs were trailing in third.

Of course, as Tip O’Neil was wont to say, “All politics is local,” so the recent disarray in the Alberta PC party (4 premiers in 4 years) likely has a lot to do with their electoral disaster, but I have to assume that there are also some generational changes in the Alberta electorate, which in turn may indicate changes in Canadian politics:  Alberta is a power base of the Conservative Party of Canada.

Here’s hoping that this bodes ill for the Prime Minister Steven Harper, as well.