Alberta election: Get-out-the-vote operations will be key, strategist says

The key to victory for the party that wins Tuesday's Alberta election will be its ability to get out the vote, a political strategist says.

Having the resources and organization to get likely supporters to the polling stations will be especially vital in battleground Calgary, said Stephen Carter, who was behind Naheed Nenshi's first mayoralty campaign and later served as former premier Alison Redford's chief of staff.

"Calgary's the great unknown. I mean, you've got teams for the PCs that work, you know that have been proven to work very strong, strongly together," he said.

"You have teams in the Wildrose that have worked pretty well in the past, but you have these NDP teams that no one has seen before. We've not had an NDP surge."

Carter says a party that's trailing in the polls but has a great get-out-the-vote effort can still beat a higher polling, but less organized, rival.

"So if you have a small percentage of the vote — let's say 25 per cent of the people are going to vote for you — and you manage to get 100 per cent of them out, you're far more likely to actually win the election than someone who has 60 per cent voter support and only is able to muster about 30 per cent of the vote."

Getting younger voters out to vote could be the toughest job. In the four byelections held last fall in the province, fewer than five per cent of those who showed up at the polls were between 18 and 24, according to Elections Alberta.

Overall, voter turnout had been steadily declining in Alberta over the past two decades, from over 60 per cent in 1993 down to 40.6 per cent in 2008.

But turnout surged to 54.4 per cent in 2012, an election that — like this time around — had pollsters predicting a possible change in government.

Polls will be open Tuesday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.