27 South Asian (Indo-Canadian / Pakistani-Canadian / Bangladeshi-Canadian) candidates in four major parties

A Forum Poll shows that 45 per cent of Albertans will vote NDP while the Wildrose Party (WRP) and the Progressive Conservatives (PC) will garner only 23 per cent support each. Very few will vote Liberal (4%), for the Alberta Party (3%) or for any other party (2%).
The NDP is dominant in Edmonton (59%), and leads in Calgary (39%) and every other region of Alberta.

The Progressive Conservatives are in second place in Calgary (26%) and Edmonton (20%), but trail in the rest of the province. As many past PC voters will vote NDP this time (39%) as will vote for their own party again (40%), while one fifth of past Wildrose voters will also vote NDP this time around (22%).

If these results are projected up to an 87-seat Legislature, the NDP would capture 63, 19 more than a majority, while Wildrose would take 19 seats and the PC would be reduced to just 5 seats, according to the Forum Poll.

Elections Alberta said on Monday that the number of voters at advance polling stations was up 31 per cent from the previous record in 2012.

THE NDP surge is bad news for South Asian / Indo-Canadian candidates because most of them are from the other three major parties. Incidentally, there are quite a few Pakistani-Canadian candidates in the three major parties. There is also a Bangladeshi-Canadian candidate.

Anyway, a South Asian (Indo-Canadian or Pakistani-Canadian) is sure to be elected from one riding – that of CALGARY MCCALL, where candidates from the NDP, PC, WRP and the Liberals are all South Asians: Irfan Sabir, Jagdeep Kaur Sahota, Happy Mann and Avinash Khangura, respectively.

Other South Asian candidates:

* Calgary Greenway: Manmeet Bhullar (PC) / Devinder Toor (WRP)

* Calgary-Glenmore: Anam Kazim (NDP)

* Calgary-West: Mizanur Rahman (NDP)

* Calgary-Cross: Moiz Mahmood (WRP) / Manjot S. Gill (Lib)

* Calgary-Fort: Jeevan Mangat (WRP)

* Calgary-Northern Hills: Prasad Panda (WRP)

* Calgary-Buffalo: David Khan (Lib)

* Calgary-Hawkwood: Harbaksh S. Sekhon (Lib)

* Calgary-Hays: Shawn Emran (Lib)

* Calgary-MacKay-Nose Hill: Prab Lashar (Lib)

* Calgary-Southeast: Gladwin Gill

* Edmonton-Ellerslie: Harman Kandola (PC)

* Edmonton-Manning: Gurcharan Garcha (PC) / Atiq Rehman (WRP)

* Edmonton-Mill Woods: Sohail Quadri (PC) / Baljit Sall (WRP)

* Edmonton-Mill Creek: Saqib Raja (WRP) / Harpreet Singh (Lib)

* Edmonton-Calder: Amit Batra (Lib)

* Chestermere-Rocky View: Leela Aheer (WRP)

* St. Albert: Stephen Khan (PC)

THERE appears to be a strong desire for change and this could be bad news for the federal Conservatives.

So the whole country will be watching today’s results in Alberta.