'The neighbours are going to think we're communists': Voting progressive in rural Alberta

Along a quiet street in Pincher Creek there's a spattering of houses with bright orange signs that contrast the surrounding sea of blue. 

Juneva Green was running errands when her husband stepped the NDP banner into their lawn. 

"When I came back and he'd gotten the sign up I said, 'Gee, Jim, the neighbours are going to think we're communists," she said laughing. 

The Greens live in Livingstone-Macleod — a riding the NDP hasn't won since 1966 but that houses pockets of progressive voters. 

The election has broadly been a neck-and-neck race. But the NDP aren't competitive in much of rural Alberta.

The UCP is at 65 per cent support and the NDP at 31 per cent outside Edmonton and Calgary, per polling aggregator 338 Canada. Seat projections show them as serious challengers in only a handful of the 41 ridings outside the two major cities.

The UCP's greatest concentrations of strength continue to be in those constituencies, of which they currently hold 39.

The fewer small city and rural seats the NDP wins, the harder its path to victory. If the NDP forms the next government, it's poised to do so largely without rural representation. 

Lately, it's been lonely to vote progressive in small town Alberta or be a conservative supporter in NDP-held Edmonton. CBC News is featuring stories from both those groups of voters during this election. 

"In the last election, we put up NDP signs on both sides of the house and realized we're the only ones with signs," said Sharron Toews, a resident of Nanton who has voted across the political spectrum.

Progressive voters in places like Nanton, Claresholm and the Crowsnest Pass would quietly vote for their parties in the past, but the support is more visible this time. It's the first election in decades where Alberta has solidified into a competitive two-party system. 

"We've been a conservative-reigned province for many years … I think maybe people are looking for more options."

This year, orange dots a dozen lawns on Toews's small street.

"The fact that we are in a two-party system where opposition to the conservatives has largely coalesced around the NDP, that's a really big deal," said Clark Banack, the director of the Alberta Centre for Sustainable Rural Communities at the University of Alberta.