It's your turn! Make your Vote count!

The politicking is all but done, the work now left to the Canadian voter to select the next Government and Prime Minister of Canada.

If you still haven't made up your mind, we can offer up our library of political insight compiled over the last five weeks, you can catch up with the National and the local campaigns, but we suggest that you start reading early however, as the polls do close at 7pm...

And so, after five weeks of non-stop campaigning, the candidates will all be anxiously awaiting the verdict from Canada's networks as they relay the will of the people in the 2008 Federal election.

If Edmonton Tarot Card reader Nadia Mitchell is to be believed, the fates will once again be kind to Stephen Harper, who according to Miss Mitchell will win the election but shall come up short again for his much cherished majority.

The Tarot card readers' viewpoint seems to shadow much of the polling done in the last days of the campaign which find the Conservatives still leading the Liberals by at least five points and sometimes more depending on your pollster of choice. (see Globe and Mail listing of major pollster findings here).

National aggregate poll data had the Conservatives still leading heading into election day.

Conservatives 35%

Liberals 27%

NDP 19%

Bloc Quebecois 10%

Green Party 9%

In British Columbia the Conservatives have an even larger spread in the vote:

Conservatives 40%

NDP 25%

Liberals 23%

Green Party 12%

Once you cast your vote, and you do plan to cast your vote right? Results will be challenging to find until our polls close at 7 pm Pacific time.

As the election results begin to trickle out across the nation, a form of electronic lock down will take place, with television networks, radio station websites and other Internet sites forced into a federal elections mandated blackout period.

Meaning if you want a sneak preview of how the tide is flowing you'll have to start reconnecting with those old friends from across Canada, taking advantage of your free after hours long distance plans or patiently biding your time until the blackout is lifted at 7 pm on the west coast.

For the record our Podunkian prognostication suggests that this election will be much like the last, with a Minority Conservative Government, a Liberal opposition and perhaps a slightly stronger NDP presence in the House of Commons

Unfortunately for Mr. Layton, however it will not feature a return to the heady days of Ed Broadbent's 40 plus members in the House. Close but night quite up that watershed moment in NDP history.

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The Bloc support will not collapse as previously thought in Quebec, and at the end of the night, we suspect that the Green party will still be watching the proceedings of Parliament from the Parliamentary Channel and not from a seat in the House of Commons.

For Stephane Dion it will place him in kind of a political no mans land in the short term, having avoided total collapse but not forming a government which is the yardstick that all Liberals use for success. He should however bide his time, while Stephen Harper may return as PM, without that much sought after majority he may find that this stint as leader of the nation may not last as long as in this mos recent minority situation.

A non confidence vote at any time will leave the Governor General with an interesting option, she could send us all back to the polls again for yet another shot at an electoral majority, or she could ask the opposition leader (hang in their Stephane!) to form the government with a coalition of either NDP or Bloc members.

All in all some interesting times set to come our way, and it all will reveal itself, like the fates of the Tarot later on Tuesday night!

Our Crystal ball sees the following final results when the networks sign off for the night...

308 seats to be elected

Conservatives 134

Liberals 94

Bloc 45

NDP 35

Green 0

Others 0

Locally, we still think that Skeena-Bulkley Valley will be an NDP riding at the end of the day, with Nathan Cullen holding off a stronger than expected wave of support for the Conservative candidate Sharon Smith.

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The Liberals, CHP, Canada Action Party and Green party will provide some diversion from the two main candidates, but there isn't any indication of a surge in any of their directions through this campaign.

Based on the participation of close to 39,000 voters in the last election in 2006 we see the breakdown this time around to be something like this:

Nathan Cullen- NDP 17,500

Sharon Smith- Conservative 13,275

Corinna Morhart- Liberal 5,175

Hondo Arendt - Green Party 1,575

Rod Taylor - CHP 1,400

Mary-Etta Goodacre- Canada Action Party 150

The above of course is no more scientific that moving numbers around a spreadsheet, but it's our version of Miss Mitchell's Tarot Cards, so take those numbers as you will.

Just remember if I'm one vote out and you didn't vote, then you can't come back and tell me I'm out to lunch on my prognostications, so for sake of your chance to say what the hell are you thinking, make sure to exercise your right to vote on Tuesday!