The political landscape has shifted here in Alberta, back to something we're apparently much more comfortable with.

That's having a leading party that is further to the right, after the left-leaning 4-year experiment known as Rachel Notley's NDP government abruptly ended on Tuesday night with the election of a majority UCP government.

The results from the provincial election may not have been a surprise for UCP supporters who have been vocal about their disdain for the NDP these past few years, but some candidates felt that intense media coverage and big money from third-party PACs played a role in our province ending up with only two parties with seats in the legislature.

Alberta Party candidate for Lacombe-Ponoka Myles Chykerda says this was a learning experience for him, and he thinks most voters' minds were set on either the UCP or NDP before the election was even called, which left little room for other parties.

“This was definitely a big learning experience and there are certainly things that I would do different. Now that said, I don’t think anything could have shifted things this election.  There have been some very well-funded third-party advertisements, those PACs, and actually the NDP and the UCP’s themselves that have been pushing this idea that it was a two-party race for the last three years basically…There was a lot of money and resources and advertising going between that, and it seems like that’s what Albertans bought into. You look at the polling results and it’s quite staggering, I wasn’t expecting to see that sort of a sweep.”

Chykerda says he hopes people who were intensely critical of the NDP hold Jason Kenney's two-year-old party to the same standards.

“I hope we all, as Albertans, keep this new government led by Premier-elect Kenney basically under the same microscope that we were doing with the NDP government. I don’t think anyone deserves a free pass because of their political leanings or colours and we all need to be responsible Albertans and make sure all these things that we were promised, happen.”

The Alberta Party has about 10% of the total votes, but that wasn't good enough to gain them a seat, as they along with the Alberta Liberal Party and the Freedom Conservative Party were all left out in the political dust.