If the NDP is to follow up its 2015 election victory with re-election in 2019, the municipal elections will provide the first reliable indication.
There are polls, however in the era of the cellphone and social media, political polls have become notoriously unreliable in spite of pollsters' efforts to adapt their methodology.
How will we know before election day whether the majority of Alberta voters have shifted to the centre or the left?
Will moderate and progressive Albertans vote to keep the NDP economic and social experiment and increase the Liberal Party and Alberta Party caucuses?
Or is the NDP term in government an anomaly in the 80 years of right-of-centre political power in Alberta?
Although there are no political parties in municipal elections, candidates can be identified as left, centre or right by their stance on economic and social policies.
The Calgary mayoral campaign is a bellwether - a leading indicator of trends.
And two of the candidates - Mayor Naheed Nenshi and former Alberta Progressive Conservation Association president Bill Smith - are the canaries in the coal mine.
Odd that the metaphors that we use for political change are from occupational practices that are obsolete.
Bellwether is an agricultural term from sheep herding.
A wether is a castrated ram. In the day, a bell was hung from the neck of the wether who led the herd for the benefit of the shepherd following the flock, so they could hear where the herd was going. Hence the metaphor bellwether.
In coal mines, the miners took cages of canaries into the drifts - the horizontal adits that followed the embedded coal from the central shaft sometimes for miles into the earth.
Opening the coal beds released colourless, odorless methane, which built up and could explode, killing the miners. To protect themselves, miners kept canary cages near at hand. The methane killed the canaries and when it did, the miners took the warning, and evacuated the mine.
Only one of the two - Nenshi or Smith - will survive politically on Oct. 16; they are comparable to the canaries in the coal mine.
If Nenshi wins, he is the lucky canary and a bellwether for provincial NDP, Liberal and Alberta Party candidates doing well in Calgary and southern Alberta.
If Smith wins, it's good news for United Conservative Party candidates, bad news for Liberal and Alberta Party prospects in the region.
The success or failure of candidates in rural towns or counties who identify with conservative, moderate or progressive policies on debt, taxation and social services will also be an indicator of how voters will treat the political parties in the next provincial election.
Municipal election results will be just an indication, and an early one, however it will affect candidate recruiting, fundraising and platform content.
And it will be a harbinger, an indication, of the results of the provincial election.
By the way, in the day harbinger was a noun, a person who was sent ahead of a traveller to arrange lodgings or to arrange billets near the battlefield for rear-echelon officers.
- Frank Dabbs is a veteran political and business journalist, author of six books and editor of several more.
