The numbers jolt you into reality on Friday morning faster and harder than a string of high-octane coffees and a couple of Red Bulls.

What also slaps you in the face is the fact the nose count is done by Janet Brown, who has a very good reputation as a pollster. This is not some fly-by-night number crunching.

As with polls in the past, CBC shares what they find.

Bam! In Alberta, the NDP under Naheed Nenshi is up 5 points. The UCP under Premier Danielle Smith is down 8 points.

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The two parties are deadlocked at 41 percentage points. Other parties are far behind.

In battleground Calgary, right after a byelection vote where the UCP couldn’t hold a seat they held in the conservative south of the city, more bad news shouts the numbers going into the weekend.

In Calgary, the NDP are up eight points on the UCP, 46 percent to 38 per cent.

Since the last poll, the NDP is up 9 points and the UCP is down by 10 points.

Smith’s UCP are not breaking through in the NDP fortress of Edmonton and are losing ground by 14 points outside the two big cities.

Still, the UCP has so much support outside Calgary and Edmonton, they are still well ahead of Nenshi and his crew.

Just so you know,........

© Calgary Herald