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A couple of trends suggest themselves when you consider Canada’s two most recent provincial elections.

First, Jason Kenney’s win in Alberta is trouble for Justin Trudeau’s federal Liberals, as his voice can now multiply co-ordinated Conservative attacks on the federal carbon tax.

Conservatives were further reinforced by this week’s election in P.E.I., where the Tories won the most ridings (12), though not enough for a majority government in the 27-seat legislature.

That brings up the second trend, the remarkable showing of the Green party in Prince Edward Island.

The Greens, led by Peter Bevan-Baker, finished second with eight seats, relegating the Liberals, who formed the outgoing government, to just six. Premier Wade MacLauchlan lost his own seat, and resigned as leader on Thursday.

This puts the Greens in a position to form the official Opposition, a first in Canadian politics. In fact, polls indicated up to a week before the vote that the Greens had a shot at forming a government.

In the end, voters stuck with the familiar back-and-forth between the two traditional parties, going back to the Conservatives even though that party’s leader, Dennis King, only took over the reins in February.

There’s a danger in reading too much into these results. Prince Edward Island, where more than 80 per cent of voters went to the polls on Tuesday, is a bit of an outlier.

High turnout alone sets that province apart. After all, voter participation in Nova Scotian provincial elections struggles to reach the 60 per cent mark. Alberta’s election turnout this year was 69 per cent, the highest in decades.

It’s tough to glean a national trend from these results, mainly because the number of voters in P.E.I. is so small. The Greens’ success could be solely due to their leader’s popularity.

But it could also mean that more young people are voting in P.E.I., and since young people lean left and green, and don’t have the Liberal-Conservative dichotomy baked in their bones, they’re willing to give the Greens a chance. That support hasn’t shown up in polls in other provinces.

Remember, also, that the Greens, with three seats, hold the balance of power as the third party in British Columbia, where the opposition Liberals hold a single-seat advantage over the governing NDP.

Back to the Conservatives. Right-of-centre parties now run seven provinces, where just two years ago, Liberals were in power in seven.

Now they’re down to two, both in Atlantic Canada: Stephen McNeil’s government in Nova Scotia and Dwight Ball’s in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Ball just dropped the writ in his province for a May 16 vote; in three weeks, McNeil could be Canada’s lone Liberal premier.

So as Justin Trudeau approaches an October date for a federal election, he’ll find provincial government allies are thin on the ground. And he’s still licking the self-inflicted wounds of the SNC-Lavalin affair.

The road to re-election is looking bumpier every day.