Canada's home of bedrock conservatism is a heartbeat away from a seismic shift that could see Alberta's governing Progressive Conservatives move to the far right and perhaps fracture a party that has dominated the province for 35 years.

Ted Morton, a rookie backbencher but with deep roots in the Reform party, finished a close second on the weekend to front-runner Jim Dinning, denying the former provincial treasurer a first-ballot victory in the race to replace Ralph Klein as party leader and premier.

Morton and Dinning, along with veteran cabinet minister Ed Stelmach, square off in a second and final vote Saturday, in which party members will rank the three in order of preference.

"(Morton) is tapping into those Albertans who want small government, lower taxes and to snip the links with Ottawa and by extension the rest of Canada," said Doreen Barrie, a political scientist at the University of Calgary.

It's a platform that plays on exaggerated fears and concerns, Barrie suggested.

"I personally don't believe Albertans are that different from people in the rest of the country," she said. "I think Albertans want to play a bigger role in Canada, not withdraw."

Morton, 57, worked behind the scenes on the national stage as policy director when the Reform party morphed into the Canadian Alliance before he himself jumped into provincial politics in 2004.

He has campaigned on returning the party to its social and fiscal grassroots. He rails against federal rules and practices and is an outspoken opponent of gay marriage.

In making his speech Saturday to supporters gathered at Calgary's Round-Up Centre to hear voting results, he revealed once again he is willing to draw a line in the sand between Alberta and Ottawa.

"Albertans understand that Ottawa is not Las Vegas," he said. "What happens in Ottawa doesn't stay in Ottawa. It comes out here and affects the rest of us, our pocketbooks.

"So when Quebec starts asking for more, Albertans want a premier that will stand up for Alberta. Change is coming!"

A Morton win would signal a major shift for the Tories, who survived mostly intact under Klein because he was able to balance the wishes of social conservatives and their more moderate fellows.

"If Morton comes in it will be very divisive. It will drive moderate Tories out of the party," said Barrie, who speculated they would wind up with the opposition Liberals.

Dinning, too, faces that challenge even if he wins. He has the backing of the business establishment and more than half the Tory caucus, but doesn't have the personal popularity of Klein, said Barrie.

And, unlike Klein, the Calgary-based Dinning didn't fare well in rural areas in the first ballot.

Liberal Leader Kevin Taft said no matter who wins, the Tories are moving away from the political centre.

"Whether we're looking at Premier Morton or Premier Dinning, we're looking at a hard-right turn," Taft said. "If (Dinning) wins, he's going to have to move hard right to accommodate Morton.

"We will see a considerably more right-wing, American Republican-style politics in Alberta."

Dinning, whom polls picked as the front-runner from the start, ran a centrist middle-of-the road campaign, promising to keep the books balanced and fix the public health system through innovation rather than privatization.

The 53-year-old's resume with the party dates back to when he ran the southern office for former Tory premier Peter Lougheed. As provincial treasurer in the 1990s, Dinning was a key member of a Klein team that slashed programs and cut thousands of government jobs to balance the budget at a time when oil prices - the province's lifeblood - were scraping bottom.

He left in 1997 to work as head of the Calgary health region and then as a senior vice-president with the power generator TransAlta.

Throughout the campaign, Morton mocked Dinning as a candidate for a discredited Tory establishment, a "Liberal-lite" corporate toady, who only re-entered politics after a decade to grab the brass ring.

Dinning attacked Morton as the candidate of fear and division, someone who would put up "firewalls" instead of build bridges - a reference to a letter he co-wrote in 2001 with five others, including now Prime Minister Stephen Harper, which urged Alberta to go it alone on health, taxes and pension plans.

Eight men, including six former Klein cabinet ministers, ran in the race to become Alberta's 13th premier. Two of the defeated candidates have already said they will support Stelmach, but their supporters don't have to move to his camp. Voting is open to anyone over 16 who buys a $5 membership.

"Now it's a different race," said Dinning. "There's a choice now that frankly wasn't there before."

It was the party's uninspiring showing in the 2004 general election that ultimately set the stage for the current leadership campaign. Klein's Tories still won a majority, but it was reduced, and they captured less than 50 per cent of the vote.

Perhaps more worrying as that the right-wing Alberta Alliance party took almost nine per cent of the popular vote and won its first seat.

Last spring, Canada's longest-serving current premier was given a stinging rebuke at a leadership review when only 55.4 per cent of delegates endorsed him. The tepid support prompted Klein to speed up his retirement plans.