Candidates for the Alberta Progressive Conservative leadership have made their final pitches to party members who vote Saturday in what has become a polarizing race.

In Calgary on Friday, front-runner Jim Dinning told a breakfast audience that party members have a simple choice to make: "When you wake up Sunday morning, who do you want to speak for Alberta?"

Dinning, a former finance minister who's been out of elected politics since 1997, sits in first place to succeed Ralph Klein as Tory leader. He's the establishment favourite, having been endorsed by legendary ex-premier Peter Lougheed, who started the party's 35-year hold on power.

Dinning captured 29,470 votes, about 30 per cent of the 97,690 votes cast by party members last Saturday.

On his heels is rookie backbencher Ted Morton, a standard-bearer for the hard right of the party, who received 25,648 votes (26 per cent).

Dinning said he's outlined the differences between Morton and himself. Some have accused his supporters of running a fear campaign about the consequences of Morton taking over the party.

In a talk-radio appearance on Friday, Morton said Alberta should keep more of the transfer money it sends to poorer provinces and keep it to build infrastructure to accommodate the influx of workers.

"People who are proud to be Canadians but don't see what's being achieved by the $14 billion or $15 billion leaving Alberta this year - those people are overwhelmingly going to come to me and they're the base of the party," he said Friday.

Ed Stelmach, a farmer and former cabinet minister, had 14,967 votes (15 per cent).

Stelmach, nicknamed "Honest Ed", is popular with voters in rural and northern Alberta.

Three former candidates eliminated in the first round -- Lyle Oberg, Dave Hancock and Mark Norris -- support Stelmach, suggesting he could emerge as the compromise candidate between Dinning and Morton.

"I think honestly, people said, 'Jeez, Ed surprised us. He's there. We're going to go out and support him'," Stelmach said.

However, Alberta talk radio host Dave Rutherford told CTV Newsnet that he doesn't see Stelmach capturing the leadership.

"I do think it's a Dinning-Morton one-two," he said.

The process

Rutherford said what might work against Stelmach -- and what makes the result unpredictable -- is the preferential ballot.

The party's leadership election follows a one-member-one-vote process adopted in 1991, and provides a two-stage ballot process.

A leader is elected when one candidate gets more than 50 per cent of the vote.

If no one wins a clear majority, a winner will be declared by preferential ranking.

Of the three candidates, the third-place one will fall off the ballot.

The second-choice vote on ballots that went to him will be distributed among the top two candidates.

"So number-two votes become very important in this race. And I don't think anybody can say how Ed Stelmach's number twos are going to vote," Rutherford said.

"Ted Morton is more the small-c conservative candidate. Jim Dinning is more the centrist, Ralph Klein-era sort of candidate. So there is an ideological difference there," he said.

"I don't know which way rural  Alberta would go. I don't think it's a slam dunk that Ted Morton would get those votes," he said.

Stelmach's support mainly comes from rural Alberta.

However, Morton is the first leadership candidate that small-c conservatives in the party can support, he said.

"The question is how broad is it, how deep is it? Is it enough to (make) him premier?"

Voting is open to all party members for both ballots. Any Progressive Conservative member in good standing can vote and there will be polling stations in each constituency.

Anyone over the age of 16 can buy a membership card for five dollars and vote, as long as they provide two pieces of identification with a photo and something that confirms their home address, such as a utility bill.

Candidates continued to sell memberships this week.

Klein is retiring after 14 years as a popular and colourful political leader in which he won four consecutive majority governments.

He finally submitted his resignation on Sept. 20 after getting a very disappointing result in a spring leadership review vote, formally triggering the race to replace him in the post he has held for 14 years.

Progressive Conservatives have been in power since 1971 (Klein's predecessors were Lougheed and Don Getty), and so the job of Alberta premier is one of the steadiest positions in politics.

On Saturday night the candidates will await results at the Alberta Aviation Museum in Edmonton.

With files from The Canadian Press