Like it or not, voters in the federal riding of Cumberland-Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley are going to the polls in 32 days and the results could prove fascinating.
The safe money, of course, is on Conservative candidate Scott Armstrong, the acting president of the provincial Progressive Conservatives and principal of Truro Elementary School.
After all, prior to last fall's election, this riding and its very similar-sized predecessors - North Nova and Cumberland Colchester - sent Conservative MPs to Ottawa in 11 of 12 tries since 1968, most of them in quite convincing fashion.
It would have happened last year, too, except for the fact that popular Bill Casey, after voting against the federal budget in 2007, was expelled from caucus and refused the Conservative nomination for the next election.
Unwilling to go quietly into the night, Casey ran as an independent and the voters supported him in overwhelming numbers - 27,503 to less than 5,000 for his nearest counterpart, NDP candidate Karen Olsson.
The Conservatives, meanwhile, were forced to parachute in a candidate who received a paltry 3,493 votes.
To put it quite simply, local voters told Prime Minister Stephen Harper where he could shove it.
But times have changed.
Casey rather quickly announced his resignation from Parliament to accept a cushy job representing Nova Scotia in Ottawa and the NDP made major breakthroughs in the spring provincial election, electing candidates in areas of the federal riding that were once seen as Tory strongholds at the provincial level.
Will all those independent votes dutifully return to the Conservative fold?
Or will NDP votes cast provincially also translate to the federal level?
And what of the Liberals? Didn't they once reign in Cumberland Colchester not so long ago?
It all adds up to an outcome that might not be quite the coronation it's been for most of the past 41 years.
