The formal provincial election campaign in Alberta is 28 days.  But the real election campaign kicks off when the government gives the first concrete hint of when it will drop the writ.

The NDP did that last week when it announced a March 18 Speech from the Throne.  Politicians and pundits are betting that means the election will be called immediately after the speech, a handy vehicle for the unveiling of a campaign platform.

With the province's wobbly oil and gas revenue problem, it is unlikely the NDP will actually table a budget (which usually follows a Throne speech in days) before announcing the election.

So it's down to brass tacks now.  And the tone set in the last couple of days suggest this will be a lively, brawling and sometimes nasty campaign.

All eyes are on Jason Kenney, the UCP leader who would be premier.  Public sentiment in the province has swung to the right with the recent oil price downturn.  But it won't be a cakewalk for Kenney.  Conservatives, beaten about the head and shoulders in the 2015 election for making assumptions about voter sentiment, will run hard.  Kenney has more than once urged candidates to stay humble.

The gotcha phase of attacking Kenney personally has already begun and it didn't even come from the governing NDP.  Toronto lawyer Kyle Morrow, a failed Alberta Liberal candidate in the 2012 election, has attacked Kenney's claim for housing allowance during his tenure as a federal Conservative cabinet minister.  Morrow argues Kenney's principle residence was in Ontario, not Calgary as Kenney claimed, so he wasn't entitled to the allowance.

The provincial NDP has piled on, however they deployed Health Minister Sarah Hoffman, rather than the premier, to call for an investigation.  Given that Kenney is using a literal motherhood defence here (he says he was supporting his widowed mother by leasing the basement of her Calgary home), Notley is probably wise to distance herself from this dustup.

Notley has not been shy about attacking Kenney on other fronts.  She is inflating a minor trial balloon about toll roads floated by the UCP leader at a chamber of commerce meeting into a zeppelin.

Both sides are now beginning to unveil their platforms.

The NDP, of course, has the advantage of governing to make a bigger splash.  Notley has been buzzing around the oil patch for the last couple of weeks, unveiling various schemes and loan guarantees for petrochemical plants and partial upgrading refineries.  And for the little guys, the province has opened up the goodie bag to provide $20 million for 29 clean technology projects.

The UCP is being a bit cagey about its platform. Kenney's favourite phrase these days is "stay tuned".  His foundational building block is elimination of the provincial carbon tax.

On a recent CBC phone-in show he predicted a four-year push to balance the Alberta budget.  That would depend on about three-per-cent growth for the province.  He is consistently downplaying the possibility of deep service cuts, a possibility that would damage the UCP's prospects in Edmonton.

Meanwhile at the grassroots party level both the NDP and the UCP are trying to keep the troops in line in the run-up to the race.

The UCP has had multiple controversies over nomination meetings.  Prab Gill, an MLA banished from the caucus for issues at a nomination meeting, is predicting there are more scandals to come, presumably about other nomination misfires.

A pair of prominent disgruntled UCP members, former MLA Ian Donovan and Drumheller-Stettler MLA Rick Strankman, have complained about that the party is abandoning the grassroots.

The NDP isn't immune from unrest, despite its reputation for running a tight ship.  About 140 party members signed a petition calling for an investigation into the way a nomination meeting in Calgary North-East determined voter eligibility.

Curiously the other question that has arisen about the NDP is the party's level of readiness for the election.

The NDP has less that half of its candidates nominated, according to long-time political blogger Dave Cournoyer's reckoning.  Cournoyer keeps a running tally of nominations in the province, which currently shows the NDP with 40 of 87 candidates in place.  The UCP have less than 10 candidates to go and the Alberta Party has 60 candidates in the field.

But no matter how prepared the parties think they are, there will no doubt be the usual number of hiccups to come on the campaign trail.