Provincial politics usually trump the federal kind when it comes to holding the interest of most British Columbians, but I suspect the upcoming federal election is going to prove to be more fascinating than recent ones.

This province has 36 ridings, and the electoral result in most of them is known about a minute after the polls close. The Conservatives should win 14 ridings quite easily, while the NDP appears to have a lock on eight seats.

In some of the ridings, the Conservatives win by such massive numbers one gets the impression the party could run house pets as candidates and still win (the same holds true with the NDP stronghold of Vancouver East).

Many federal Conservative MPs who win by huge margins lack any kind of public profile. (When was the last time you heard about Mark Warawa in Langley, Ed Fast in Abbotsford, Ron Cannan in Kelowna or Colin Mayes in the Okanagan for example?)

To be fair, the lot of a government backbencher is an anonymous one, but the fact is the MPs I just named win three or even four times the votes of their nearest opponent.

So these ridings lack any kind of drama on election night. But there are more than a dozen or so ridings where things may get very interesting as the night progresses and a number of them are likely to change hands when it's all over.

If the current polls are correct - they suggest the federal Liberal vote is collapsing - then the seats to keep the closest eye on are the five currently held by that party.

That includes the three seats in Vancouver, one in Surrey and the Vancouver Island seat of Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca.

The Conservatives, having run second in all of those seats in 2008, are the logical favourites to reap the benefits of even a small collapse in Liberal votes in those ridings. The one exception may be the riding of Vancouver Centre, where long-time Liberal MP Hedy Fry has been counted out before, but who always seems to emerge victorious.

Other seats with uncertain outcomes include Surrey North, where the NDP has targeted the near-invisible Conservative MP Dona Cadman for defeat, Newton-North Delta, where the Liberals will be hard-pressed to hold the seat, and Saanich-Gulf Islands, where federal Green leader Elizabeth May is trying to win a seat.

May is facing longtime Conservative MP Gary Lunn, who has a formidable election machine in his riding. There is a misconception that the Gulf Islands is Green-friendly territory, based on the assumption there must be a bunch of tie-dyed tree huggers living there.

There are a few, but there a lot more retired doctors, lawyers and dentists there who ensure the Conservatives win every poll on the islands in every election, so it will by a major upset if May wins.

One of the more intriguing scenarios involves some apparently safe Conservative-held ridings in the Interior and on Vancouver Island. On paper, they should remain in that party's win column.

However, there are a couple of potential factors that may turn those races on their heads.

First of all, if there is indeed a surge in NDP popularity, that factor - combined with lingering anti-government sentiment that lies barely below the surface in those regions - could make these races competitive.

Second, a significant collapse in the Liberal vote would hurt the Conservatives in particular, as Liberal voters would shift to the NDP.

The riding of Kootenay-Columbia, for example, should be a Conservative stronghold. But long-time incumbent Jim Abbott has retired, and that area has long held an anti-government sentiment (the Reform party used to own this territory, remember). This has the NDP talking about an upset victory there.

There are also several ridings where the combined Liberal/NDP vote in 2008 was significantly higher than the Conservative vote, so if enough strategic voting occurs, some of those ridings may be going the NDP's way.

So how's it all going to come out in the end?

In the end, the Conservatives should win 20 to 27 seats, while the NDP should win from nine to 17 seats, and the Liberals will be lucky to hang on to four of the five they currently hold.

Yes, B.C. politics is usually more interesting than the federal variety (at least in this province), but for one night at least the federal scene should keep our interest longer than usual.

Keith Baldrey is chief political correspondent for Global B.C.

Keith.Baldrey@globalnews.ca