Poll shows right got it right with merger, says Kenney
Poll numbers showing voter preference crushing the NDP in favour of the newly minted United Conservative Party prove the wisdom of merging the political right, the new party’s leadership hopefuls said Tuesday.
But an official in Premier Rachel Notley’s office brushed off the results showing the UCP with 57 per cent of support compared to 29 per cent for the ruling NDP: “at the end of the day, it’s just a poll.”
In a campaign stop in Calgary, Jason Kenney said the results in the Mainstreet Research/Postmediasurvey among 2,100 Albertans just after the July merger vote is an early indication the union was the right move.
“I know it’s just one poll, but it confirms the whole premise of this unity campaign for the past year, that the vast majority of Albertans simply want a sensible free enterprise government that’s going to get this province’s economy back on track and renew the Alberta advantage,” he said.
“We have a whole lot of work to do. We have to remain humble, but it shows we’re on the right track.”
His UCP rival, Brian Jean, said the poll results are expected in a province fed up with the NDP.
“I’m not surprised by the support for a united conservative alternative to the NDP,” he said in a statement.
“As I have travelled Alberta, there has been a strong appetite for a single party that will stand up for the mainstream common sense conservative ideals that I hope the UCP will become a standard-bearer for.”
Recent economic analyses predict Alberta will be among the top performers in the Canadian economy this year and next with GDP growth of around three per cent. Kenney downplayed those figures, calling them “modestly positive economic signals” unlikely to see conditions recover to where they were before the 2014 oil price crash.
“It’ll take several years to dig out of a hole the NDP has put us in,” he said, citing new taxes, regulation and billions of dollars in oilsands divestment under the government.
Deputy premier Sarah Hoffman said polls are notoriously inaccurate.
“If the outcome of the polls could be relied upon, you’d be interviewing premier Danielle Smith right now,” said Hoffman, referring to the then Wildrose leader whose party went down to unexpected defeat in 2012.
The NDP government, she said, is too busy investing in infrastructure, such as medical centres, to be preoccupied with polls and that Albertans are more interested in NDP policies that benefit them.
“They’re looking forward to school fees going down, and that we’ve capped electrical rates,” said Hoffman.
She admitted that during the first two years of their mandate, much of her colleagues’ time was spent learning the mechanics of government rather than meeting with Albertans, but that’s now changed.