Poll finds Jean in the driver’s seat
Ex-Wildrose leader well-positioned in undecided camp, pollster says
Former Wildrose Party boss Brian Jean has edged past his United Conservative Party leadership opponents as the one with the best chance of toppling Alberta’s ruling NDP, a Mainstreet Research poll has found.
The Postmedia-commissioned survey, which queried 2,100 Albertans July 27-28, days after the new right-wing party was forged, suggested any of the four current leadership hopefuls — Jean, former Progressive Conservative leader Jason Kenney, MLA Derek Fildebrandt and Calgary lawyer Doug Schweitzer — would cruise to a likely majority government were an election held today.
However, the poll suggests Jean, who became leader of a fractured Wildrose Party in 2015 — just two months before the provincial election that brought Premier Rachel Notley’s NDP to power — would appeal to more Alberta voters still on the fence about where they’ll cast their ballot than any of his peers.
“Basically any candidate we would throw in the mix is getting a majority,” said Mainstreet president Quito Maggi.
“But with Jean’s name in the mix, the UCP certainly performs the best.
“His main effect is on the undecideds because of their familiarity with who he is.
“He’s been a very good and effective opposition leader and he’s going to be hard to beat in this leadership contest.”
Poll numbers showing voter preference crushing the NDP in favour of the newly minted UCP shows the wisdom of merging the political right, the new party’s leadership hopeful Jason Kenney 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 to 29 per cent for the ruling NDP, saying “at the end of the day, it’s just a poll.”
During a campaign stop in Calgary, Kenney said the results in the Mainstreet Research-Postmedia survey conducted in late July among 2,100 Albertans just after the unity 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, adding the party can’t rest on the poll numbers.
“We have a whole lot of work to do, we have to remain humble but it shows we’re on the right track.”
The poll numbers, he said, are also a rejection of what he called the NDP’s socialist agenda.
Recent economic analyses have forecast Alberta to either lead or 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, she said, was too busy investing in infrastructure like medical centres to be pre-occupied 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 changed.
The poll showed the Alberta Party and provincial Liberals at seven and three per cent respectively.
Mainstreet polls tend to lean conservatively, said Liberal Leader David Khan but nonetheless said the results indicate what he’s known, that the NDP is weak in Calgary.
“But Calgarians are going to wake up and not vote for Kenney ’s UCP with its socially conservative outlook,” he said.
He said once his own new leadership becomes more established, “our numbers are going to go way up, I’m hearing it at the doorsteps.”
The poll also states 27 per cent of Albertans are undecided on which party they support.
Its margin of error is considered plus or minus 2.14 points, 19 times out of 20.