PCs hold edge over NDP in city, says poll

Still too early to translate into 2019 election results

The trend continues: Lethbridge voters are supporting the Progressive Conservatives once again, at the expense of the governing New Democrats. But that can’t be translated into a prediction of the 2019 election results, warns Lethbridge political scientist Faron Ellis.

Political leaders and party names are expected to change before then, he points out. And if frontrunning Conservative leadership candidate Jason Kenney wins and steers the party hard right, progressives in the Peter Lougheed tradition could form another party.

“This is snapshot of the present — and the present is in great flux,” Ellis says, outlining the results of the latest political poll conducted by the Citizen Society Research Lab he supervised at Lethbridge College.

“But we all know things will be different at the next election.”

The survey of Lethbridge residents, conducted in mid-February, shows 23.7 per cent of the city’s decided voters backing the NDP, down from 25.6 per cent a year ago.

While Wildrose support is little changed at 21.3 per cent, the Progressive Conservatives jumped more than four points to 37.4 per cent over the last year. More than 10 per cent remained undecided.

“The NDP has built up a lot of animosity, especially among small business people and farmers,” Ellis says. “That’s showing up here and across the province.”

Despite the government’s cut in taxes collected from small businesses, he adds, owners remain upset about the carbon levy and hikes in the province’s minimum wage. Government MLAs have also become “tone deaf,” he suggests.

That was a rap against the previous government as well, but Ellis says voters in Calgary seem ready to forgive recent PC administrations. But that’s not to say “everything’s forgiven” in Lethbridge and other parts of the province, however.

What’s boosted Conservatives’ fortunes, he says, is longtime supporters’ hopes for a “united right,” assuming the long-serving PCs will fold their tent and merge with Wildrose.

That’s the plan touted by Kenney over the last eight months or more, and Ellis says the former Conservative cabinet minister appears to have won the endorsement of many Albertans who want to boot the NDP. The province’s Progressive Conservative delegates will elect their next — and possibly final — leader on March 17-18.

“This has pretty much been a grassroots thing,” with Kenney visiting every constituency in the province.

Here in Lethbridge, Ellis observes, the Wildrose haven’t built a strong constituency organization. In part, he suggests, that’s because PCs have held voters’ confidence for many years. Even so, the provincial Liberals were re-elected repeatedly in Lethbridge East, and in Lethbridge West the PCs’ margins of victory were sometimes slender.

The new poll shows the PCs are strongest in Lethbridge East — at 35.2 per cent of decided voters — while they enjoy 32.6 per cent

support in the West constituency. The New Democrats placed second in West (21.8 per cent vs. 18.3 for Wildrose) but they’re tied with Wildrose at 20.1 per cent in Lethbridge East.

Liberals were supported by 10.5 per cent of decided voters city-wide, while the Alberta Party trailed at 1.3 per cent.

Ellis says the students in 11 Lethbridge College courses conducted the telephone survey Feb. 11-16, using cellphones as well and landlines. A total of 1,501 Lethbridge adults responded, providing a margin of error amounting to 2.5 per cent plus or minus, 19 times out of 20.

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