UCP holds huge lead in key Calgary, poll finds

Area’s 30 seats enough to swing Alberta election

CA LGA RY • The popularity gap in Alberta between the leading United Conservative Party and the NDP has shrunk, but the margin in the crucial Calgary battleground remains huge at 21 points, suggests a recent poll.

The online poll of 1,196 people conducted March 14-17 by Thinkhq Public Affairs states that provincewide, Jason Kenney’s UCP has 49 per cent of decided support with the NDP second at 38 per cent, a gap that has narrowed by three points in the past month.

In Calgary, meanwhile, the UCP has 54-per-cent support, while the NDP trails at 33 per cent.

While the NDP has an 18-point advantage in Edmonton, where they fared well in the 2015 election, the governing party is stuck with Calgary numbers they had four years ago but with no vote split on the right, said Thinkhq president Marc Henry.

“The math and geography is hard (for the NDP) ... How do you make it up in 27 days where you’ve been in the last four years,” he said.

“They have to have a lopsided gain from the undecideds.”

That undecided vote stands at 22 per cent which provides some flexibility, said Henry, but the danger for the NDP is that 50 per cent of those polled say the governing party has had a negative impact on their lives.

“When that’s double the opposite, that’s a problem,” he said.

And where the NDP has made gains in popularity, those have largely been made in areas where they were already leading which doesn’t help their seat count, said Henry.

He noted the tail end of the poll was conducted just as evidence in the form of emails suggesting collusion between UCP Leader Jason Kenney’s 2017 leadership campaign and that of onetime Wildrose Party president Jeff Callaway were emerging.

Even so, Kenney continues to deny the Callaway campaign was run to benefit his own, but Henry said the impact of honesty in the campaign could still fall along partisan lines.

At her campaign launch in Calgary on Tuesday, Premier Rachel Notley was asked if she could overcome years of negative polling in a fourweek campaign.

“Polls don’t decide elections, voters do,” she said.

She also defended her government’s record in helping the city during the economic doldrums, citing major infrastructure projects it has funded, along with efforts at diversification, including $100 million for high-tech ventures.

But Henry said of 30 Calgary-area seats, there are probably only six that the NDP has a chance of winning “and the NDP isn’t leading in any of them.”

Rachel Notley