This Week in Alberta: Polling Numbers

A round up of recent news stories from Alberta:


1. The Wildrose Alliance have had their first semi-public internal party dust up, over the Little Bow nomination. While this certainly isn't good news by any means, it does show that a Wildrose nomination is now worth fighting over. The airing of internal party dirty laundry on the Internet is really just a coming of age ritual for political parties.


2. Justin Archer pens a guest post over at Daveberta on an Alberta Liberal's perspective of the Alberta Party. By and large, I tend to agree with Justin. Personally, I think the best bet would have been to blow up the ALP after the last election and start fresh - a new name, new members, an outsider in charge. If done correctly, the new party could very well have capitalized on a lot of the anti-Stelmach feelings Danielle Smith has instead lassoed. I'm a Liberal but that means I'm also a pragmatist, so I'm by no means one of these "we've lost as Liberals for 80 years and dammit, I'm ready to lose as Liberals for another 80" people.

But because I'm a pragmatist, I just don't see the Alberta Party being able to suck up enough oxygen to survive, so long as the ALP lives. It's always great to have more options, and I'm sure they'll appeal to a lot of former Green voters, but the party is basically advocating Liberal policies, and I'm skeptical this movement will accomplish much more than wounding the ALP (more so in the form of lost volunteers than lost votes).


3. An Environics poll is out, with the Liberals down slightly and the Wildrose up slightly from May:

PC 34%
WRA 32%
ALP 19%
NDP 13%

Most notably, the poll shows the Wildrose on the rise in Edmonton which is probably the one consolation the Liberals can take from these numbers - after all, a split right wing vote in Calgary and Edmonton means they'll pick up seats so long as they get their act together.

AlbertaVote has done up a seat projection which shows the PCs with a slim majority (45 seats), the Alliance a strong second (32 seats), and the ALP (5 seats) and NDP (3 seats) taking just a handful of seats.

Although I enjoy a good seat projection as much as the next statistical/political nerd, I'd be really cautious about extrapolating out these poll results into seats. And not just because we're only talking about 200-300 decided voters in each region. The big problem is the emergence of the Wildrose Alliance is such a wild card that you can't expect vote patterns to shift normally.

But hey, a little unpredictability in Alberta politics is a refreshing change.

This Week in Alberta - Behind the Numbers

It turns out the polling presentation made to the PC campaign committee at their AGM last weekend has been left on a public server. Oops.

Mind you, given the numbers are fairly flattering to Stelmach and don't reveal much about PC strategy or messaging, I suspect this may have been a somewhat intentional "accident". Still, it's worth taking a look, if only because we rarely see this level of in-depth polling data about Alberta in the public domain.


VOTE

The PCs already leaked the vote numbers, and why wouldn't they? They show Alberta's natural governing party leading the Wildrose Alliance 40% to 26%, an improvement from their 36% to 29% lead in June. Still, as the leaked presentation shows, the vote question asked about "local candidates" rather than naming the party leaders. I suspect the gap would be narrower had the vote question been on "the PCs led by Ed Stelmach, the Wildrose Alliance led by Danielle Smith, etc etc".

Regardless, the regional splits are the interesting ones here - given the small sample sizes we're dealing with, I averaged the June and October numbers together:

Calgary: WRA 36%, PC 32%, ALP 23%, NDP 6%
Edmonton: PC 42%, ALP 22%, NDP 18%, WRA 16%
Rural: PC 40%, WRA 30%, ALP 16%, NDP 10%

So long as the PCs continue to hold a firm grip on Edmonton, they'll stay in power, with the only question being "minority or majority". But if we ever see the Liberals and NDP return to their '04 numbers in Redmonton, then watch out - we've actually got a contest.


LEADERS

The take home message here is that Stelmach is still a drag on the PC brand, but not enough to drag them out of power - yet:

Stelmach: 43% favourable, 38% unfavourable (9% unfamiliar)
Smith: 30% favourable, 10% unfavourable (51% unfamiliar)
Mason: 24% favourable, 16% unfavourable (48% unfamiliar)
Swann: 17% favourable, 17% unfavourable (57% unfamiliar)

This is a big jump for Stelmach since June when close to half (47%) the province was unfavourable towards the big guy. Still, he's clearly a negative to the brand - 33% of Albertans say the PCs are the most competent party whereas only 23% say Stelmach is the most competent leader. I suspect we'd see a similar 10-point Ed-drag across most attributes.

Stelmach's biggest asset appears to be the "regular person" label, though I guess it depends if people think he's "a regular guy who is in way over his head when it comes to running a province" or "a regular guy like Ralph".

Half of Albertans still don't have an opinion on Danielle Smith - somewhat surprisingly given the media love-in she's enjoyed. This lack of awareness is clearly hurting her on some of the head-to-head leadership comparisons in the survey. But, man, if she can keep that 3-to-1 ratio of like-to-dislike when Albertans do become familiar with her, she'll be the next Premier. No question about it.

And before people jump on the Liberals, the survey refered to their leader as "Dr. David Swann". To me, that completely biases the respondent and (I would hope) the grits are smart enough not to be slapping the "Dr." on their campaign signs in 2012.


THE NEXT ELECTION

The most interesting part of this survey to me was the relative areas of strength between the PCs and the WRA. I'd assumed one of the biggest selling points of the Wildrose Alliance was the "balancing the books" argument. Yet, when asked which party is the most financially responsible, the PCs beat the WRA by a 3-to-1 ratio (32% to 10%). Even the tax-and-spend Liberals and that dang Dr. Swann are judged better money managers than the Wildrose Alliance.

Rather, where the Alliance seems to be connecting is at a more emotional, personal level. When asked about "values", the PCs only lead 27% to 21% - by far, the closest of the head-to-head attributes measured. And when the leaders are put head-to-head, Stelmach fares worst on the "caring" questions - "cares about the problems in my community", "cares about people like me", and "listens and responds to the views of others".

To me, this means the Danielle Smith Party has not surged because the PCs are "spending like Liberals". Rather, people see the PCs as an out of touch government which does not listen to, or care about, common Albertans.

And if that's true, it's actually good news for all the parties. It's good news for the WRA because they're strong on the "shares my values" question and that's one of the most powerful vote drivers in all of politics. It's good news for the Liberals because it means the WRA haven't surged on ideology (where the ALP can't compete with them) but rather on emotion (where they can). And it's good news for the PCs because, ironically enough, the largest strength of an otherwise dud of a leader is that people see him as the "common man" - the perfect counter to arguments their 40 year old government is out of touch.

This Week in Alberta - This One Came Out Of Right Field

Alberta politics tend to stay dormant for 30 years at a time. But when they wake up - watch out! The latest from Angus Reid:

The surging Wildrose Alliance party would form the next provincial government in Alberta if an election were held tomorrow, according to a new poll of decided voters that gives the right-of-centre party a double-digit lead in popular support over the long-ruling Tories.

A new Angus Reid Public Opinion survey of 1,000 Albertans suggests 39% of voters would cast a ballot for Danielle Smith and the Wildrose Alliance.

The fledgling party is pulling away from Premier Ed Stelmach's Progressive Conservatives, who were tied with David Swann's Liberals for second place with the backing of 25% of decided voters province-wide, according to the poll.

Brian Mason and the NDP are in fourth spot with the support of 9% of Alberta voters, while 2% said they would vote for another party.

Yup, the PCs are tied for second with the Liberals...ouch.

The good news for Ed Stelmach is he has two years - during which time the price of oil should rise - to recover from this. He's already survived his leadership vote, but a few more polls like this and we may start seeing some defections.

No one would have called it back in January, but 2009 has proven to be the most interesting year in Alberta politics since the early 90s. Stay tuned.

Chequing Back In

Well, the big news of the past week appears to be the stimulus cheques with Tory logos plastered all over them. Given what we know of Harper and the way the stimulus funds have been spent, this shouldn't come as a huge surprise to anyone.


Back in Alberta...

Danielle Smith took the Wildrose Alliance leadership race 6,295 to 1,905. With the spoiled ballots, that means there were about 8,300 votes cast, more than the 4,500 who voted in the ALP leadership race last year, but a far cry from the close to 100,000 who voted in the 2006 PC leadership race. Mind you, PC leadership races are the only time Albertans actually get to vote for a Premier, so the interest in that race is understandable.

As I wrote last month, the challenge for Smith becomes one of building up credibility. Smith's credibility won't be a problem - despite not having a day of elected political experience, she's already a more credible Premier than Ed Stelmach. The real challenge will be making the Wildrose Alliance credible. Sure, defections of PC MLAs will help, but it's really all about finding credible candidates and quieting the crazies.

For all intents in purposes, Alberta has its own version of Mario Dumont and the ADQ...and we all know how that ended.

This Week in Alberta - Poll Results More Difficult to Interpret than an Ed Stelmach Speech

No, not those polls. There's not much I can say about those that hasn't already been said. Suffice to say it's likely a good thing we're not in an election campaign right now.

No, today's polling update comes from Alberta:

Progressive Conservative: 38.4%
Wildrose Alliance: 21.5%
Alberta Liberal: 20.5%
NDP: 10.7%
Other: 8.5%

There's certainly some Wildrose momentum there. But until they actually pick a leader and let people know a bit about their party, it's a fairly futile task to ask voters who they'd vote for. For all intents and purposes, that 21.5% is just a "Stelmach sucks" vote at this point, and nothing more.

Basically, Alberta is in Buffalo Springfield territory now: There's something happening here, What it is ain't exactly clear. Come back to me in January after Albertans meet the new Wildrose leader, after Stelmach's leadership review, after all this floor crossing gossip either materializes or fizzles. That's the poll I'll be very curious to look at.