A new poll suggests if a provincial election were held in Alberta today, the Wildrose Party would win. But the survey highlights regional differences that make it hard to predict “exactly what kind of government would form.”
The Mainstreet/Postmedia poll suggests the NDP now sits third behind the Progressive Conservatives.
The findings show 33 per cent of Albertans polled would vote for the Wildrose.
Twenty-four per cent would vote for the PCs and 20 per cent for the NDP.
Mainstreet Research president Quito Maggi said the regional picture is very different.
“Among decided and leaning voters, in Edmonton the NDP leads (43 per cent) with the Wildrose in second, (26 per cent); in Calgary the PCs lead (38 per cent), with the NDP in second (26 per cent), and outside the major urban centres, the Wildrose Party dominates with 48 per cent while the PCs take second place with 27 per cent,” Maggi said in a release.
“It would be difficult to anticipate exactly what kind of government would form with these results without knowing the new riding configurations that are expected as a result of redistribution.”
The poll found if all Albertans could vote in the PC leadership race, 32 per cent would choose Jason Kenney to lead the party. When specifying PC voters, that number hit 61 per cent.
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“Most do not seem to be following the race closely with a majority of Albertans not familiar with Richard Starke (63 per cent) or Byron Nelson (81 per cent),” Maggi said.
Mount Royal University political science professor Duane Bratt suggests “no one knows who Starke or Nielsen are.”
“This is why they are about to lose, and lose badly, on the first ballot of the PC leadership race,” he said.
The poll suggests 54 per cent of Albertans support a merger between the Wildrose and PC parties. Among PC voters specifically, the number increases to 72 per cent. Among Wildrose supporters, the merger would see 65 per cent support.
READ MORE: Wildrose’s Brian Jean ‘prepared to step down’ and run for a merged Alberta conservative party
“Non-conservative Albertans are most opposed to a merger, while conservative Albertans are most in favour of a merger,” Bratt said. “This makes sense: an NDP supporter likes conservative parties so much so that they want two of them. Conservative Albertans are being driven by fears of vote-splitting so they want to ensure that there is one unified conservative party to face the NDP.”
Mainstreet predicted the NDP majority government in the 2015 provincial election, which ended four decades of Tory rule in Alberta.
Mainstreet surveyed a random sample of 2,589 Albertans on Feb. 9-10. Respondents were screened to confirm voting eligibility. Responses were weighed using demographic information to targets based on the 2011 census.
The margin of error for survey results is ± 1.93 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. For Edmonton-specific results, the margin of error is ± 3.56 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. For Calgary-specific results, the margin of error is ± 3.28 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
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