CALGARY – Ric McIver is stumbling, Barb Higgins is steady, Naheed Nenshi is soaring — and Calgary’s race for mayor is now a three-way dead heat, a new Herald-CTV News poll shows.
For much of the campaign, election watchers have framed the race as a tense duel between the southeast alderman and the former TV anchor.
Lingering in the background was Nenshi, the Mount Royal University business professor whose public-opinion support was at just eight per cent three weeks ago.
Nenshi has now rocketed to 30 per cent, tied with Higgins and just behind Ric McIver’s 33 per cent support, according to a Leger Marketing survey of 500 Calgarians conducted between Oct. 6 and 11.
The pollster reported a healthy lead for McIver in mid-September, who’s now in a statistical tie with his two rivals, given the survey’s margin of error.
"I don’t think McIver slipped — he just didn’t go anywhere," said Lisa Young, political science professor at University of Calgary. "He had kind of maxed out his support. It’s that both Higgins and Nenshi had huge potential to grow, and they’ve done that."
Pollster Ian Large of Leger noted Higgins’ support didn’t really shift that much — she had 28 per cent support to McIver’s 43 in the last Herald survey — compared with Nenshi’s sharp rise.
"The win-lose-or-draw is next week, but the real star in this is Naheed Nenshi, for sure," Large said.
Although Nenshi boasts the greatest momentum, when the poll includes people leaning toward a particular candidate he’s at 28 per cent, slightly behind Higgins (31) and McIver (33).
The number of undecided voters — ones not decided or leaning — sits at 21 per cent.
Behind the top three, none of the other candidates polled above two per cent. Bob Hawkesworth, who’s represented northwest Calgary for 30 years as MLA and alderman, conceded Tuesday he has no chance of winning.
Nenshi had for months been a middle-tier candidate in the crowded field of politicians and outsiders vying to replace three-term Mayor Dave Bronconnier.
Observers and rivals almost universally viewed the self-branded "common sense conservative" McIver as the one to beat ever since Bronconnier announced his retirement in February. And until now the only challenger seeming to pose a true threat was Higgins, given her name recognition after 21 years anchoring CTV’s supper-hour newscast.
Her campaign struggled through September before she switched campaign managers, then seemed to pick up momentum as she started rapping McIver about his reputation as a perennial "Dr. No" critic and a divisive council member.
But Nenshi took a big grass-roots gamble, trying to build support through social-media sites Twitter and Facebook, as well as smaller individual donations than his better-connected opponents.
"To the extent there is an anybody-but-McIver movement afoot, Nenshi can claim quite credibly to be the anybody-but-McIver candidate," Young said.
"Whereas when it looked like a two-person race, there was a real risk that Nenshi support would disappear in favour of Barb Higgins, because she was the one who could beat McIver."
McIver is also the only candidate with negative momentum — 16 per cent of respondents said their impression of him has worsened during the campaign, while 15 per cent say it’s improved.
Nenshi boasts the strongest momentum, with a better impression among 32 per cent of voters and a worse one among only five per cent.
The impression of Higgins has improved for 25 per cent of those polled and worsened for 15 per cent.
She is leading among people with no post-secondary education, while Nenshi grabbed the most respondents with university degrees.
Although the women’s vote was long seen to be a potential wellspring of support for Higgins, the survey shows little difference along the gender divide — except that more women than men are still undecided.
Nenshi’s online strength translates to a solid 43 per cent backing among Calgarians aged 18 to 34. But that demographic is least likely to vote, meaning that getting out the vote for his campaign will prove vital in a race that’s far too close to call, Young said.
The live-operator telephone poll is considered accurate within 4.4 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
jmarkusoff@calgaryherald.com
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