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Lorne Gunter: Poll confirms UCP clear front-runner among Albertans

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The recall petition against Alberta Premier Danielle Smith failed this past Tuesday — the same as every other recall petition started against UCP MLAs since last fall’s teachers’ strike.

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To force Smith into a vote on whether she should step aside, petitioners would have needed to collect 12,070 signatures. In 90 days, they collected not quite 2,300. That’s only about 20 per cent of the number required.

Even more interestingly, the fewer than 2,300 signatures is not much greater than half the number of votes the local NDP candidate received in the 2023 provincial election. That means the petition organizers couldn’t even convince NDP supporters to recall for Smith in her riding of Brooks-Medicine Hat.

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Heather VanSnick, the petition’s organizer, says that despite its failure the recall campaign sent “a powerful message.”

Yeah, it sent the message that VanSnick’s attempt to unseat Smith was a gigantic flop, just as all the other recall petition drives have been.

Of the 26 recall campaigns started since last November, all but five have reached the end of their signature-gathering phase. All of them have failed, spectacularly. The remaining five will, too.

Last week, the petition campaign against Adriana LaGrange, the Health Minister and Red Deer MLA, who has likely been the target of more resignation demands than any other cabinet minister, nonetheless managed to collect only 2,400 of the signatures needed to force LaGrange to a recall vote.

One campaign against Calgary-North UCP MLA Muhammad Yaseen needed 9,503 signatures, it received a tiddly 638 — less than seven per cent of the required total.

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Those organizers — largely teachers and unionists — who were sure the rest of Albertans hated Smith and the UCP as much as they did (and had convinced themselves their recall campaigns would topple the government) badly misjudged the amount of voter discontent there is with the UCP.

A recent poll of 1,000 Albertans (a large sample size for a provincial poll) by Abacus Data, also shows the UCP are much more popular — and the NDP much less — than you would come to believe from listening to most pundits.

Abacus found a large lead for the UCP provincewide over the NDP — 49 per cent to 36 per cent.

Abacus also found the UCP ahead of the NDP in every region of the province except Edmonton.

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In Edmonton, which has no UCP MLAs, the NDP leads 44 per cent to 38 per cent. Meanwhile in Calgary, which is supposed to be breakthrough territory for the NDP, the UCP leads 46 per cent to 38 per cent.

What makes the NDP’s second-place Calgary results so interesting is that the party’s new-ish leader, Naheed Nenshi, was the former Calgary mayor who was supposed to take the party over the top.

If anything, Nenshi, who was one of Calgary’s most unpopular mayors when he left office in 2021, is pulling down his party in Calgary.

In rural Alberta, the UCP are so far ahead (70 per cent to 15 per cent) they cannot even see Nenshi and the NDP’s compact EV in the rearview mirror of their 4×4 superduty pickup.

The UCP lead among women, as well as man, and among every age group, except those 18 to 29.

Young voters in Edmonton are solidly NDP, but that’s about it.

Premier Smith herself is not that popular. Her disapproval rating is 10 points above her approval rating. But the consolation is that the NDP’s approval rating is exactly the same: -10 percentage points.

Even the referendums proposed by the UCP for this fall, which the punditry have assured us will be so controversial they will drag down the government, are well supported by Albertans. At least the one claiming temporary residents should not receive social benefit is popular.

Among voters, 60 per cent support a referendum proposal to confine public services to Canadian citizens, permanent residents and provincially approved immigrants.

At the moment, the UCP are in a comfortable position.

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