Wow! This just in! Alison Redford is so popular….

How popular is she?

Alberta's new premier is so popular she's more popular that her popular party. And they're so popular they're called the Popular Conservatives, right? So that means, surely, that "the Conservatives have basically recovered from the Stelmach era."

A poll by conducted during the weekend that the Tories were selecting Alison Redford as their leader illustrates why Alberta voters should be extremely cautious with the inevitable media claims the next provincial election will be a titanic battle between two articulate and powerful women leaders.

Wouldn't it be ironic if one of the reasons the New Democratic Party and its leader Jack Layton have been doing so well the past few days of this election campaign is the months of ugly negative advertising Prime Minister Stephen Harper's so-called Conservative party has devoted to destroying Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff?

This observation is not meant to detract from Layton's terrific, at times inspiring, performance in two debates and on the campaign trail. Nor is it a denial of the fact that the NDP platform is genuinely closer to what Canadians describe repeatedly in non-partisan polling between elections as the policy mix they truly desire.

Obviously, the NDP's campaign could not have caught fire without such positive factors in its favour.

The news coverage of the New Democratic surge noted in a poll early today by Angus Reid reads like a bad joke.

"NDP moves into tie with Liberals: Poll," said a headline in the Toronto Star, sensibly enough. However, the reporter led the story as follows: "The New Democrats begin the fourth week of the campaign tied with the Liberals for second place, but their support could collapse by the time voters go to the polls, according to a new survey." (Emphasis added.)

Here's the bad joke this reminds me of:

If Canada's rifle and shotgun registry manages to cling to life tomorrow, as seems likely with support from NDP Sackville-Eastern Shore MP Peter Stoffer, the Conservative strategy will be to go after rural New Democrats who planned to dump the registry but were talked into switching sides.

The story so far:

Feisty upstart right-wing party leads in polls;
is set to unseat plummeting Conservatives

This, at any rate, is how Alberta's mainstream media have been portraying the contest between the Alberta Conservatives of Premier Ed Stelmach and the Wildrose Alliance party led by former journalist and Fraser Institute apparatchik Danielle Smith. For weeks in Alberta, you couldn't read a story on the topic without being reminded that the far-right Alliance was "leading the government in public opinion polls across the province."

The release of a reputable Environics poll yesterday shows Ed Stelmach's Alberta Conservatives are still ahead of the Wildrose Alliance party, if only by a nose.

Does this mean Alberta's media -- which loves a horserace, even at the expense of accuracy -- will stop saying the far-right Alliance led by former journalist Danielle Smith "is leading the government in public opinion polls across the province"? After all, until yesterday there'd only been one poll that put the Wildrose Alliance is in the lead, and it was based on controversial methodology.