News that a leaked copy of high-profile Alberta pollster Janet Brown’s latest poll suggesting Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party may be on the road to a relatively easy victory in Calgary (and therefore Alberta) was about as welcome in NDP circles as the proverbial skunk at a garden party.
Brown is a respected pollster with a traditional and persistent telephone-based approach to collecting voter opinions and a unique model for crunching the data they provide that has a history of giving her the right answers about who is going to win elections.
With rumours that her company, Janet Brown Opinion Research, was in the field last week, NDP strategists riding the wave of a positive new poll from another respected opinion research company, Abacus Data, were naturally hoping for something that would back up those numbers and the positive results they’ve been getting from their own polling.
Everyone understands that that a positive poll or even better several positive polls shortly before an election helps set a narrative that impacts voter behaviour, that can keep the supporters of one party at home and energize those of another.
But when a copy of the confidential poll done for Brown’s Wild Ride opinion research clients showed up in Calgary Herald political columnist Don Braid’s email inbox only 35 minutes after she’d pressed the send button, it wasn’t just the NDP’s strategists who were unhappy.
Brown was furious. This isn’t the first time one of her Wild Ride polls has been leaked by someone connected to the UCP.
“It’s not my intention to give the NDP a heart attack,” she told me yesterday. “I’m as nervous as everyone. These numbers don’t add up for me either.”
“I would have preferred to spend more time to understand them, because it is not an expected result,” she said. But this is what the methodology she uses told her, she added, and it’s been right for her before.
Some UCP operatives in the government’s election war room couldn’t have been all that pleased either. After all, in a tight race like this one, having their supporters think they might be in a weaker position than they in fact are in Calgary’s crucial ridings could have given them a covert edge when it came to the struggle to get out the vote.
Judging from the way the UCP reacted to the Abacus poll, their own internal polling is more like the NDP’s than Brown’s.
They presumably understand that being the underdog isn’t always the disadvantage it might appear at first blush, and that added motivation may have now passed back to the NDP in what is sure, according to everyone’s polling, to be a tight race in Calgary.
Moreover, the fact that someone in the UCP war room thought this was a good idea, and someone else there didn’t, suggests a level of disunity right at the heart of the UCP campaign.
One way or another, though, this does change the narrative of the last two weeks of the election campaign, and that’s why it was leaked.
Brown’s results show the UCP winning 56 seats to 31 for the NDP province-wide. As Braid put it in his column, though, “The real shocker in this poll is the Calgary finding: 51 per cent for the UCP, 39 per cent for the NDP.”
If true, that’s grim for the NDP. It’s also true that some of the data collection for Brown’s poll, which was in the field from May 1 to May 11, was done before it was widely understood that Smith thought the 75 per cent of Albertans who got themselves vaccinated against COVID-19 were just like the Germans who voted for Hitler. That could have an impact on the results – or not. This is Alberta, so who knows?
The Brown poll also shows rural Alberta leaning more heavily to the UCP, but even if true, that may not matter as much as the Calgary numbers because you only get to elect one MLA per riding.
It’s Calgary that matters in this fight and Brown’s numbers show Calgary leaning toward the Take Back Alberta-dominated UCP. I don’t have to tell regular readers what a UCP victory big enough to give Smith a credible claim to an overwhelming mandate would mean. Given what a truly enabled Smith is likely to do with such a mandate, that should energize her opponents to ensure they make it to the polls on May 29 or before.
UCP supporters who were crying that the Abacus poll was a set-up to explain the election being stolen by sinister NDP operatives are now crowing that their victory is assured and circulating a conspiracy theory that Brown’s poll was done for the CBC and suppressed by the network.
Not true, but the speed at which Conservatives can generate self-serving conspiracy theories is a wonder to behold.
Interviewed by Braid, an unruffled senior NDP strategist Jeremy Nolias coolly laid out the results of the NDP’s polling. They show the NDP leading province-wide by 11 points, he said – 53 per cent to 42 per cent. The party is ahead by 12 points in Calgary, he said, 54 per cent to 42 per cent, and by 34 points in Edmonton – 65 to 31.
“Janet Brown is a very respected pollster, but this time she’s got it wrong,” Nolais told Braid. “Her poll is an outlier.”
Brown described her poll the same way.
Whatever you thought when you first heard about Brown’s conclusions, this remains a close race, with ample evidence it could go either way. There is no question though, that the electoral map of Alberta means the road to victory is a steeper path for the NDP than any party with the word conservative in its name.
A few thoughts on Thursday’s leaders’ debate on TV
One thing NDP supporters should not count on is that Notley will slaughter Smith in Thursday’s leaders’ debate on CTV and Global News.
Yes, Notley is a better parliamentary debater, able to forensically slice and dice her opponents’ arguments with surgical precision.
But televised debates are not about the sort of arguments that win a debate in a legislature or a court of law. They are about creating a positive impression with voters, often with clever lines and speedy ripostes. And who is going to check the facts – especially if the fact checkers are busy tweeting furiously at each other on social media?
If parliamentary debating skills won elections, Thomas Mulcair would be prime minister of Canada today.
Smith is a congenial bullshitter. Nothing she says can be trusted, but it often sounds good. Sad but true – that may be all that’s needed to win a TV debate.
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Nick Seebruch, editor
