Alberta Liberals at 19% in recent Leger poll

Some bad news for Alberta Liberals:

Forty-one per cent of Albertans polled this month said they would vote for the Stelmach government if elections were held this month -- up slightly since June. ...

According to the poll, support for Kevin Taft's Liberal party is at 19 per cent, while the New Democratic Party sits at six per cent and the Greens at five.

Almost one in five people polled did not know who they would vote for.

The Leger Marketing opinion poll was conducted by phone among a random selection of 901 Albertans, between July 19 and 27. The margin of error was 3.3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

This result is 10 points lower than the Ipsos Reid poll released on June 22, and 10 points off what the Alberta Liberals received in the 2004 election.

The article notes that the Tory slide that we witnessed between April and June, appears to be over.

If Taft can't do better than this against a stumblebum like Ed Stelmach, he really has no future as leader.

My advice to Kevin Taft is that he start polishing up his resume.

Source (click for full screencap):

Alberta Tories at 34%?

Werner Patels has a post up on Jeffrey Simpson's latest column in the Globe and Mail. In that column, Simpson alleges that the Tories are polling at 34% in Alberta:

Rub your eyes, political junkies, when you read this: The Alberta Conservative Party stands at 34 per cent in the latest public opinion polls. Yes, poll numbers rise and fall. They are just snapshots. But still: only 34 per cent support for Canada's leading political dynasty, the party of Peter Lougheed and Ralph Klein.

I left a comment over on Werner's blog regarding the inaccuracy of the column:

In his column, Simpson states that the Alberta Tories are polling at 34%. I have seen no poll that has them that low, and just blogged about this yesterday.

An Ipsos-Reid poll published on June 23 had the Tories at 47%. There was a poll from Leger Marketing last week that put Stelmach's approval rating at 39%, and had the Tories at 34% in Calgary, 37% in Edmonton, and 45% in the rest of the province. That poll was reported in the Calgary Herald.

The Calgary Herald and Leger Marketing rarely get things right. They predicted Dinning was way out front in the PC leadership race, followed by Oberg. The rest, including Ted Morton, were supposedly in the 5% range.

We all know how accurate that prediction turned out to be.

Posted by: The Watcher ¦ July 18, 2007 at 09:48 AM

I, for one, don't buy this 34% nonsense. I think Mr. Simpson is letting his own Liberal bias cloud his reading comprehension.

I would welcome a link to a credible poll that has the Alberta Tories at 34%, and will open comments for this purpose.

Correction: The Calgary Herald poll that I refer to in my comment on Werner's blog as being published "last week", was in fact published on July 3, 2007.

New polls roundup

You can read about the latest Alberta provincial polling data at Nodice.ca. In fact, they have compiled most of the provincial polls since 2006 in one chart. Here is a screencap:



For more detailed coverage of some of these numbers, go to this post and this post at Alberta Alliance Watch.

New premier; new poll; same old result for Kevin Taft

Today's edition of the Calgary Herald contains a new Ipsos Reid poll measuring provincial party support amongst Albertans.

Notwithstanding the optimistic blatherings of Alberta Liberals, the results show no real growth in support for the Alberta Liberal Party. In fact, the Alberta Liberals are still polling at 9% less than what the party received in the November, 2004 general election:

The April 10 to 20 survey of 800 Albertans found that almost 66 per cent of respondents approve of Stelmach's performance as premier (21 per cent "strongly approve," 45 per cent "moderately approve").

Those ratings aren't far off of Klein's support levels in the last weeks of his leadership (71 per cent) and very similar to the former premier's approval ratings this time last year (65 per cent), shortly after receiving a vote of non-confidence from the party.

"It's a first report card for Stelmach," said Ipsos Reid pollster Cory Davison. "It is consistent with the support given to the Conservative party."

The poll has a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Yet, backing for the Tories has dipped nine points since Stelmach took the reins in mid-December, the polling numbers show. And Stelmach is struggling a bit to get Calgary and southern Alberta on his side.

The Conservatives remain well ahead of the second-place Liberals, with the support of 59 per cent of decided voters in Alberta, and would still roll to an easy majority government if an election were held today.

The Liberals garnered 20 per cent support, with the NDP at 10 per cent, the Alberta Alliance at six per cent and the Alberta Greens at five per cent.

The results represent a nine-point drop from Stelmach's initial post-election bounce in December (68 per cent), but pollster Davison said the dip was to be expected after the immediate honeymoon with voters ended.

A regional breakdown reveals support for the Fort Saskatchewan-Vegreville MLA is far greater in central Alberta (77 per cent), northern Alberta (70 per cent) and Edmonton (69 per cent), than it is in Calgary (57 per cent).

Back on January 9, Kevin Taft announced that the new Stelmach government would be divided, and that he was moving to position his party as a "government-in-waiting".

Well, based on this latest poll, Albertans will be waiting an awfully long time for a Premier Kevin Taft ...

... and thank goodness for that.

Screencap (click to enlarge):

New Leger Poll: Bad news for Kevin Taft

A new Leger Poll was released yesterday. The results for the Kevin Taft led Alberta Liberal Party couldn't be more laughable. Here is a summary of the results:

The Kevin Taft Liberals are at a pathetic 12% in the province, with only 10% of the popular vote in Calgary, and 6% in rural Alberta. This is about 17 points lower than the Alberta Liberals scored in the last provincial election.

The Kevin Taft deathwatch has officially begun.

Methodology

This Leger Marketing opinion poll was conducted among 900 respondents throughout Alberta, September 20th and 30th, 2006. The maximum margin of error for a sample of this size is ± 3.3%, 19 times out of 20.

The margin of error for each area, namely Calgary, Edmonton and other areas combined is ± 5.7%, 19 times out of 20. The Margin of error for the sample of self-declared PC Party supporters is ± 4.4%, 19 times out of 20.

Using the latest data from Statistics Canada, final results were weighted according to gender and region to ensure a sample representative of the province of Alberta population.

Source: http://legermarketing.com/documents/pol/061004ENG.pdf

Google News: Your search - "Alberta Horizons" - did not match any documents

The pathetic political performance of Kevin Taft's Liberals has continued unabated over the course of the summer. You may recall that the inept Mr. Taft was quoted in this blog entry back on April 17, 2006. At that time he was boasting about how he was going out on a province-wide tour to "promote his party's vision for Alberta." That vision was evidently contained in a policy document entitled "Alberta Horizons".

The summer is now over. How did the Alberta Liberals make out in their latest attempt at making themselves relevant to Albertans? Well, when one searches Google News, the phrase "Alberta Horizons" does not even appear anywhere in the media.

Not good.

Furthermore, according to this story in the Calgary Herald, the Taft Liberals would do even worse against a Tory party lead by Jim Dinning or Lyle Oberg (15% support) than they would against Ralph Klein (measured at 18% support in March):

When respondents were asked which political party they would most likely vote for, 46 per cent said they would back a Dinning Conservative party, compared with 15 per cent for Kevin Taft's Liberals and eight per cent for Brian Mason's NDP.

The Green party and Paul Hinman's Alberta Alliance rounded out the mainstream parties with five per cent each.

Oberg, meanwhile, would nab 42 per cent of public support as Tory leader, with the remaining parties receiving backing similar to that if Dinning were party chief.

The Leger poll was conducted throughout Alberta, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20 ...

Kevin Taft has been railing against the Progressive Conservatives since at least 1997, when he published his razor-thin book "Shredding the Public Interest". The Alberta Liberals are now polling at about half the level of support they received less than 2 years ago in the Alberta provincial election.

Grab a brain Alberta Liberals.

How long are you going to let this ineffective demagogue cling to power? Isn't it time for Kevin Taft to get "Chretiened"?

Support for Liberals plummets in Quebec

A CROP poll of 1,002 Quebecers published today shows that support for the "natural governing party" has fallen to a measly 15% in Quebec:

The poll contained more bad news for the Liberals, who once dominated the province but were brought down last November by a corruption scandal which centered on Quebec. The party sank to 15 percent support from 20 percent on January 23.

This means the federal Liberals are now polling less support in Quebec than the hapless Kevin Taft Liberals are polling in Alberta (whose support level was last measured at about 18%).

Have the federalists in Quebec finally decided to abandon the centralizing federalism of the Liberals?

Source: Reuters

Some wishful thinking from Kevin Taft

Alberta Liberal leader Kevin Taft made a bold prediction today. In an interview published in the Lloydminster Meridian Booster, Taft stated that the Alberta Tories should start hemorrhaging support as a result of Ralph Klein stepping down:

“With Ralph Klein stepping down it is a new era in Alberta politics, no question,” Taft said. “It leaves a gaping whole in the middle of the Conservative party. They have really become the Ralph Klein Party, and now they don’t have Ralph Klein and they’re in turbulent times.

“I’ve heard political scientists say that in many parts of Alberta that Ralph Klein was worth about 1,000 to 1,500 votes in each constituency, and there’s some truth to that. With him gone, it’s the end of one era, and the beginning of another.”

Let's do the math. If Ralph Klein is worth 1,000 to 1,500 votes in each constituency, that means the Tories should lose somewhere between 83,000 and 124,500 votes in the next election without Ralph Klein as leader. That would represent as much as a 30% drop in support for the Tories.

But what if Preston Manning were the leader? According to a Leger Marketing poll published today in the Calgary Herald, Manning would enjoy the support of 51 % of Albertans, compared to 17% for the Liberals:

Manning's popularity would translate into more electoral success for the Tories compared with Dinning, Oberg or any of the other leadership aspirants, according to the Leger poll. When asked which party they'd vote for with Manning at the Tory helm, 51 per cent of respondents said they'd back the Conservatives, compared to 17 per cent for Kevin Taft's Liberals and seven per cent for Brian Mason's NDP.

That would in fact be an improvement over the last provincial election in 2004, when the Tories garnered the support of 46.8% of the electorate, compared to 29.4% for the party of Taft.

Oh well. Why let the facts get in the way of some shameless self-promotion, right Taft?