As we head into the final weekend of the 2012 Alberta election, I think it’s a good opportunity to assess the polling data we have collected for Sun News throughout the campaign.
Pre-Election Poll
Since our first tracking poll in early March, a lot has changed. Back then, the Progressive Conservatives held a small, but noticeable lead over the insurgent Wildrose Party. The PCs lead by 5-points over the Wildrose 34% to 29%. The Liberals were at 18%, and the NDP was at 14%.
The PCs had a big lead in Edmonton (18 points), among female voters (17 points) and among younger voters (19 points). Although their wider lead captured by other pollsters earlier in the lead had closed, the Tories were still in a good position to win the 2012 election. The fundamentals of the “Redford” coalition looked strong and there was plenty of soft Liberal and NDP voters to pry away if some of the conservative base continued to leak to the Wildrose Party.
The Campaign Begins
But those promising fundamentals did not last for long. Soon after the election was called, we were back in the field with our first tracking poll of the election and the results were shocking. Not only had the 5-point Tory lead vanished, but the Wildrose took a 13-point lead over the PCs. Wildrose led among decided voters 41% to 28%. Along with a surge of support for the Wildrose, the Tories were down six points, the Liberals down two, and the NDP down two. For the two centre-left opposition parties the small decline in support was a harbinger for things to come.
What was probably most worrisome for the PCs in our numbers was that their lead among female voters completely disappeared and the Wildrose opened a significant advantage among male voters. All of a sudden, Edmonton was competitive and Calgary and the outlying regions were trending heavily in favour of Wildrose. After the first week of the campaign, it seemed the wheels were already coming off the PC’s campaign bus (no pun intended).
Week 2
Many believed the Wildrose surge in the polls wouldn’t last long. As the campaign continued voters would become more aware of its platform and the inexperience of its team and return back to the PCs. But our polling found the opposite. Not only did voters not return to the PCs but the Wildrose cemented their lead among a number of core voting groups.
While the province-wide gap between the Wildrose and PCs was similar to the previous week (12-points), the Wildrose Party’s coalition continued to be built around strong support outside the two major urban centres and a healthy lead in Calgary. They remained competitive in Edmonton (2-points behind the PCs) and had built up an impressive (14-point lead among male voters). Most important to Wildrose success was their massive lead among middle-aged voters (30 to 44, 16-points; 45 to 64, 19-points). With large leads among these voting groups, Wildrose victory looked assured.
Week 3
Our tracking poll in Week 3 found the Wildrose continue to move up in the polls expanding their lead over the PCs to 17 points. More significant was the slow decline of the Alberta Liberals who bottomed out at 10% in the latest poll, moving behind the NDP in the province-wide ballot numbers.
In the three days leading up to the Leaders Debate, the Wildrose Party had expanded its lead in Calgary (55% to 25%) and in regions outside the major urban centres. However, in Edmonton, the PCs had widened the gap to seven points pointing to a possible regionalized legislature after the April 23 election.
Wildrose now lead in all demographic groups: men, women, younger and older voters, and continued to do very well among middle aged voters. The Wildrose Party seemed impenetrable. Especially after a strong debate performance by Danielle Smith.
Week 4
But campaigns shift quickly and the weekend after the debate and the start of Week 4 was a difficult one for Wildrose. The media piled on with stories about controversial things some Wildrose candidates had said. The pitch for strategic voting intensified with a viral video asking traditionally non-PC voters to plug their nose and vote PC. Some polls (here and here) out early in the week suggested that the gap between Wildrose and the Tories was starting to close with Wildrose still ahead but their lead in Calgary eroding and Edmonton shifting more and more to the Tories.
We are currently in the field completing our final survey of the campaign for Sun News. The results will be released tomorrow morning around 9:00am MT on Sun News and I’ll be speaking with Dave Rutherford on his radio program around the same time.
What I’m Looking For
I’m looking for a few things in our final poll as a guide to how Election Day on Monday might turnout.
Does Liberal support continue to erode? The PCs are continuing to press the strategic voting angle hard. It has been effective to some extent. In early March we had the Liberals at 18% and by the third week of the campaign, their support had dropped to 10%. Can that continue? Are Liberals who have disliked the PCs for so long willing to switch to PC to stop Wildrose?
Is Calgary changing its mind? Throughout the campaign, voters in Calgary we surveyed continually told us they planned on voting Wildrose. Last week, the gap between the Wildrose and PCs was 30-points. Those kinds of numbers mean a certain sweep of most, if not all, of the seats in the city. But if the gap closes and the Tories can pull to within 5 or 6 points, all bets are off on how the seats might play out.
What do seniors do? Our polling has shown that the one demographic, other than Edmonton voters, that caught the Wildrose crush has been seniors or voters aged 65 and older. In our last survey, Wildrose lead these voters by only 6-points despite leading younger age groups by 22-points. Will seniors be a decisive voting block on Monday? Is the risk of Wildrose too great for those who have lived at a time when the PCs weren’t in power? Or has the PC messaging “not your father’s PC Party” backfired with their most dependable voters?
This campaign has been nothing if not interesting.
As an adopted Albertan who lived in the province during the 2008 election, this is unlike anything the province has seen in 20 years. Reports have suggested voter turnout will be higher (maybe reaching 60%). I’m not certain we can project that but here’s to hoping that the first competitive election in a generation is sparking interest that ultimately leads to more people casting a ballot.
For those of you looking to catch up, here are the links to all our releases throughout the campaign:
On Saturday, we released a report on what Albertans thought about the parties and party leaders. The results came from an online survey we conducted from April 5 to 10 that interviewed 943 Albertans.
That survey also asked respondents about their opinion on some of the campaign promises released by the various parties. The party making the promise was not identified in the question.
In this post, I detail some of the findings of that series of questions.
Overall, the most popular promises we tested was put forward by the NDP. Over seven in ten Albertans supported creating a $5,000 interest-free loan program for Albertans who make eco-friendly home renovations. Only 12% of respondents were opposed to the idea.
A majority of Albertans also supporting the Wildrose pledge to introduce a $2,000 tax deduction for each child under the age 18 (66%), the PC promise to create an interest-free loan program for seniors (58%), and the Wildrose Energy Dividend pledge (57%). Only the Liberal promise of reducing tuition fees by $250 immediately and eliminating tuition by 2025 was not supported by a majority of respondents.
Ranking the Promises
Respondents were also asked to rank the top three favourite promises. Overall, 32% ranked the Alberta Energy Dividend as their favourite promise, followed by the child tax deduction (18%), the seniors’ loan program (14%), and the $5,000 eco-loan program put forward by the NDP (12%).
Interestingly, although more respondents supported the NDP promise, when compared with the others, it was ranked relatively lower.
In total, 55% of respondents ranked the Alberta Energy Dividend in their top 2 promises while 33% ranked the Tory seniors’ loan program in their top two.
The Wildrose Energy Dividend
Perhaps one of the most controversial promises of the campaign, the Wildrose Party’s Energy Dividend pledge had wide support across a number of demographic and political groups.
For example, 45% of PC supporters and 50% of Liberal supporters said they support the policy whereas 78% of Wildrose supporters liked the pledge.
Of note, the most opposed to the idea were high income Albertans with 40% opposing the idea. In contrast, support was strong among lower income respondents with middle income respondents ($50k to $75K) being most supportive (66% support).
On March 29, the Constitution Act, 1867 and the Constitution Act, 1982 received Royal Assent. To celebrate the creation of Canada’s founding documents, the Canadian Constitutional Foundation has released a new website to commemorate the day and inform Canadians about the constitution.
As part of the release of the website, the CCF commissioned Abacus Data to conduct a national survey of Canadians that measured people’s knowledge about the Constitution. The results were quite interesting: most Canadians knew very little about the constitution and assumed much about their rights they believed were enumerated within it.
Here’s a sampling from the CCF Press Release:
Barely half of Canadians surveyed (53%) knew that Canada’s original constitution came into force on July 1, 1867.
Only 28% of Canadians were correctly able to identify the four provinces (Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia) that initially formed the Dominion of Canada in 1867.
61% of Canadians did not know that the Constitution Act, 1867 listed the distribution of powers between the federal and provincial levels of government.
Only 9% of Canadians surveyed knew that the Charter does not include protection for private property.
Only 7% of Canadians surveyed knew that the Charter only applies to governments and not to private individuals, businesses, or other organizations.
The survey also reveals Canadians attitudes about various amendments to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, including:
After being informed that the Charter does not protect property rights, 56% of Canadians strongly supported/somewhat supported amending the Charter to protect private property. Support was highest in Alberta at 67%.
Only 36% of Canadians strongly/somewhat supported removing the section 33 “notwithstanding” clause from the Charter.
I’ll admit it – I love the Oscars. The pomp, the ceremony, the beautiful women in nice clothes makes for great television. And while I’m a big Billy Crystal fan and think he’s by far the best host they can find, this year’s Oscars was not Millennial friendly.
Instead of authenticly trying to engage us, they made fun of us. Case in point: Justin Bieber’s appearance in Crystal’s opening monologue in which he says he’s there to “get you the 18 to 24 demographic.” Probably true – but not the best way to do it.
While the appearance of Justin Bieber and a scene from Twilight in a montage of “classic” movies is a shout out to young viewers, Crystal often made fun of Millennials and how we interact with media saying that our idea of the big screen is watching a movie on our iPad.
Very few Millennials own iPads. Why? Because they are so damn expensive.
Other features of the Oscars demonstrates formal Hollywood’s failure of relevance with Millennials.
1. It’s too damn long. Very few of us can stay focused for a 3.5 hour show.
2. None of us have seen the movies that won - The Artist? Seriously?
3. There’s no interaction, no collaboration, nothing! If you’re going to make us sit through 3.5 hours of television at least encourage a Twitter or Facebook discussion. It’s a live show so embrace technology. Don’t completely ignore it.
In analyzing the ratings from Sunday night’s broadcast, it is no surprise that viewership was up slightly. James Franco and Anne Hathaway were meant to appeal to younger viewers. They might have succeed if they weren’t so bad at hosting.
And while Billy Crystal‘s crowd may have skewed slightly older, it was almost certainly larger. Early viewership returns put the nearly three-hour broadcast at 39.3 million viewers. That’s a 4 percent bump over last year’s 37.9 million final.
There’s no denying that Millennials love movies. Sure many of us download them and refuse to pay or wait until they appear on Netfix to watch them. But as older generations leave this beautiful planet for greener pastures, Hollywood and the producers of the Oscars will have to do better in making the Oscars relevant to us. Otherwise, we’ll just tune out.
Here’s a clip with the highlights from Billy Crystal’s monologue:
When politicians, pundits, and the media talk politics, they use a lot of words, often as a signal or code to something more complex. In the United States, the word “liberal”, largely tarnished during the Reagan years, has been replaced by progressive to describe policies, partisans, and politicians on the left side of the political spectrum.
In Canada, political words are inflected into the brands and names of our largest political parties. Ever wonder why we rarely hear Conservatives in Canada positioning themselves as the defenders of capitalism? Or why New Democrats prefer to discuss social democracy as opposed to socialism?
The results of a little test we conducted in our last national survey offer some answers to these questions.
In our latest national survey we asked Canadians whether a set of words elicited positive or negative reactions when they read or see them. The respondents were show a word, in a random order, and asked to select either “positive” or “negative” as how they would describe them.
What we we found is quite interesting and is an interesting exercise in political communication and imagery.
The info graphics below report the results for each of the five words we tested.
Overall, there was more consensus around the word “progressive” with almost nine in ten respondents saying they have a positive reaction when they see the word. ”Social Democracy” also performed well.
There was less consensus on the remaining three words. Not surprisingly, the words “conservative” and “socialism” divided the country with older Canadians, those living in Western Canada, and men being more likely to respond positively to “conservative” and younger Canadians and women being more likely to respond to the word “socialism”.
The only word we tested where a majority of respondents reacted negatively to it was “capitalism” with only 42% saying they had a positive reaction to the word. Women, Quebec respondents, and younger generations reacted less positively to “capitalism”.
So what’s the point? The point is that the words we use matter.
Progressive is a universal word not necessarily associated with one political position or ideology. Almost all Canadians considered it to be a positive word. Moreover, despite its connection with left-wing politics, the phrase “social democracy” also is positively received, especially among younger generations.
Socialism turns off about half of the country while conservative turns off about the other half. Capitalism appeals to men far more than women and is rejected by over six in ten Canadian Millennials.
