This morning, there was a clear narrative. Reputable pollsters were seeing a shift in the campaign. The Premier wasn’t so teflon after all. It might not be enough to turn the election, but there was movement and momentum. And we were all having fun watching the outcome change back and forth over at the 338 snake.
By lunchtime, the momentum had vanished, reversed or maybe hadn’t ever been there in the first place. News of a leaked Janet Brown poll sent Alberta’s chattering class into a flurry of Twitter DMs all along the lines of “WTF is going on??”
Here’s what we know:
Abacus, which uses an online panel, has been watching the undecideds and ‘reluctant UCP’ supporters. They were in the field late last week and saw those folks breaking toward the NDP, presumably in response to the ‘Hitler video.’
Mainstreet, which uses Interactive Voice Response polling, shows the UCP in the lead. Their full data is available only to subscribers, but the CEO spent the weekend cryptic-tweeting “the top lines are deceiving, unless things change significantly, the Alberta_UCP are headed for a loss.” (OK, maybe not so cryptic…)
Janet Brown, the doyenne of Alberta pollsters, the one who called 2019, the one who prides herself on getting the most representative sample by actually phoning people repeatedly until they do her survey, finds that the UCP are ahead by 10 points province-wide and a stunning 12 points in Calgary.
The NDP have said their internal polls (methodology unknown) have them 10 points ahead province-wide and 11 points ahead in Calgary.
What to believe? I don’t know. I have huge respect for both Coletto (Abacus) and Brown. I understand that sampling methodology matters. The idea that the teflon was wearing off made sense intuitively. But Brown has a proven track record, and her results are reminiscent of the IPSOS poll (that used a methodology similar to hers) released a week ago.
tl;dr? I have no clue what’s going on in the election at the moment.
In other news…
Hop on over to the Tyee where I’m writing about gender gaps and women’s representation in the current campaign.
Or pick up the latest Alberta Views magazine - I wrote a longer piece on The Big Choice facing Albertans.
And if you’re feeling the need for a flowchart, hop on over to the CBC’s Back of the Envelope space, where I’m posting something most weeks. Or I was back when I thought I knew what was going on!
I think the late leak of Janet’s poll is behind a bunch of the various conniptions. It only got leaked today, so it’s being compared to current polling. But it was in the field from May 1-11. Compared to other polls from a week+ ago it’s not a particularly notable result.
This is twice now that Janet’s polls have been leaked out of context to generate a specific narrative. I suspect she is less than impressed.
Edit: and this all really speaks to how highly she is regarded. If private polling from anyone else leaked after it was a week old, no one would care.
The polling spread is ABNDP+12 to UCP+12 right now if you include the ABNDP internal. I don’t know who to believe right now even with brown’s track record. It’s very possible that this is going to be an election that tests pollsters including brown. I do hope the polling spread decreases soon. I suspect that the race is still tight