Calgary voters look off to their right and see Danielle Smith. That's a problem for UCP

EDITOR'S NOTE: CBC News commissioned this public opinion research in late March, roughly two months before Albertans vote in the next election on May 29.

As with all polls, this one is a snapshot in time. 

This analysis is one in a series of articles to come out of this research.

This spring's election is shaping up to be the closest contest since 2012, when Alison Redford's centre-right Progressive Conservatives pulled one out against the populist-right Wildrose Party. Or the 1993 race, when Ralph Klein's Tories promised harsh budget cuts against a Liberal group so fiscally hawkish that then-leader Laurence Decore suggested shutting abortion clinics as an austerity measure.

What we have in 2023 is a far clearer left-right tilt. The Wildrose-PC merger has made the UCP more firmly conservative than the Tories were, and the New Democrats remain a union-affiliated and unabashedly progressive party.

But the Danielle Hatfields and Rachel McCoys will have to settle their feud in a province full of centrists. And the results will likely have much to do with how far voters see their would-be premiers straying from where they themselves sit ideologically.

In the new Janet Brown Opinion Research/CBC News poll, we asked 1,000 Calgarians how they viewed themselves on a scale from 0 (far left) to 10 (far right). As Brown likes to say in her presentations, Calgary is a centrist city that tilts slightly to the right — a ton of 5s, with more 6s and 7s than 3s and 4s.

Brown's poll also asked respondents how they'd plot UCP Leader Danielle Smith and NDP Leader Rachel Notley on that same spectrum.

Unsurprisingly, neither one is perceived as a centrist, though voters are more likely to put Notley there. 

The new UCP leader, Calgarians believe, strays farther from the middle of the road. Smith, they say, is more of an extremist than Notley is. Nearly one-third of Calgarians rate Smith a 10.

Smith has given voters multiple reasons to view her as more right-wing than the politicians they're used to, starting with her Wildrose leadership a decade ago.

With her vaccine skepticism and impassioned opposition to COVID restrictions, she placed herself outside the mainstream and beyond the stance of predecessor Jason Kenney, a principled conservative by almost anybody's measure (even if the health emergency of the pandemic made him compromise often).

The revealed conversation with preacher Artur Pawlowski about his legal troubles could not have helped, given how notorious he has become for his own inflammatory remarks and actions.

Smith's first pre-campaign promise was a clear signal she's trying to shake off the sense — or at least accusations — that she's too ideologically rigid. A guarantee you won't begin charging for hospital or doctor visits is not a promise your garden-variety moderate has to make.

Brown's poll findings get even more interesting when you look at what partisan supporters think. Although it's not surprising that UCP voters and NDP voters depict the opposing leader as a radical — it's what their own factions tell them to think — the way they view their own side's leadership is revealing.

United Conservative voters perceive themselves as much more moderate than Smith. Only 11 per cent think she's a 5 or 6, even though 39 per cent of them put themselves in those centre or centre-right positions — and twice as many say she's a 9 or 10 than say they're on the edge of the spectrum themselves.

Contrast that with the way probable NDP voters rank their leader and themselves.

The Calgarians who intend to vote for Notley's party are far more likely to put the leader closer to where they are, in the 3, 4 or 5 centre/left zone. It doesn't match up exactly with their sense of their own worldview, but elections are seldom a quest for the perfect choice; rather, the most adequate option.

This could help explain some of the poll's other findings, that the NDP is more popular in the election's most competitive city, and that Smith is much less well-liked than her chief rival.

"It's almost like leadership is an important consideration for NDP voters, but UCP voters are sort of disregarding how they feel about the leaders," Brown said in an interview.

This would actually mark the second election in a row where Notley was considered her party's best asset, and the UCP leader was less popular than their party was. Kenney didn't win the popularity contest in polls, even if his United Conservatives won the election overall.

Again this time, don't expect to see Smith's face or name often when candidate pamphlets hit Calgarians' mailboxes. And expect Notley's big smile on the orange campaign literature, along with perhaps Smith's name featured in menacing tones.

"This time around, it looks like Rachel Notley is doing more for her party than she was in 2019, and Smith is more of a liability to her party than Kenney was," Brown said.

Hardcore partisan rhetoric and rallying cries are great to motivate one's activist base. But it's conventional wisdom that politicians seek to meet voters where they are — which is why this election, especially in Calgary, will come down to motivating the centrists.

And based on what I've written thus far, guess which leader is doing better in the middle.

Not only are the NDP more popular among the Calgarians who consider themselves centrist, but they're also notching votes among people on the slight centre-right as well. In fact, among all the Calgarians who say they're an ideological 4, 5 or 6 — and that's more than half of Calgarians — Notley's party gets support of more than half of them, compared to one-third for Smith's.

Though in Calgary, the 7s and 8s still matter a lot, and that's where UCP can rack up its suburban scores.

Both parties want their leaders to look as mainstream, moderate and (dare I say) boring as possible. One side is clearly having an easier time at it, but what's an election if not one giant muddy ideological tug-of-war?

CBC News' random survey of 1,000 of Calgarians was conducted using a hybrid method between March 23 - April 6, by Edmonton-based Trend Research under the direction of Janet Brown Opinion Research. The sample is representative of regional, age and gender factors. The margin of error is +/- 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. For subsets, the margin of error is larger.

The survey used a hybrid methodology that involved contacting survey respondents by telephone and giving them the option of completing the survey at that time, at another more convenient time, or receiving an email link and completing the survey online. Trend Research contacted people using a random list of numbers, consisting of half landlines and half cellphone numbers. Telephone numbers were dialed up to five times at five different times of day before another telephone number was added to the sample.