{"id":267345,"date":"2019-06-25T10:31:39","date_gmt":"2019-06-25T14:31:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/issues\/underestimated-conservative-voter-alberta-polls\/"},"modified":"2025-10-07T22:35:36","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T02:35:36","slug":"underestimated-conservative-voter-alberta-polls","status":"publish","type":"issues","link":"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/fr\/2019\/06\/underestimated-conservative-voter-alberta-polls\/","title":{"rendered":"The underestimated conservative voter in Alberta polls"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the end, it wasn\u2019t even close. The United Conservative Party (UCP) won<\/a> a massive majority in Alberta\u2019s recent election. The new party \u2013 formed in 2017 following the merger<\/a> of the old Progressive Conservative Party and the Wildrose Party \u2013 captured<\/a> 55 percent of the vote, ousting Rachel Notley’s NDP after a single term. The UCP, led by former federal cabinet minister Jason Kenney, netted 63 of the 87 seats<\/a> in the Legislative Assembly.<\/p>\n

And yet nine \u2013 that\u2019s nearly half \u2013 of the public opinion polls released during the campaign suggested the distance between the NDP and UCP was in the single digits. Towards the end of the campaign, some media outlets cited polls to back up the idea that the race was tightening.<\/p>\n

The UCP won the election by 22 percentage points<\/a> \u2013 55 percent to the NDP\u2019s 33 percent of the actual ballots cast. That\u2019s a lot. Clearly, the race wasn\u2019t tightening or narrowing.<\/p>\n

How did some of the polls get it so wrong? Historically, public opinion polls in Alberta have underestimated conservative support. Any read of an Alberta provincial poll should, therefore, assume that it doesn\u2019t capture the true extent of conservative support, and the limitations of polls should be acknowledged by the news media and the public opinion research industry.<\/p>\n

A history of getting it wrong<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2012, many polls<\/a> showed the Wildrose Party leading the Progressive Conservatives (PCs). The PCs won a comfortable majority on election night. In Calgary\u2019s 2017 municipal election, three polls<\/a> suggested the city\u2019s popular mayor was going down to defeat to a relatively unknown challenger.<\/p>\n

In the most recent provincial election campaign, the total absolute error for polls was almost 15 points. (This is the total absolute error calculated using all four of the mainline parties running in the recent election \u2013 the UCP, the NDP, the Liberal Party, and the Alberta Party.)<\/p>\n