There are two things you need to remember about that new poll from Think HQ Public Affairs that suggests the number of Alberta voters who still approve of Premier Jason Kenney’s job performance has now sunk below 30 per cent.
First, it’s a survey of a sample of Albertans, not a sample of United Conservative Party members who will necessarily vote in the premier’s leadership review vote starting later this month.
Also, it was “in the field,” as pollsters like to say, between March 29 and April 1 – so, before most respondents discovered that Mr. Kenney doesn’t even know how to gas up his own truck, which strongly suggests he’s never had to.
That happened on April Fool’s Day, appropriately enough, when Mr. Kenney set off for a Co-op gas station in Calgary to make a cute little video about how he was delivering savings at the gas pumps by temporarily dropping the provincial fuel tax to help Albertans cope with high fuel prices that had already moved back down ward.
Mr. Kenney’s difficulties removing the nozzle from the big blue Dodge Ram he’s rumoured to not actually like driving were hilarious, resulting in some versions of the video being set to music, for example, the theme for the Seinfeld Show, or Yakety Sax, theme of Britain’s venerable Benny Hill show.
Neither was intended to make the premier look good.
More seriously from a political perspective was the possibility that, like the late George H.W. Bush’s astonished public discovery of how grocery store bar codes worked during the 1992 U.S. presidential election campaign, working class Alberta voters might react the same way their American counterparts did when they learned their patrician president didn’t have to buy his own groceries, and maybe never had.
On voting day that year, older readers may recall, with a little help from independent candidate Ross Perot Americans sent Mr. Bush packing and gave the keys to the White House to Bill Clinton.
Now voters in Alberta – home of free-range truck nuts – have discovered that Mr. Kenney is a poseur, all hat and no cows – in addition to having been born a member of the Laurentian Elite. (Not that Oakville’s all that close to the Laurentians, but regular readers will know what I mean).
What do you want to bet if the poll had been done a few days after April 1, like right about now, Mr. Kenney’s numbers would be even worse?
Now, someone in the Premier’s Office in Edmonton is likely thinking, he’s only 1 per cent below 30 per cent. But assuming this poll is right, that’s not really where a premier facing a leadership review on which the survival of his party’s government may depend really wants to be.
“With only a handful of days to go before the leadership review vote in the UCP Party, Premier Jason Kenney’s approval ratings have stalled below 30 per cent, and with his party trailing in the polls, most voters want new UCP leadership,” the pollster said in its news release yesterday.
And if that don’t sound like a Country & Western song, dear readers, I don’t know what does!
The public, it would seem, is set in its determination that the UCP needs a new leader – and, if it doesn’t get one, some of them are indicating they’re likely to vote for Rachel Notley’s NDP.
Sixty-three per cent of the poll’s 1,135 respondents said Mr. Kenney should be replaced. (By the way, only 8 per cent strongly approved of his performance.) Only 22 per cent want him to stay for whatever reasons.
Worse from the UCP’s perspective, it wasn’t actually much better when respondents were asked their party preference. In that case, 62 per cent of the self-identified UCP voters said they wanted Mr. Kenney gone. But 32 per cent thought he should hang in there.
However, that may not account for UCP members who had their memberships purchased for them by someone else, and who may not even know they are party members. How those votes get counted will be the real story of the leadership review when the results are released on May 18.
“If a provincial election were held tomorrow, the NDP would win decisively,” Think HQ’s press release said. The NDP has 46 per cent of decided voters, with the UCP at 34 per cent and the Wildrose Independence Party stealing 13 per cent of the right-wing vote. As a result, Mr. Kenney will probably get around to calling them, as well as his own party’s right wing, “lunatics” soon enough.
“The lack of variation in Jason Kenney’s numbers over the past few months is a surprise and suggests voter impressions have just hardened on him,” Think HQ President Marc Henry said in the release.
Said Mr. Henry: “The UCP coalition in 2019 was resounding. Two parties, once split, came together to unseat an unpopular NDP government. The challenge for the ‘United’ Conservatives at this point is the 2019 coalition of voters don’t appear ready to support a party led by Kenney again. They are well back in the polls, the Wildrose Independence Party is a force (or at least at this stage a vote-splitting force), and voters aren’t especially motivated to give the premier another go – WIPA voters are particularly vitriolic toward Kenney’s leadership.”
Blaise Boehmer, a former senior communications staffer for the Kenney Government who is now director of corporate communications and public affairs for NATIONAL Public Relations told AlbertaPolitics.ca that “the die appears to be cast for Albertans.
“A number of announcements, including the balanced budget and cutting the gas tax, have had almost no positive effect on this premier,” Mr. Boehmer said. “That’s a big problem for a guy facing his members in the next few weeks, and voters in just over a year.”
The Think HQ poll uses the Angus Reid Forum’s online panel. Margins of error outside of Calgary, likely to be the most important battleground in the coming election whenever it happens, are pretty big, as large as 8.5 per cent. So don’t go betting the ranch on anything you read here.
These results are also at variance with some recent polling, most notably Alberta pollster Janet Brown’s clients-eyes’-only poll, partly leaked to media last month by UCP operatives, that showed if an election had been held then, the UCP would have triumphed with 47 seats, with 40 for the NDP. Actual percentage support for the parties wasn’t included in the leak, alas.
Ms. Brown did say her poll indicated that 60 per cent of Albertans disapprove of the job Mr. Kenney has been doing.
Yeah, that Benney Hill moment of Kenney fighting with the gas pump can’t be helping his already tepid popularity. It was quite entertaining as many who watched it will probably agree, but it also illustrates a larger truth. Kenney is far from being the man of the people he sometimes tries to portray himself as.
I doubt most people ever really fell for his fake populist shtick. Its fairly clear that you can’t rrally be a political insider and a populist outsider at the same time. The gas pump debacle just confirms the existing general perception here.
Of course Kenney is preoccupied with his leadership review right now, so how most Albertans feel about him is probably not his most pressing concern. However it must concern him that UCP supporters are not that enthusiastic about him either.
Perhaps the only way he can survive politically now is if he somehow finds a bunch of fake UCP members to go along with his fake populist approach.
This isn’t a surprise in any way, shape, or form. There have been so many polls taken over the course of many months that show the UCP cannot last beyond a single term. The UCP have shown they are a very bad government. The heads of Postmedia are starting to panic. There is absolutely nothing their Conservative loyal columnists can write up to defend the UCP. The defenders of the UCP also are running out of excuses to try and show why the UCP are a good government, and deserve another chance. Had Albertans listened to those of us who said the UCP were no good to begin with, we wouldn’t be in this horrific mess.
There can be no doubt that it will more than a triumph over a gas pump for Premier Crying & Screaming Midget to get his numbers higher. What happens when the gaslighting stops working? Do more gaslighting.
Kenney must be going through every single complaint that have been leveled by every member of his coveted base in the hope that he will make someone happy. But this maybe to no avail and no one is buying his shite anymore.
Of course, there’s always the option of a snap election. Calling a sudden and faithful election will, like Moses, demand that Alberta voters pick a side. Come to the side of Kenney, the righteous. Or go to the NDP and fall forever. While that moment made for an awesomely violent scene in the ‘Ten Commandments’, I’m not sure if fire and brimstone will motivate voters to even like Kenney these days.
In politics, as in many things, timing is every thing. Calling an election before his leadership review smacks of spitefulness, which Kenney is full of in spades. But to wait until he blows the review, and then calls an election to avoid an especially bitter and divisive leadership battle may just be the ticket for the kind of drama that Kenney likes to cast himself in.
Calling the election after failing his leadership review is pulling the nuclear option and handing Kenney his last stand moment. Pick a side. You’re either with him or against. Can you really handle another round with Rachel Notley? These are the sort of challenges that Kenney will throw back at the UCP membership when he goes to war with them.
The snap election/leadership test does move everything into high level of stakes, where the risk of punishing Kenney becomes too much for his base to bear. Though such a gambit is clearly irrational, who ever said Kenney was rational? This guy lives and breathes in his own manufactured reality where he is all-powerful, all-knowing, and undefeatable. He wasn’t fumbling with that gas pump nozzle: he was teaching it a lesson in the ‘will to power’, and Kenney’s will is always greater.
On a side note, perusing Skippy Pollivere’s social media feeds has shown a glaring change: there is no mention of Jason Kenney anymore. The praiseworthy genius of the Alberta premier seems to have vanished. Maybe Skippy’s minions noticed that every time Kenney was mentioned, the venom of the engagement became real?
Will I ever become sick of popcorn?
“…Mr. Kenney set off for a Co-op gas …” Here’s a guy that has a visceral, deep seated hatred for anything the smacks of people working together for the betterment of all, at a CO-OP station. Being an easterner he probably doesn’t know what that is short for! As DJ often says, you can’t make this stuff up!
This raises other questions about Alberta’s April Fool. He knows how to air dirty laundry, but can he wash his own? Does he look like a man who can wash, rinse and repeat?
“…22 per cent want him to stay for whatever reasons. ”
This is what’s really frightening about living in Alberta. That 22% hard core Albertans still support that murder clown is incomprehensible.
No way 22% of Albertans are doing better under the fascist UCP, than they were under the NDP. No way 22% are CEOs of oil and gas companies, or even work in that industry. Who are these 22%. Haven’t they witnessed enough carnage under kenney? Are they asleep. I don’t know what planet or reality they must be living in to claim kenney is doing a good job. How is that even possible.
I guess I just have to conclude that kenney is running the province to please this 22% lunatic fringe. God help us all. We’re truly fucked.
Do Albertans approve of any politician in office? The last one was Stephen Harper. Calgary’s recently elected mayor only has support in the 30’s. The province seems to be in a perpetual state of discontent. This should have played to Kenney’s advantage.
Rachel Notleys approval rating was below 30 for less than three months, from Jun-Sept of ’17, by 2018 she had returned to the low 40s, in a province where the media lights their hair on fire every time anything REMOTELY progressive happens. Jason Kenney has been flirting with the high twenties for over a year, in a historically deeply conservative province, with several industries directly lobbying for his policies, a basically unlimited war chest, an entirely captured media, AND using every dirty trick in the book.
No, this is not “normal.” Jason Kenney is despised by Albertans and will soon be replaced, one way or another.
It really looks like the right is fixin’ to split again though, doesn’t it?
I think it’s hilarious how Kenney and his supporters hurl sarcastic comments a Trudeau calling him a dictator and making fun of some of the things he has done after these fools all watched the Ralph Klein Gong Show . When it comes to stupid antics Trudeau isn’t even in the same class as Klein. He was the master of stupidity. It doesn’t make them look very smart, does it?
I had a good conversation with an economist who agrees with me that it’s hard to bash Trudeau when he is the guy saving this province during this pandemic and oil industry crash and this article he referred me to proves it “ Ottawa spent more money in Alberta than it collected in taxes in 2020, economists say”
Of course they would rather believe the Kenney lie that Ottawa is stealing all our money when it’s the Reformers helping their rich friends do it.
Hi Alan. Ready for some armchair psychoanalysis? Cons, I hasten to add, not you personally.
The economist you mention would be correct for most people who are not afraid to THINK. Sadly, too many people get scared when they try; they get headaches and stop figuring things out. People who’d rather get their opinions from someone else tend to vote conservative (I read in the Guardian or somewhere). It saves mental effort and makes the headache go away.
Folks who prefer gut instincts to reason have an easy time deciding what to believe. If it makes ’em feel good, they’ll believe it. This saves all kinds of mental anguish, since they can “believe” without troubling themselves over “facts.” Living a fact-free life makes it easy to believe six impossible things before breakfast. Contradictions tend to disappear when you can divide the world into Us (the good guys) and Them (everyone else).
Cons tend to follow the Leader. Cons are either disciplined (by the party or their friends) or self-disciplined (fear of headaches makes them say, “Don’t ask, it’s not worth it.”). That’s why Cons aren’t bothered by the Ralph Klein Gong Show. Ralph was “one of Us.” In fact, Ralph was Number One of Us—at least until he lost interest in the job. That’s the flip side of the Con tendency to defer to The Leader. If the Leader dares to betray Us—he’s gone. That’s why Jason Kenney is now fighting for his job, his reputation, and his all-important sense of self-worth.
K-Boy’s unpopularity has made him a legend in his own time. Too bad his office is intended for better things. Will Kenney’s legend somehow be comparable with, say, Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed’s whose status in this respect was earned by excelling in what the office is intended for? Well, K-Boy’s time is now, not then—and neither forever, the amount of time it would take, even if all the bitumen-based CO2 were somehow sequestered in a hole in Jason’s backyard and kings and princes bearing all precious gifts came to glow in the shadow of the black sludge, for Kenney’s blighted management of the public weal to be forgotten, much less forgiven.
Seldom has a leader owed so much to so many for doing so little good. Squandering billions of public dollars isn’t the most pressing of his infamy—politicians have been known to get away with that. But, while bringing the province’s healthcare system gasping to its knees, he’s earned the enduring enmity of doctors, nurses, and healthcare administrators by attacking them ideologically even as the pandemic he’s disingenuously declared “over” over and over has taken a nap from which it will likely re-awaken. And, as healthcare professionals catch their first break in over two years of well-warranted outrage and burnout, many might consider availing the lull to fill the dearth of their colleagues in neighbouring provinces where they are welcome and respected. It’s less than unlikely they’ll ever return— even after Kenney is safely gone—and that of course would depend on what damage he might do if he survives the increasingly shady-looking leadership review and leads the province into the next election. But I doubt he can match Bette Davis’ “Jane Hudson”, not even if nominated.
I shan’t mention the education system.
The list of poisoned public services is too long to expect soothing by any magic or luck. The K-Boy is more saboteur than “Honourable” for, if he really had surveyed the political landscape around him, rear, van and flanks, he would have already resigned, as any honourable public figure would for the sake of cher people and province.
(“Sire! The peasants are revolting!” “Boy! You sure got that right!”)
But, lo, the man works so hard at staying, even as so many want him to go. What makes him so different from “Common Sense” Mike Harris or “Pay-to-Play” Gordo Campbell or, for that matter, Allison Redford and Jim Prentice—politicians who drove in in Cadillacs and voluntarily took the next Greyhound out of town when they heard the clarion clank at the bottom of the tank? Think popularity, Jason, the great leveller.
Pretty soon somebody in the UCP is gonna realize the longer Kenney cloys to power, the more it looks like there truly is no honour among thieves and the only way any of them can accomplish absolution is by safe distancing. That outta be interesting.
I suppose it’s impossible, both ways, that there either is or is not honour amongst the petulant. Can there be a hierarchy of pettishness that supports Kenney, the man on top of his own, steaming pile? Three years before masts akimbo, divine winds in the rigging, misbehaviour on the poop, the prodigy outgrown his epaulettes: his party blanches in its wheelchair, his electorate simmers its verdict, waiting, sharing sips from the ladle while citizens struggle, daily Sasquatchless.
A politician of honour would have packed it in by now, for goodness sake. At least soon we’ll find out what the UCP is made of.
Yes, I did note that Bumbles was using Western Canada Co-Operatives gas bar – read owned by members – read socialist idea. Bet there are some red faces somewhere for that gaffe in addition to the nozzle incident.
Anyway, safe bet this next election will be unpredictable, unless something changes. Expect lots of past midnight results.
One other thing, that Kenney’s pimply faced advisors don’t know. The United Farmers of Alberta helped found the Co-Op, and the CCF, and it’s descendant the NDP are from the political lineage of the UFA.
I attended one of mr Kenney’s speeches. He is a great speaker, engaging, funny, comes off as sincere. I am a UCP member. I believe in the party however, I will not EVER follow a politician that subverts ANYONE’S human rights. Those are promised under the Canadian bill of human rights. Notley is all for subverting Canadian law by taking our human rights. In this way her an Kenney are 2 pea’s……As for Notley’s performance as a premier. She put Alberta so far in debt that our children’s children will be paying for it. NDP have always had no understanding of what it takes to bring business into the province (and Canada for that matter) . On the other hand……..if you LIKE taxes……….. but I digress. We need a premier that HAS a moral compass. We need a leader that does NOT have their lips puckered to a federal tyrant who is an embarrassment to all of Canada on an international scale. Jason Kenney is NOT fit to lead the UCP NOR act as our premier.
If Jason Kenney cares about Alberta’s future, he should use his majority to change how we do elections in this province. Most Albertans are small c conservatives, but there are enough differences between the rural conservatives and the urban conservatives to have resulted in Rachel Notley’s government and there are deep enough divisions between the two groups of conservatives that a repeat of that disaster is a distinct possibility.
But a change to “preference ballots” (aka instant run off voting) would allow Alberta to have two conservative parties contesting each riding. I admit that some “small c” conservatives would vote NDP as their second choice because of deeply rooted distaste for Jason Kenney, but the vast majority of UCP voters would mark an X beside the other “small c” candidate (let’s call them Wildrose 2), as they do not believe in state socialism.
The likely result would be three parties with about 1/4 to 1/3 of the seats each. The natural coalition partners would be the two “small c” conservative parties. Who would head the coalition government? Whichever had the most seats in a given election.
I think that if the last election was run under Preference Ballots, Mr Kenney might still have won, but my guess is that the next election would result in a Wildrose 2/UCP coalition led by Brian Jean or Danielle Smith.
What it would not be is another Rachel Notley train wreck supported by a small number of true socialists and a bunch of “anybody but the UCP” voters.