Making Sense of the Alberta Election
A small sliver of voters about 10 to 12% of the electorate, will decide this election.
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As we approach the crescendo of the Alberta election - Election Day is May 29 - the state of the race remains both obvious and clear as mud. It’s a very close election - but how close and who it favours remains unclear depending on which poll you look at. , stirred up by the latest polls. I’ve been polling elections for almost 20 years and so, I'm no stranger to political winds, but even I must admit this election is an unusually riveting one.
On Wednesday, we released a new poll that presented an intriguing picture of the current electoral battlefield. It found the NDP and the UCP locked in a statistical dead heat. This development is a marked shift from our previous survey, which had the NDP leading the race by a healthy 10-point margin.
From our data, we can see that the majority of the electorate has firmly made up its mind. If you support the UCP, you like Danielle Smith and really don’t like Rachel Notley. The opposite is true if you’re an NDP supporter. The level of polarization around the leaders and choices is pretty deep and both sides are very motivated to vote.
Only a slim fraction, somewhere between 10 to 12%, remain genuinely undecided at this point. However, it is this crucial sliver of voters that could very well swing the balance and decide the outcome of the race.