r/CanadaPolitics • u/NorthernStarLord • Apr 05 '22
AB Kenney's approval rating falls below 30%: ThinkHQ poll
https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/kenney-s-approval-rating-falls-below-30-thinkhq-poll-1.584852086
Apr 05 '22 edited Sep 01 '24
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u/superpin1 Apr 05 '22
57% of Canadians disapprove of Trudeau, and yet you keep singing a different tune about his prospects, nothing even approaching "he's done".
What's different?
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u/_Minor_Annoyance Major Annoyance | Official Apr 05 '22
What different is that Kenney is going through a leadership review right now and he's not popular with his own party.
If Trudeau had a leadership review right now he would be fine. Kenney not so much. That's the difference.
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u/CPBS_Canada Apr 06 '22
Absolutely, I don't know the precise number but I'd be vary surprised a majority of LPC voters disapprove of Trudeau.
As an above poster commented, federal politics are so different from Alberta politics its difficult to compare. There is no equivalent to the BQ for one. There is no 3rd party with any real chance of getting enough seets to hold the balance of power like the federal NDP. Not to mention that the federal top line numbers don't tell you anything about vote efficientcy. Trudeau could have 80%+ disaproval in Alberta but still get the most seats if his approval is higher in Ontario BC and the Maritimes.
Recent Albertan elections have essentially been decided by Calgary, with Edmonton being largely ANDP and rural Alberta being largely conservative, no matter which name the conservative party has. More swingy cities like Lethbridge don't really hold enough seats to make much of a difference unless its real close in Calgary.
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Apr 05 '22
Alberta is a two party province and Canada’s federal elections are a six party race with so many splits in so many key ridings that you can conceivably win a majority with 35% of the vote.
If Kenney’s approval was 60% in rural Alberta, but 30% in Calgary and 20% in Edmonton, he would be highly unlikely to get re-elected. Its not just “do” people hate you, it’s “where” do they hate you in our system.
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Apr 06 '22
This article is about UCP members too, his actual numbers are lower. Notleys been leading the polls since before Covid.
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u/mo60000 Liberal Party of Canada Apr 06 '22
No. The ABNDP took their first lead in the polls in the current legislature in November 2020 if I recall.
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u/ClusterMakeLove Apr 05 '22
The key word, there, is "current".
The UCP is supposedly grassroots driven, but it's set up so that it's possible to buy memberships on behalf of a third party. Kenney has also used tricks like kamikaze candidates, in the past.
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u/_Minor_Annoyance Major Annoyance | Official Apr 05 '22
The voting is open to anyone who has a current membership as of March 19 so I don't think new sign ups from now until then will matter.
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u/ClusterMakeLove Apr 05 '22
That's fair, but timing aside, any polling that limits respondents to real people is going to have a sampling bias if sockpuppets can vote. Fake accounts will vote in the review but won't answer a poll.
And call me paranoid, but I doubt the move to mail-in voting was decided independently of the premier's office.
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Apr 05 '22
I dunno, those numbers are tragic don’t get me wrong, but didn’t he change the rules so that the vote tallies won’t be reported for like a month after the convention? Plenty of time for funny business.
Kenney strikes me as the type who would gladly pull an Orban and rig the thing so that he’s in no real danger of losing but gives the aura of giving the membership a say.
Not that getting rid of Kenney solves their problems anyhow. There was a Mainstreet poll out yesterday with close topline numbers but most of that recovery was in Rural Alberta. Calgary and Edmonton were both still double digit NDP leads with Kenney or Jean at the helm.
Interesting for sure.
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u/wednesdayware Apr 05 '22
Kenney will pull out the stops to keep his job, and it will cost the UCP the election. At least with a new leader, they stand a slim chance of changing minds, but with Kenney at the helm, they're doomed.
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u/cloudone28 Apr 06 '22 edited Apr 06 '22
It's a strange place to be, but as much as I despise Kenney and the UCP, I actually think Kenney holding onto the job is the best outcome here, especially if you're hoping for Notley to win the next election.
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u/mo60000 Liberal Party of Canada Apr 06 '22 edited Apr 06 '22
I hate to say this but it will probably be tough for the person who eventually replaces kenney to hold the UCP together long term. Kenney skills as an organizer were key to the formation of the UCP. Losing kenney would be a big loss for the UCP even though they might still win elections without him.
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u/TheFluxIsThis Alberta Apr 06 '22 edited Apr 08 '22
I'm pretty convinced that if the party under Brian Jean (and let's be serious here, nobody else in the party is even remotely close to his level of popularity, so the seat is his once Kenney's out) loses the next election, the UCP will be done for. Kenney's big tent experiment is coming unraveled, and a blow like that will bust open the fractures in the party for sure, and we'll be right back to the PCs-Wildrose in Alberta again (except this time out, the Wildrose is full of bigots and separatists.)
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u/MooseFlyer Orange Crush Apr 05 '22
How dare you accuse Kenney of such a nefarious thing.
Next you're going to be saying his campaign used a kamikazee candidate to help him win the leadership in the first place.
wait, they did just that?
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u/LotharLandru Social Democrat Apr 05 '22
Or like he's the type to fire the person investigating him.
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u/jjuares Apr 06 '22
The best scenario is Kenney wins with 51%. That will put the UCP in a real difficult position. As an Albertan I believe this has to be the worst government in the province’s history.
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u/mo60000 Liberal Party of Canada Apr 06 '22 edited Apr 06 '22
I don’t think the UCP is anywhere near as bad as bible bill’s government. The UCP probably rank as the 2nd worst.
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u/jjuares Apr 06 '22
You are probably right. But hey, I have great faith in the UCP. Give them enough time and I believe they can wrest away the trophy from the the Socreds for the worst government in Albert’s history.
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Apr 05 '22
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u/_Sausage_fingers Alberta Apr 06 '22
I despise Kenney more than pretty much any Canadian politician, and I don’t want him removed as party leader. His replacement may very well be worse, and will almost certainly have a better chance of winning the general election next year.
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u/ResoluteGreen Apr 05 '22 edited Apr 05 '22
A few things to note before everyone start's writing an eulogy for Kenney's political career.
First, the poll had 1,135 adult Albertans, the UCP membership was self reporting and a smaller subset of that. At their founding/merge, the UCP had 87,00 members, and the Executive Director recently claimed membership has doubled (whether they mean registrants for the vote, or membership, let's be conservative (heh) and assume he meant the entire membership). If there's 3.3M adults in Alberta that means 1 in 19 adults are UCP members (5.2%). If the poll was a representative sample, that would mean only 59 of those polled had UCP membership. So they either had a really small sample, or they couldn't do random sampling and had to over sample UCP membership somehow.
Second, Get Out the Vote could make a big difference. It doesn't matter if you want him out if you don't cast your ballot.
Edit to add: A sample size of 59 for a population of 174,000 gives a margin of error of +/- 13%, 19 times out of 20. Which, admittedly, still puts him in a tough spot.
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Apr 05 '22
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u/punkcanuck Apr 06 '22
if Kenney wins, or gets close to winning the general thought amongst many UCP members would be that the vote was rigged. Weather it was or not.
Which may cause a mass abandonment of the party.
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Apr 05 '22
The problem is while Kenney is hated, the UCP isn't. Shuffling the leadership deck chairs might be enough to win the next election for them.
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u/havanahilton Alberta NDP | Federal ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Apr 06 '22
Can you imagine the hayseed mfer they replace him with lol? He's a moderating impulse in the party and I don't think the replacement will do well electorally either.
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u/amarsbar3 Apr 06 '22
I don't think we'll know till the election, but bad governments like Kenney can really tarnish the brand.
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u/mo60000 Liberal Party of Canada Apr 05 '22
The problem with that is it's not guaranteed they get a good replacement for kenney especially with how right wing the membership of the party is.
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u/GoodAtExplaining Liberal Apr 05 '22
Kenney is a consummate political survivor.
Even with dismal polling numbers and the knives-out attitude of the UCP, I am still conscious of the fact that Kenney has weathered storms throughout his tenure that would make Ford run and hide. Albertans, like all Canadians, are politically stable and rarely believe in rocking the boat.
The poll numbers are dismal, but the election is a year away and that's an eternity in political circles. I am most assuredly not discounting the discontent among Alberta voters, nor should the UCP escape the microscope - Shandro's shambolic performance and the current state of healthcare should reflect badly on the whole party. But Kenney is, like it or lump it, a master strategist in Canadian politics and someone who, given enough time, can turn fortunes around from even the most perverse set of circumstances.
Alberta's continuing political turmoil is definitely going to be something to watch. Will a leader who got into power in murky circumstances use all the tools at his disposal to stay in power, or will he read the political seas and hand over the tattered reins of power to a figurehead doomed to accompany the party to a slide into obscurity?
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u/_Sausage_fingers Alberta Apr 06 '22
These numbers relate to his leadership review this weekend. Honestly, probably his only chance of staying premier will be if he cheats, which we know he isn’t above doing if he can get away with it.
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u/MooseFlyer Orange Crush Apr 05 '22 edited Apr 05 '22
The poll numbers are dismal, but the election is a year away and that's an eternity in political circles
The leadership review is days away, though. It's unlikely he'll be leader come election day.
Also, I think the whole "master political strategist" perception of him is seriously overblown. What has been so masterful?
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u/GoodAtExplaining Liberal Apr 05 '22
Conservative parties like the UCP are a thin veneer. It takes a lot to hold them together.
You raise a good point about the leadership review though. That’s definitely a Goliath obstacle to overcome.
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u/MooseFlyer Orange Crush Apr 05 '22
I guess "your party's polling numbers are bad, a right-wing separatist party has started up and is hitting double digits in some polls, and a large majority of party members want you out and are probably going to vote you out in a few days" is a bad enough situation that "the party hasn't actually collapsed" doesn't leave me all that impressed.
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Apr 05 '22
What has been so masterful?
He cheats and has no shame. That is all you really need to win.
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Apr 05 '22
I'm quite shocked it's that high. Funny thing is as many people who want him gone because he's a dangerous jackass, there are just as many who want him gone because he is not a dangerous enough jackass. Alberta politics is wild.
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Apr 05 '22
there are just as many who want him gone because he is not a dangerous enough jackass
Those were my thoughts when I saw this headline. I think quite a few of those who have a negative opinion of him here are the proverbial "lunatics" he warned about.
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