Despite facing public resistance to its handling of health care, affordability, and Alberta separation, the United Conservatives remain clearly in the lead in provincial polling conducted by Leger at the end of last month and the early days of this month.
What I like about Leger's provincial polling is that they contact 1,000 or more Albertans. Some national polls aren't much larger than that across the country, and in those polls it's rare to see 200 Albertans questioned about their views.
The latest Leger survey puts Albertan voters' intention at 49 per cent UCP to 40 per cent NDP.
This is down slightly for where Leger found voters in April (53 per cent UCP) and up slightly for the NDP (36 per cent in April).
Such totals, though, would still yield a substantial UCP majority if an election were held today.
In Calgary, the UCP/NDP split is exactly the same as it is provincewide — 49 per cent to 40. That's good news for the UCP since Calgary is currently where elections are decided in Alberta.
The UCP have a commanding lead (63 per cent to 25) in the 44 ridings outside the two largest cities, while the NDP lead is 55 per cent to 34 per cent in Edmonton's 20 seats.
The Edmonton figures are a substantial change from April when the UCP were in the lead in the capital by one percentage point. But that looks now like the one time in 20 in which a poll is entirely out of whack.
If these numbers are translated into seats in the legislature, the UCP could well still be shut out in Edmonton. They would, however, elect 40-plus MLAs outside the two major cities and probably win 14 to 16 in Calgary.
That puts them into comfortable majority territory.
Voters are almost evenly split on their support for the two major party leaders. Premier Danielle Smith earns 40 per cent approval, while NDP boss Naheed Nenshi earns 38 per cent.
Smith receives very little support from Edmontonians, while Nenshi does not go over well with rural Albertans.
The biggest surprise in Leger's results is perhaps support for separation.
Several other polls, including most recently one done by the Angus Reid Institute, have shown a roughly 60/30 split in favour of the province remaining part of Canada.
In this latest poll, 73 per cent said they want to remain in Canada. Meanwhile just 15 per cent want to separate. Even in rural Alberta, where discontent with the feds is strongest and support for separation the highest, Leger determined 62 of rural residents want to stay in Confederation, while 24 per cent want out.
In Calgary, the split is Calgary 75 per cent to 14 per cent (almost identical to the overall provincial split), while in Edmonton, 81 per cent want to stay, just eight per cent want to go.
