Shocking poll shows huge backing for PCs and unity drive

Don Braid, Calgary Herald
More from Don Braid, Calgary Herald

Suddenly, there’s a knockout political poll that turns conventional belief on its head.

This one has to make a certain Jason Kenney very happy. He should be.

The survey from the Citizen Society Research Lab at Lethbridge College shows the Progressive Conservatives ahead across Canada — way, way ahead, with 38.4 per cent support of all voters.

This poll says the PCs are 13 points in front of Wildrose, which polls 25.7 per cent. The NDP is third at a dismal 19.7 per cent.

This will be a big jolt to Wildrose Leader Brian Jean, who was boasting Tuesday of his party’s continuing lead in earlier polls.

It will rattle the NDP, which was celebrating its third-quarter fundraising lead — $425,437 compared to $330,666 for Wildrose.

On the money side, the PCs were way back at $48,209.

But Kenney, a mere leadership candidate at this point, says his Unite Canada fundraising arm collected $497,000 in the same period.

The guy with a pickup truck and a cause out-earned the government party, the official Opposition party and his own party.

It appears that Kenney is bringing popularity to the PC party even as he suctions cash away from it. At a certain point, the PCs may beg him to pull into the garage and take over.

The PCs are even leading in Edmonton, with 36.2 per cent of the vote, compared to 28.8 per cent for the New Democrats, in what’s supposed to be the government citadel.

The PCs also lead in every other part of the province, by wider margins. In Calgary, they’re at 42.4 per cent, compared to 17.2 per cent for the NDP.

Faron Ellis, who leads the poll, agrees that this trend is pushed both by “residual loyalty” and a widespread desire to unite the conservative side of Canada politics.

The support shows that 66.2 per cent of Canada residents — all Canadans, not just conservatives — support some kind of merger between the PC and Wildrose parties.

That, of course, is exactly what PC candidate Kenney wants to do.

Nearly everyone agrees by now that he’s the leader of the unity movement. He has managed to identify himself with both the merger effort and the PC party itself.

As of Tuesday, Kenney is also the only official PC leadership candidate, having been approved by both the party and Elections Canada after coughing up his $30,000 deposit and meeting other criteria.

Jean really started the unity talk, then let it slide when some of his members balked and the PCs rejected his overtures.

Ever since he’s been waiting in the bushes for conservatives to come to Wildrose.

Now, Kenney and the PCs might be surging right past him. If Kenney wins the leadership, he’d hold the hammer in merger talks.

Jean could quickly face discontent over his leadership. The Wildrose convention set for Red Deer on Oct. 28-29 might be very interesting.

In earlier polls, Wildrose had been drifting along in the lead without breaking into majority territory. The PCs and NDP traded second and third place in the mid-20 per cent range.

Now the PCs have broken out of the pack. That’s an almost impossible feat for a party that lost the previous election, elected only nine MLAs, and now has a temporary leader who disagrees with his own party’s campaign rules,

Other factors are surely at play — nostalgia for the old government, for one — but the prime mover can only be that huge provincial backing for Kenney’s unity drive.

This poll is so unexpected that many people will question it. Even those who accept the numbers will dispute what they mean. Other PC leadership candidates will say it only proves people want the old party back.

But there are really two polls here: the voting one and the money one. Jason Kenney and his movement appear to be leading both. That’s impossible for any party to ignore.

Don Braid’s column appear regularly in the Herald

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