A poll by Lethbridge College shows that the United Conservative Party is expected to garner 57.8 per cent of the vote — a majority government — while the Alberta New Democratic Party lags far behind at 23.2 per cent.

If some of the actions of the Alberta NDP — such as filling quasi-judicial boards with controversial anti-oil activists just weeks before the provincial election — has you wondering how this can possibly be a wise election strategy, wonder no more.

The NDP can read polls just as well as the rest of us, and party members know they are headed for an electoral bloodbath if poll numbers hold steady in the election, which must be held before the end of May.

Distroscale

A poll released recently by Lethbridge College shows that provincewide, the United Conservative Party is expected to garner 57.8 per cent of the vote — a majority government — while the Alberta New Democratic Party lags far behind at 23.2 per cent, the Alberta Party is at seven per cent, the Alberta Liberal Party is at 5.1 per cent and the Freedom Conservative Party has 2.8 per cent support. Other parties or candidates have 4.1 per cent of intended voter support.

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The numbers are even more striking when you consider that the UCP leads the NDP in every region of the province — including Edmonton, where NDP support is the highest.

The poll, conducted by Lethbridge College students from Feb. 2 to 5 under the supervision of political scientist Faron Ellis, research chair of the Citizen Society Research Lab, has a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

The students interviewed 1,055 adult Alberta residents and asked the question: “If a provincial election was held today, for which of the following parties would you be most likely to vote for?”

In Calgary, the answer to that question is 61.8 per cent for Jason Kenney’s UCP, 20.2 per cent for Rachel Notley’s NDP, 7.1 per cent for Stephen Mandel’s Alberta Party, 3.7 per cent for David Khan’s Liberal Party and 2.6 per cent for Derek Fildebrandt’s Freedom Conservative Party.

“The NDP will likely get clobbered in Calgary, but that doesn’t mean the NDP aren’t going to pick off a riding or two in Calgary,” said Ellis, who was reached in Lethbridge on Friday.

“A lot of that has to do with individual candidates and incumbency. Incumbency does play a significant role — 10 to 15 per cent — depending on the incumbent. It can go either way, positive or negative, but typically it’s positive,” said Ellis.

In Edmonton, the UCP have 41 per cent support, the NDP has 39.2 and the Alberta Party has 10.6 per cent, likely because Mandel is the candidate for Edmonton-McClung.

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“Edmonton is a horse race. It’s statistically a tie, so there will be some major battles there,” predicted Ellis.

In northern Alberta, however, the UCP are at 64.4 per cent support to the NDP’s 19.8 per cent, and in southern Alberta things look even worse for the NDP with just 13 per cent support, while the UCP has 64.2 per cent and the Liberal Party has 10.9 per cent.

In other words, in most of the province, it appears the UCP will win by landslides.

Ellis says the UCP support is broad and relatively deep, with the party leading the NDP among decided voters in every demographic group.

What’s most surprising is that young Albertans (60.4 per cent) “are just as likely to be planning to vote UCP as are other age groups, including seniors who, while still much more likely to vote UCP than for any other party (50.9 per cent), are less supportive of the UCP than are other age groups.

“What I find interesting is that the NDP is not the party of the youth that we used to think of in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s,” said Ellis.

“The youth today are not old-style socialists. They are worried about jobs. They know which side their toast is buttered on and they want policies that reflect that,” said Ellis.

That bodes well for Alberta’s future.

Statistics Canada’s latest jobs numbers released Friday aren’t likely to help the NDP over the next few weeks, either. The percentage of Albertans unemployed climbed again in February to 7.3 per cent — which is higher than Nova Scotia. The news is even worse in Calgary, where 7.6 per cent of workers are unemployed, the highest rate of any city in Canada. NDP policies of raising taxes and spooking businesses has been a disaster for Alberta.

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Last month, the NDP appointed anti-Alberta oil and gas activist Ed Whittingham , the former executive director of the Pembina Institute, to the Alberta Energy Regulator — kind of Tzeporah Berman 2.0, only worse.

During the many years Whittingham worked at the Pembina Institute, the environmental organization accepted $8 million in U.S. foundation money earmarked to landlock Alberta oil and gas through an insidious and highly effective Tar Sands Campaign, which was exposed by Vancouver researcher Vivian Krause.

The group Corporate Ethics boasted on its website that: “from the very beginning, the campaign strategy was to land-lock the tar sands so their crude could not reach the international market where it could fetch a high price per barrel.”

Just days after a Postmedia column about Krause’s work was published by Postmedia in January, CorpEthics executive director Michael Marx removed that revealing quote from the organization’s website, but Krause has screen grabs of everything on her website.

So, the NDP knows that making controversial appointments and showing their anti-oil colours will not likely help on election day.

“It’s a classic strategy. The NDs know they’re not going to be here in six months’ time so they’re doing everything they can to stack things in their favour for as long as they can, or at least force the new government to fire people that you’ve appointed,” said Ellis.

“Having said that, the New Democrats had no problem doing that. They cleaned house on many boards when they got in.”

Finally, an NDP policy Albertans might actually urge the UCP to adopt.