Something astounding is happening in the Conservative heartland. The Alberta New Democrats’ polling surge is no blip — it’s real, and at the moment it appears Albertans are getting ready to make history by switching governing parties for only the fourth time in their history.

After 43 years and 12 consecutive majority governments, the provincial Progressive Conservatives are in deep trouble. Their support appears to have imploded for both genders and across all age groups. The NDP and its leader, Rachel Notley, are not only on track to win on May 5, they may well be headed for a majority.

There’s a catch, of course. The Alberta NDP relies heavily on younger voters, who have a history of poor election day turnout. So the New Democrats’ biggest challenge now is tactical — they have to ensure their supporters actually get out and vote. But even if Notley’s people fail to turn every polled supporter into a vote for the New Democrats, it’s hard to imagine a scenario which would lead to a turnaround in support of more than 19 points between now and election day.

Four factors are driving this remarkable trend:

A united centre-left. The NDP owes its success to its ability to unite progressive voters across the province. Federal Liberal, NDP and Green Party supporters have all rallied around the Notley banner.

A divided right. In an exquisite juxtaposition of the federal scene, small-c conservative voters are split between hard and light-right. (The federal Conservative Party doesn’t face this handicap, obviously.)

The revenge of the latte-sipping elites. The Alberta NDP is being propelled largely by a huge and unprecedented lead with the university-educated. At 51 points, they out-perform both the Wildrose Party and the Progressive Conservatives by a margin of more than 30 points with this group.

Labour muscle. The NDP also holds a 2-to-1 advantage among union members, both current and former. Outside of this base, the race is much narrower.

The NDP’s success in Alberta may offer some insights for the coming federal election. Ms. Notley’s party is being propelled by much more than mere dissatisfaction with Premier Jim Prentice and the current provincial government. Rather, these results reflect a rapid, underlying transformation of political opinion in the province.

Anxious about the stagnation of the Canadian middle class (47 per cent of Albertans cited ‘restoring middle class progress’ as the most important election issue), Albertans appear fatigued with the neo-conservative model of austerity and trickle-down economics. Instead, opinion in the province appears to be moving towards support for a shift in how Alberta’s economy works — away from resource-extraction and towards a more stable economy based on innovation and what Notley calls “value-added” economics.

Frank Graves is founder and president of EKOS Polling.

Methodology:

This study was conducted using High Definition Interactive Voice Response (HD-IVR™) technology, which allows respondents to enter their preferences by punching the keypad on their phone, rather than telling them to an operator. In an effort to reduce the coverage bias of landline only RDD, we created a dual landline/cell phone RDD sampling frame for this research. As a result, we are able to reach those with a landline and cell phone, as well as cell phone only households and landline only households.

The field dates for this survey are April 25-29, 2015. In total, a random sample of 721 Alberta residents aged 18 and over responded to the survey. The margin of error associated with the total sample is +/-3.7 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Please note that the margin of error increases when the results are sub-divided (i.e., error margins for sub-groups such as region, sex, age, education). All the data have been statistically weighted by age, gender, and educational attainment to ensure the sample’s composition reflects that of the actual population of Canada according to Census data.