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He noted there is also considerable “residual loyalty” for the PCs — who governed Alberta for more than four decades before being swept from office by the NDP in last year’s provincial election — and centrist voters disillusioned with the Notley government may be returning to the fold.

“As long as a party has a relatively positive image, a leadership contest tends to increase voter support for them,” Ellis said in an interview this week.

“Added to that, is the desire to have — the substantial desire to have — a united option.”

The poll shows 66.2 per cent support for unifying the PCs and Wildrose into a single party ahead of the next election. The idea is equally popular among each party’s supporters at about 80 per cent backing from both PC and Wildrose supporters.

“A good chunk of Albertans are looking for that united option,” said Ellis.

He said the poll is good news for Kenney, the former Conservative MP who is campaigning for the Tory leadership on a platform of merging the PCs with the Wildrose. The other declared contestants so far in the leadership race, Donna Kennedy-Glans, Byron Nelson, Sandra Jansen and Richard Starke, have opposed the merger proposal.

Wildrose Leader Brian Jean, speaking to the Rotary Club of Calgary Tuesday, said he is in favour of consolidating conservatives but that over the last decade he’s seen little “that would suggest the PCs are actually conservative.”

Ellis said the poll is less favourable for Wildrose, which remains at basically the same level it was in polling he conducted a year ago.