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The NDP are in second with 26 per cent, followed by 22 per cent for the PCs.

The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points.

Kenney, a Calgary MP who held various cabinet positions under former prime minister Stephen Harper, launched his bid for the PC leadership earlier this month.

The party will pick a new leader in March 2017. Kenney has said he plans to unite the PCs and the Wildrose if elected, though Tory leadership dismissed that idea in May.

Kenney, a popular social and fiscal conservative, has received high-profile endorsements from Harper and interim federal Conservative leader Rona Ambrose. At one time, he was expected to be a front-runner to replace Harper.

However, his candidacy has proved controversial, and uniting the right would involve many legal and logistical difficulties.

Though uniting the PCs and Wildrose would presumably require one or both to fold, provincial law doesn’t allow parties to simply transfer assets to one another. And the formation of a third party would theoretically involve another tangled leadership race, which Wildrose leader Brian Jean may also want to run in.

According to political scientist Duane Bratt, of Mount Royal University, voters should take this and similar polls with a grain of salt.

“The essential problem with any of these polls is, there are many steps Jason Kenney has to go through before he can even challenge for the premiership,” Bratt said.

Bratt said future surveys should examine more scenarios, such as outcomes for a Kenney-led PC Party versus one led by someone else.

‘There’s a number of assumptions placed in this poll,” he said.

“But if you’re a Kenney supporter, you’re emboldened by what you see.”

emcintosh@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/EmmaMci