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“That even the idea or concept of such a party captures the imagination of more than one-in-three Western Canadians is highly significant,” says Shachi Kurl, executive director of the Angus Reid Institute. “It shows the ‘national’ parties are not succeeding in reflecting or representing the West as well as they might hope to be.”

So perhaps there is space for a regional party.

“Yeah, we did that and all the conservatives are together now, and if they want, I just say ‘have at it,'” said Deborah Grey, the Reform Party’s first-ever member of Parliament. “It was 30 years ago we put the Reform Party together and they’ll have to see if they’re going to splinter, and then we, you know, do it all again. That makes me weary, actually, thinking of that.”

The Angus Reid polling, when mapping vote intentions, shows that 35 per cent of respondents would vote for the western party, but that only narrowly beats out the Conservative Party of Canada, which would get 29 per cent, overall. Only in Manitoba does this hypothetical party not take the lead — and even then it’s tied at 27 per cent with the Conservative party.

Jared Wesley, a political science professor at the University of Alberta, cautioned against taking the results of one poll at face value, especially since protest votes in the West are normally locked up by the NDP on the left and, when the Conservatives are in opposition, they get those votes on the right.