Albertans for Carney? They're as impressed with new PM as they are with Poilievre: poll

CBC

a day ago

EDITOR'S NOTE: CBC News commissioned this public opinion research to be conducted immediately following the federal election and leading into the second anniversary of the United Conservative Party's provincial election win in May 2023.
As with all polls, this one provides a snapshot in time.
This analysis is one in a series of articles from this research.
Alberta's politics are not without their complexity. Here's one striking new example.
While this is a province where many people are newly interested in separating from Canada because the Liberals won — again — and nearly all ridings went Conservative — again — Albertans appear as likely to express admiration for Mark Carney as for Pierre Poilievre.
Yes, Albertans.
A new Janet Brown Opinion Research poll conducted after the federal election for CBC News asked respondents for their impression of the federal Liberal and Conservative leaders, on a 10-point scale, where 0 means deeply unimpressed and 10 means utterly dazzled.
And the results for Carney and Poilievre are nearly identical.
Conservatives won nearly all the seats in the province and 65 per cent of the votes, compared to the Liberals' 28 per cent — far back, even if it was their best performance in Alberta in a half-century.
But the polling data suggests that the number of Albertans who are very impressed with Carney outstrips the number who voted for him. It also suggests that significant numbers of Conservative voters aren't enamoured with their own leader, though some may consider themselves hopeful about the new Liberal prime minister.
Typically, voter choices are largely driven by a party's leader, said John Santos, data scientist for the polling firm. The similarities in Albertans' views of Carney and Poilievre are a striking departure for that norm.
"The parties they lead couldn't have been more far apart in terms of results [in the province]."
Bryndis Whitson ran unsuccessfully for the Liberals in Calgary Signal Hill, finishing 24 points behind Conservative David McKenzie.
But she's been campaigning for Liberals in Calgary since 1997, and said this was the most positivity she ever encountered.
"There were some people who really, really liked Carney, and there was also a factor of people being very, very unsure about Pierre," Whitson said.
She had begun door-knocking as a Liberal while Justin Trudeau was still prime minister. She recalls getting praise for her own ideas and background in the supply chain sector, but people were turned off by her leader.
That all changed with Carney at the helm.
"I think most Conservatives were very willing to give him a chance," she said.
Poilievre certainly had his regional strongholds in the survey, with respondents far more likely to report a better impression of him outside Edmonton or Calgary, and among men.
In line with party preferences, Carney had higher rankings among women. Poilievre's and Carney's scores broken down by gender are nearly mirror images of each other.
OK with boomers
Poilievre narrowly edged out Carney's rating among millennial Albertans and Gen X.
But the wider gap was among seniors, who were far more impressed by Carney, and more unimpressed by his Conservative rival.
Karamveer Lalh, a lawyer and longtime Conservative campaigner, helped the party's candidate win in Edmonton Southeast, where Mayor Amarjeet Sohi ran as a Liberal.
He said older voters tended to be aware of Carney's background in finance and as the central bank governor in England and Canada, and that outshone the resumes of both Trudeau and Poilievre.
Who else is showing more warmth lately toward the new Liberal leader? Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who stated after this week's premiers' meeting with the prime minister in Saskatoon that she saw an "immediate change" with Carney, after repeatedly crossing swords with Trudeau and his focus on climate action instead of boosting Alberta's oil and gas sector.
"I haven't heard a prime minister say we want to build a bitumen pipeline to the northwest coast in a long time," Smith told Power & Politics on Monday.
"The fact that we have a change of tone and a change of direction from this prime minister is very encouraging."
Still, Alberta's premier has warned of a "national unity crisis" if the Carney government doesn't clear hurdles to pipeline development and roll back other oil-and-gas-related regulations. And there's also renewed interest in Alberta separatism, although this poll also suggests just 28 per cent of Albertans would vote to break the province off from Canada in the aftermath of Carney becoming prime minister. (Notably less than the 37 per cent who say they are highly impressed by Carney.)
This is, of course, an early stage for Carney's leadership, and most new prime ministers enjoy a honeymoon period, said John Santos, data scientist with Janet Brown Opinion Research.
But it appears that for now, many Albertans perceive that a key figure during past economic crises is the appropriate person for this moment of U.S. tariffs and economic upheaval.
"If Albertans are going to be warm to any federal Liberal leader, one who comes from big business from that right flank of the federal Liberal party is going to be one of the Liberal leaders that, if they don't like more, will at least dislike less," Santos said.
Conservative voters in Alberta are still predominantly more impressed by their own leader — and since there are far more of them, Poilievre's impression scores pull roughly even with Carney. However, four in 10 Conservative voters give Carney either a high or moderate score, as opposed to fewer than one-quarter of Liberals doing the same for Poilievre.
"He was viewed favourably in Conservative circles before he came out as a partisan," Lalh says of Carney.
"He was sort of seen as technocratic, well respected, helped to navigate the financial crisis."
Conversely, 82 per cent of Liberal voters said they were highly impressed with Carney, compared to 68 per cent of Conservative voters who expressed that same sentiment about Poilievre.
It might be chalked up to how polarizing each leader is. When Lalh would knock on doors of Conservative supporters, they tended to dump on the Liberals but not much on their new leader. When he visited Liberal doors, he'd more often get an earful about Poilievre.
"Carney was fresh enough at the doors anyway that the people who were not particularly fans of Poilievre had a positive reason to vote for the Liberals," Lalh said.
As for himself, Lahl said he appreciates how Carney has signalled he wants to address Alberta's concerns about getting its natural resources to market, but added: "I am reserving judgment until I see if he can walk the walk."
Given that this survey measures how impressed Albertans are with the respective leaders, part of the lower score for Poilievre among his own partisans may have to do with voters being unimpressed his Conservatives lost, and that he lost his own seat, Santos noted. (Winning, of course, impresses more than losing does.)
But it appears from this poll that Carney has a reservoir of goodwill among even Albertans who didn't vote for him.
Smith has cautioned that while Carney's words and direction have impressed her, she's keen to see action on her priorities from the Liberals.
It's those next steps that could determine whether Albertans sour on Carney like they did with his predecessors, or if they have finally found a Liberal leader they can get behind.
The CBC News random survey of 1,200 Albertans was conducted using a hybrid method between May 7 to 21, 2025, by Edmonton-based Trend Research under the direction of Janet Brown Opinion Research. The sample is representative of regional, age and gender factors. The margin of error is +/- 2.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. For subsets, the margin of error is larger.
The survey used a hybrid methodology that involved contacting survey respondents by telephone and giving them the option of completing the survey at that time, at another more convenient time, or receiving an email link and completing the survey online. Trend Research contacted people using a random list of numbers, consisting of 40 per cent landlines and 60 per cent cellphone numbers. Telephone numbers were dialled up to five times at five different times of day before another telephone number was added to the sample. The response rate among valid numbers (i.e. residential and personal) was 12.8 per cent.