Why Alberta politics may be getting more polarized — and why that matters

CBC

4 days 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. More stories will follow.
If Albertans feel a divergence of political attitudes — a shift from the centre, toward more ideological extremes — in the province, they aren't wrong, according to a recent poll commissioned by CBC Calgary.
"I think we are so polarized," lamented Calgary's Jillian Reimer as she and her two boys sipped drinks outside a coffee shop recently.
"I would like to have more conversations. I think there's very little that's actually black and white and so much more that's nuanced," she told a CBC News journalist asking Calgary residents about their impressions of Premier Danielle Smith.
Reimer applauds Smith's defense of the energy industry, but not her actions on health care. The Calgary woman laughed when told she is part of a shrinking group of people who rate Smith somewhere in the middle.
From the mainstreaming of "F--k Trudeau" bumper stickers and flags to the heated tone of social media debate, our political discourse can often feel more barbed and split.
While a 2023 political science study found "only mixed evidence that Canadians are diverging ideologically and becoming more polarized," data from CBC News' recent poll suggests an increase in political polarization among Albertans, pointing toward possibly more contentious times ahead for the prairie province.
Why we should care about polarization
Polarization isn't necessarily a bad thing, according to a data scientist who analyzed the poll results for CBC News.
"It's important to identify where the fault lines in society are," said John Santos.
He believes that, if we know where the cracks are in our politics, we can try to meaningfully grapple with divergent views and democratically sort out our differences.
"We need to deal with those in a way where people's concerns are heard and they feel like they have a voice and a say in the democratic process," Santos told CBC News.
Experts say addressing these political fractures can blunt the entrenchment that polarization can trigger.
Political scientists differentiate between ideological polarization — the divergence over policy on issues from the health-care system to taxes — and so-called affective polarization, the emotional dislike or distrust that people feel for the other side.
"We worry about the effect of polarization," said University of Calgary political scientist Lisa Young, "because it's hard to have a functioning democracy when you see your opponents not as … coming from a different perspective or being misguided, but as being evil."
Albertans' flight to the extremes of ideology
The poll does not measure how Albertans feel about their political opponents, but the data does suggest an increase in political polarization on values and worldviews.
Over the last seven years, CBC News has polled voters about their ideology, asking them to place themselves on the left-right spectrum, with zero being extremely left-wing or progressive and 10 being intensely right-wing or conservative.
Consistent with previous polling, the latest representative survey found that Albertans, for the most part, see themselves as political centrists with a slight right skew: on average, they rated themselves at 5.8 out of 10 on this scale.
But while the average is only up slightly, fewer individuals in the recent survey identified their worldview as centrist, when compared to previous surveys in recent years.
Most of the intensification happened on the right side of the political spectrum, with an expanding number of Albertans rating themselves an eight, nine or 10. The left side of the spectrum, by contrast, appears relatively stable.
In addition to ideology, Albertans appear to be polarizing on political values.
Polarization on value questions
Since 2018, the number of Albertans who think we'd have fewer problems if there was more emphasis on traditional family values has remained steady, with almost two-thirds of people agreeing with that sentiment.
Yet, the number of Albertans who strongly agree with the importance of family values has notably grown, from 35 to 40 per cent, over the last seven years.
Additionally, the number of Albertans who strongly agree that social programs make people less willing to look after themselves has grown to 21 per cent in the recent poll, up from 15 per cent when CBC News first asked the same question five years ago.
"There is a clear fault line in Alberta today, and I think this mirrors a lot of what we're seeing across the advanced industrial West," said Santos.
"What gets difficult," he added, "is when people are unwilling to compromise, when disagreeing leads to being disagreeable."
There is also evidence of increasing polarization over Alberta's place in Canada — and Albertans' attachment to the country and province.
The lastest poll also found growing strength of support among Albertans who think the oil-rich province would be better off if it separated from Canada. In March 2020, only 11 per cent "strongly" agreed. But in the poll this spring, that sentiment grew to 17 per cent.
"I would say this is probably the most polarized that I've seen since I've been studying and tracking public opinion in Alberta," said Santos.
There's also evidence of polarization when it comes to Smith's leadership, as premier.
Talking with about a dozen voters in Calgary's southeast community of McKenzie Towne about Smith, it was easy to find divided opinions.
Most people either loved her or were quite disappointed, aligning with the CBC News polling results that suggest roughly equal numbers of Albertans are extremely impressed with her, or not impressed at all.
A small group — only 16 per cent of Albertans — had a middle-of-the-road impression of Smith.
And this growing division may be a byproduct of Alberta's increasingly competitive political landscape, according to Janet Brown, who conducted the poll for CBC News.
Why are we seeing increasing polarization?
For decades, Progressive Conservative governments remained a constant in Alberta politics.
The party's unbroken rule — 12 consecutive election wins — ran from 1971 to 2015.
Brown believes the election of the New Democrats a decade ago dialled up the polarization she found in her recent random survey of 1,200 Albertans.
"For a long time, Alberta was essentially a one-party state," said Brown.
The surprise win of the NDP 10 years ago thrust Alberta into a competitive, two-party system.
"It just makes politics a lot more divisive. It makes public dialogue more contentious," said Brown.
The NDP government was a "shock to the political system," according to Young, who has studied Alberta politics for decades.
"It really did send everyone to their corners, politically," she added.
The NDP win in 2015 also appears to have amped up the emotions — or affective polarization — in Alberta politics, according to Young.
"We see people on both sides entrenching themselves more and more," she said.
This widening divide may repel middle-of-the-road Alberta voters such as Reimer, who prides herself on being a centrist.
" Hopefully, we can grow that middle group," she said.
"I think that would be better for our society, as a whole, if we could have more people in the middle, not just full black and white on one side or the other."
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 dialed 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.