A poll released earlier this week showed Alberta premier, Jason Kenney, down again in public perception regarding how he has handled the COVID-19 pandemic.
The poll had a weighted sample size of 147 people in Alberta and was released this past Tuesday by Léger Marketing. Respondents were survey 29–31 January 2021.
The respondents overwhelmingly indicated a lack of support for how Jason Kenney and his UCP government have responded to the pandemic.
| Very dissatisfied | 38% |
| Somewhat dissatisfied | 34% |
| Somewhat satisfied | 21% |
| Very satisfied | 4% |
More than 9 times as many people indicated that they’re very dissatisfied with Alberta’s COVID-19 response than those who were very satisfied. And more than 1.5 times as many were somewhat unsatisfied than were somewhat satisfied.
Combined, Kenney saw 72% total dissatisfaction and only 25% satisfaction, with about 3% not answering. That’s nearly 3 out of 4 people dissatisfied with the UCP pandemic response.
This, once again, puts Alberta at the bottom of the list when ranking the rest of Canada. The next lowest province was Manitoba, at 58% satisfaction. In fact, these two were the only regions in the poll to have more people indicating dissatisfaction than satisfaction.
Alberta’s 25% satisfaction rate is significantly lower than the 58% average satisfaction rate respondents across the country indicated regarding their respective provincial governments.
Kenney has seen a downward spiral in his COVID-19 satisfaction rating ever since he hit a high of 80% satisfied in June. At the start of the pandemic, he received a 74% satisfaction rating.
Most other premiers have also been trending downward, except François Legault of Québec, who has been climbing in the biweekly poll lately, from 65% at the end of November to 80% this week.
Kenney and the UCP enjoyed a brief bump of support two weeks ago, when they went from 27% to 28%, but these new results, once again, show this government at its lowest support since the pandemic began.
For Canada as a whole, 54% of 1,559 respondents indicated that they were satisfied with the federal government’s response to the pandemic. In Alberta, 49% indicated they were satisfied with the federal response and 55% were satisfied with their municipal response.
In case readers think the poll attracted too many supporters of the Alberta NDP, keep in mind that 48% of respondents indicated that they’d vote for the federal Conservative Party “if federal elections were held today”.
