Strong support for UCP government’s pandemic response down to just 4%

Over the weekend, Canadian polling and market research firm Léger released their latest survey of how Canadian governments have performed during the pandemic.

When the 1,537 respondents were asked how they thought the federal, provincial, and municipal governments have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic, only 17% of Alberta participants said they were satisfied with their provincial government’s response.

Alberta ranked the lowest of all the provinces, with Manitoba and Saskatchewan coming in second lowest with a collective 42%.

When split out even more, respondents who were “somewhat satisfied” with the UCP pandemic response was 13%, while those who were “very satisfied” came in at only 4% of respondents.

The dissatisfaction rate for Alberta was 80%, the highest in the country. Manitoba and Saskatchewan were next again, with a combined 56%.

	Satisfied	Dissatisfied
BC	61%	34%
AB	17%	80%
MB/SK	42%	56%
ON	52%	43%
QC	74%	21%
ATL	75%	22%

That Alberta dissatisfaction broke down even further to 28% “somewhat dissatisfied” and 52% “very dissatisfied”.

Now, to be fair, just because Alberta performed so poorly, it isn’t necessarily because people think they’re not doing enough. Alberta participants also gave the lowest approval ratings to the federal government.

	Satisfied	Dissatisfied
BC	54%	43%
AB	45%	51%
MB/SK	56%	41%
ON	57%	37%
QC	60%	34%
ATL	75%	19%

Alberta respondents also felt that their municipal governments responded poorly to the pandemic, being the only province that with a minority of respondents viewing local response favourably:

	Satisfied	Dissatisfied
BC	63%	27%
AB	46%	50%
MB/SK	65%	28%
ON	60%	30%
QC	65%	18%
ATL	74%	17%

On a related note, 81% of Alberta respondents support a vaccine passport in the province, the second highest level of any province:

	Support	Oppose
BC	86%	14%
AB	81%	19%
MB/SK	77%	23%
ON	76%	24%
QC	77%	23%
ATL	70%	30%

Also, when asked whether governments should lift all COVID-19 restrictions right now, 3 out every 4 respondents in Alberta said no.

	Yes	No
BC	10%	87%
AB	14%	76%
MB/SK	15%	78%
ON	19%	71%
QC	25%	69%
ATL	14%	81%

And that’s not all.

Think HQ, another polling firm, released their findings just yesterday and found that Alberta premier, Jason Kenney, has seen his support plummet.

When their 1,116 participants were asked to say whether they approve or disapprove of the performances of Kenney and NDP leader, Rachel Notley, only 22% said they approved of Kenney’s performance. And most of that was only “somewhat approve”.

Notley, on the other hand, received 50% overall approval.

Kenney’s disapproval rating was way higher than Notley’s, coming in at 61% for strongly disapprove, compared to Notley’s 39%

	Strongly approve	Somewhat approve	Somewhat disapprove	Strongly disapprove	Unsure
Kenney	6%	16%	16%	61%	1%
Notley	32%	18%	8%	39%	3%

Here’s how both leaders fared according to how participants voted in the 2019 election:

	Approve			Disapprove
	UCP	NDP	AP	UCP	NDP	AP
Kenney	39%	—	8%	60%	99%	92%
Notley	18%	97%	66%	80%	2%	32%

This is Kenney’s worst performance since not only the 2019 provincial election, but since November 2017.

When broken down geographically, Kenney’s highest approval rating is in rural Alberta, but even that is only 30% overall.

	Somewhat approve	Strongly approve	Overall approve
Calgary CMA	13%	6%	19%
Edmonton CMA	15%	4%	19%
Small urban	19%	6%	25%
Rural	21%	9%	30%
North	10%	14%	24%
Central	26%	2%	28%
South	20%	9%	29%

Men were slightly more likely to approve of Kenney’s performance (18% somewhat, 7% strongly) than women (15% somewhat, 5% strongly).