Calgary voters look off to their right and see Danielle Smith. That's a problem for UCP

EDITOR'S NOTE: CBC News commissioned this public opinion research in late March, roughly two months before Albertans vote in the next election on May 29.

As with all polls, this one is a snapshot in time. 

This analysis is one in a series of articles to come out of this research.

This spring's election is shaping up to be the closest contest since 2012, when Alison Redford's centre-right Progressive Conservatives pulled one out against the populist-right Wildrose Party. Or the 1993 race, when Ralph Klein's Tories promised harsh budget cuts against a Liberal group so fiscally hawkish that then-leader Laurence Decore suggested shutting abortion clinics as an austerity measure.

What we have in 2023 is a far clearer left-right tilt. The Wildrose-PC merger has made the UCP more firmly conservative than the Tories were, and the New Democrats remain a union-affiliated and unabashedly progressive party.

But the Danielle Hatfields and Rachel McCoys will have to settle their feud in a province full of mostly centrists. And the results will likely have much to do with how far voters see their would-be premiers straying from where they themselves sit ideologically.

In the new Janet Brown Opinion Research/CBC News poll, we asked 1,000 Calgarians how they viewed themselves on a scale from 0 (far left) to 10 (far right). As Brown likes to say in her presentations, Calgary is a centrist city that tilts slightly to the right — a ton of 5s, with more 6s and 7s than 3s and 4s.

Brown's poll also asked respondents how they'd plot UCP Leader Danielle Smith and NDP Leader Rachel Notley on that same spectrum.

Unsurprisingly, neither one is perceived as a centrist, though voters are more likely to put Notley there. 

The new UCP leader, Calgarians believe, strays farther from the middle of the road. Smith, they say, is more of an extremist than Notley is. (When nearly one-third of Calgarians rate Smith a 10, they don't mean it in the usually flattering way.)

Smith has given voters multiple reasons to view her as more right-wing than the politicians they're used to, starting with her Wildrose leadership a decade ago.

With her vaccine skepticism and impassioned opposition to COVID restrictions, she placed herself outside the mainstream and beyond the stance of predecessor Jason Kenney, an principled conservative by almost anybody's measure (even if the health emergency of the pandemic made him compromise often).

The revealed conversation with preacher Artur Pawlowski about his legal troubles could not have helped, given how notorious he has become for his own inflammatory remarks and actions.

Smith's first pre-campaign promise was a clear signal she's trying to shake off the sense — or at least accusations — that she's too ideologically rigid. A guarantee you won't begin charging for hospital or doctor visits is not a promise your garden-variety moderate has to make.