Danielle Smith is losing Alberta's moderate middle. Now she'll try to reclaim them

Hours after her byelection victory last week, Danielle Smith aimed her Twitter feed at fighting inflation. Among a series of tweets, one stood out: an earnest looking photo of herself listening to a group of women that could pass for a stock image of suburban moms. The tweet's infographic vowed to review utility costs and targeted government relief at the cost-of-living. 

Her long-awaited pivot was taking on a more solid form — from grievance politics popular with her conservative base to the everyday concerns of rising food and fuel costs, and the bottlenecks in hospital emergency rooms across the province.

In her byelection victory speech, she vowed to take "unprecedented and substantial action to help Albertans and their families."

Smith ignited the governing United Conservative Party's (UCP) leadership race with fiery anti-Ottawa rhetoric and a proposed sovereignty act.

Then, on the day she ascended to the province's top job, Smith sparked even more controversy with her contentious claim that unvaccinated people were the "most discriminated against group" — keeping in line with her views of COVID restrictions that only a minority of Albertans seem to share.

Unlike her predecessors, Smith did not get the usual honeymoon glow of a new leader. CBC News's recent Road Ahead poll suggests the NDP leads the UCP in voter preferences, 47 per cent to 38.

A deep dive into the data shines a spotlight on the disconnect between Smith's rhetoric and the more moderate values of most Albertans — especially in urban areas — on issues ranging from the environment to the handling of the pandemic. The UCP's path to victory appears steep. It requires picking up moderate voters, who prefer the NDP right now by more than 30 percentage points, the poll indicates.

"You see a population that's becoming more tempered, more moderate, more centrist at a time where it seems the governing party is becoming more militant," said pollster Janet Brown, who conducted the research for CBC News. 

Brown and other longtime Alberta political watchers say it would be politically strategic for Smith to now pivot toward the values of most of the Prairie province's voters. 

But can she?

The CBC News poll asked a random sample of 1,200 Alberta voters more than a dozen "value" questions, ranging from the role of the government in the economy to social issues such immigration and equality.   

And while politicians' barbed words and the pugilistic pandemic discourse may make it seem like our politics is bitterly polarized, the polling data suggests Albertans are not as divided. A big mushy middle of Alberta voters retain pretty centrist values. 

"There are robust groups at either end of the political spectrum, and those are the people whose voices tend to be heard in the public sphere. The bulk of voters in the centre are listening," said University of Calgary political scientist Lisa Young, who reviewed the findings. 

Using 15 poll questions, we extracted five factors — or underlying constructs — that are correlated or grouped together: economic conservatism, populism, western disaffection, cultural conservatism, and energy and the environment.