NDP still waiting for Nenshi wave: poll shows party farther behind UCP with new leader

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.

Naheed Nenshi, the Alberta NDP leader and prolific public speaker, spent 55 minutes delivering a speech to his party's convention in early May about the state of Alberta politics and where he wants to take his movement and province.

Well, at least most of it was present- and future-focused.

He spent 11 minutes near the top of his address looking back at the Calgary flood — the defining moment of his mayoralty. A dozen years ago.

At one point in that reminiscence, he became self-aware he was dwelling on the past.

"So I know this feels like an old story," Nenshi said. "Why is he going back to the greatest hits?"

He then tried to bridge his storytelling about Calgary's flood-time resilience into a metaphor about the UCP government. 

"It's a flood of economic uncertainty. It's a flood of attacks on our public services. It's a flood of policies that divide rather than unite. And today, my friends, we're going to start stopping that flood."

But it seems like the hero of 2013 Calgary isn't stirring hearts in 2025 Alberta, according to new polling from Janet Brown Opinion Research.

The massive enthusiasm that surrounded his big win last year as the Opposition party's leader appears to have failed to resonate beyond his base.

He was a star recruit from outside the NDP ranks, selected to deliver victory after former premier Rachel Notley had failed in her second and third bids to return the party to that electoral Jerusalem.

However, NDP fortunes have fallen sharply in Calgary under its first Calgarian leader. They'd narrowly won the popular vote and won the most seats in the province's largest city in 2023, but now trail the UCP there by 13 percentage points, the poll shows — nearly as far back as they are provincewide.