Albertans are more politically progressive than assumed, according to findings collected by Ottawa’s Abacus Data and published in a recent report titled “The Quiet Majority.”
Commissioned by Progress Alberta — a brand new left-leaning, non-partisan organization based in Edmonton and affiliated with the Broadbent Institute — the poll discovered that 59 per cent of Albertans self-describe as “progressive” and tend to vastly overestimate the percentage of other Albertans who self-describe as conservatives.
“We had a hunch that Albertans were a little more progressive than the perception out there, but the results were pretty incredible, to be frank,” says Duncan Kinney, founder of Progress Alberta. “Really, what surprised me the most was just how much Albertans overestimate how conservative other Albertans are.”
To be fair, the definition of “progressive” seems fairly nebulous: some 72 per cent of people who voted for the Alberta NDP in May harnessed the label to describe their political affiliations, but 47 per cent of those who backed the far-right Wildrose Party also used it.