Think you know who'll replace Jason Kenney? Think again
CBC
This column is an opinion from Graham Thomson, an award-winning journalist who has covered Alberta politics for more than 30 years. For more information about CBC's Opinion section, please see the FAQ.
Now that the race is officially underway for leader of Alberta's United Conservative Party, you'll be hearing this question a lot: Who will win?
Or at the very least: Who is the front-runner?
The two questions might sound like the same thing, but they are vastly different.
Let's take a look back at the leadership races for the old Progressive Conservative party — one of the forerunners of today's UCP.
In the three most hotly-contested PC leadership contests from 1992 to 2011 (when the party was still in power), the front-runner lost every time.
That was a result of front-runner overconfidence, a preferential balloting system, and backstabbing politics.
In fact, being the perceived front-runner was a bit of a curse.
Speaking of which, who is the front-runner this time around?
You could argue Brian Jean, the former Wildrose leader and MLA who helped undermine Jason Kenney, is the front-runner based on public opinion. A Leger poll released on June 1 indicated that 22 per cent of 1,000 Albertans surveyed thought Jean "would make the best leader" of the UCP.
In second place was former-Wildrose-leader-who-notoriously-crossed-the-floor-to-the-PCs-in-2014 Danielle Smith with 18 per cent. Former finance minister Travis Toews was the bronze medallist with just five per cent.
For anyone relying on public opinion to handicap this race, here is the rub.
The Leger poll surveyed the general public. The new UCP leader will be chosen not by the general public but by United Conservative members — and because memberships will be sold over the next eight weeks by frantic leadership teams, you couldn't even generate an accurate poll of party members today.
The Leger poll might help some candidates establish their credibility with party members, but the survey is really just an indication of name recognition among the general public and that's a fickle measurement when dealing with an in-house party vote, especially when that vote won't happen until Oct. 6.
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