Premier Rachel Notley's strong support for the construction of the Kinder Morgan pipeline has given the NDP a boost in support on Jason Kenney and the United Conservative Party.  

Those are the findings of a new UltraPoll, a conglomeration of ten provincial polls released today (April 26) by Mainstreet Research.  President and CEO Quito Maggi says the poll in Alberta shows a massive swing in favour of the NDP.

"Rachel Notley's position has caused a huge swing.  The United Conservative Party is down almost eight points, the NDP and Rachel Notley is up almost eight points.  That's a massive swing from what we saw just three months ago."

The new poll suggests that among decided and leaning voters, the UCP and Kenney have 48.6 percent support, down 7.3 percent from January while the governing NDP with Rachel Notley at the helm currently have the support of 35.4 percent, up 8.1 percent from January.  Although Maggi points out that the UCP lead over the NDP is still more than 13 percent, he says things in Alberta have tightened up.

"We asked people, 'are you more or less likely to vote NDP now as a result of the position that Rachel Notley and the NDP government has taken' and we're seeing strong indications that more and more people would consider voting NDP in the next election.  So what looked like a foregone conclusion three months ago now is starting to look interesting."

While Maggi says the UCP would still win an election, if it were held today, it doesn't negate the fact that the NDP has made up a lot of ground since January.  He says when you start looking at some of the regional differences in the poll, the NDP closing of the gap seems even stronger.

"The NDP is doing much, much better in Edmonton than they were doing in January.  We saw them doing much, much better, almost at the levels of the last election in Calgary.  It's really just in the rest of Alberta that we see the UCP support extremely high.  We know that's where the votes are and that's where the seats are.  Even though it's a 13 point lead, it's just about a year until the next election and this is a much-needed bump for Rachel Notley and the NDP and it's largely on the backs of this issue (Kinder Morgan)."

Maggi says the poll also shows overwhelming support in Alberta for the pipeline's construction.  87.8 percent said they somewhat support the Kinder Morgan expansion, with 77.5 percent saying they strongly support it.

The rest of the Alberta political parties are far behind the UCP and NDP with the Alberta Liberals at 6.2 percent, the Alberta Party at 5.1 percent and the Alberta Green Party at 2.4 percent.  

The poll surveyed 1,071 Albertans between April 16th and April 18th.  It has a margin of error of +/- 3.11 percent and is accurate 19 times out of 20.

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