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Originally Posted by c.t.ner
I think the UCP has already hit it's high mark with the 60% poll in August and it'll start losing support as time goes on. The problem for the UCP is that it's been a blank slate for a lot of people. For example if you support Doug Schweitzer and think the UCP will be the #newblue you'd probably vote that way, if you think it should be more socially conservative then Jason's your man and you'd vote UCP. If you love Brian Jean and think he's the man of the people than the UCP is your party.
But that blank slate ends on Saturday and with a leader officially in the driver's seat it's going to start having an identity and a lot of that will be who wins it. I don't for a second doubt that the UCP will be Jason Kenney's and the party will have to wear the baggage he brings to the party and cash some of the cheques his campaign has been writing to get support during these leadership races.
Don't get me wrong, Kenney has been a machine at motivating his base and is an amazing campaigner for leaderships, but what motivates his base isn't the same thing that motivates a vast majority of voting Albertans and he'll have to prove that he can attract many Albertans who haven't been paying attention and provide a platform that's better than "NDP BAD!". Kenney is also incredibly awkward when it comes to answering media questions outside of his bubble of support.
I think over the next few months you'll see the gap between the UCP and NDP starting to shrink and probably the amount of undecideds starting to rise.
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I think that the only way that the gap is going to close is if somehow the NDP get a major win before going into the election, something on a pipeline front or a major policy win.
If they come out with another bad budget that gets picked apart for bad math, the gap will increase significantly.
Kenney is a pretty cagy guy and a strong politician, in the last election the Wildrose and Progressives didn't have good leadership at all and it showed in the debates and in the other events.
Jim Prentice was incredibly arrogant and he thought he had this thing in the bag and his campaign was lazy.
Wildrose self sabotaged.
There's also no vote splitting on the right, but people that are on the left that are disgruntled with the NDP will split to either the center Alberta Party of the Liberals.