Majority in Alberta think Notley would be doing a better job handling COVID-19 pandemic than Kenney

A majority of Albertans believe that former Premier Rachel Notley would be doing a better job handling the COVID-19 pandemic than current Premier Jason Kenney, a new poll has found.

More than half of Alberta residents (54%) would prefer to have their former premier in charge during the COVID-19 outbreak, while 29% would prefer to keep the current one, according to the new Research Co. poll^[1]https://researchco.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Tables_Poli_COVID19_CAN_14Apr2020.pdf.

This is in stark contrast to other major provinces in Canada.

For example, in Ontario (36%) and British Columbia(35%), only just over a third of residents believe their former premier would be doing a better job handling the COVID-19 outbreak than the current one, while Quebecers are almost evenly divided between the previous premier (42%) and the current one (38%).

More than two thirds of all Canadians (68%) are pleased with the way the federal government is managing the COVID-19 outbreak.

“As was the case last month, Canadians aged 55 and over (71%) are more likely to endorse Ottawa’s performance on COVID-19,” Mario Canseco, President of Research Co, said. “Majorities of Canadians aged 35-to-54 (68%) and aged 18-to-34 (66%) are also satisfied.”

The poll also found that just over a third of Canadians (34%) think former prime minister Stephen Harper would be doing a better job handling the COVID-19 outbreak than current head of government Justin Trudeau, while half (50%) disagree with this assessment.

Significantly smaller proportions of Canadians believe Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer (25%), and leadership candidates Peter MacKay (23%) and Erin O’Toole (17%) would be performing better than Trudeau.

The results are based on an online study conducted from April 6 to April 8, 2020, among 1,000 adults in Canada. The data has been statistically weighted according to Canadian census figures for age, gender and region. The margin of error—which measures sample variability—is +/- 3.1 percentage points, nineteen times out of twenty. The margin of error for Alberta is +/- 6.0 percentage points.