Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith won Thursday’s debate and Progressive Conservative Leader Alison Redford lost it, an Ipsos Reid/Global TV/CORUS online survey indicates.
In the poll of 538 people drawn from Ipsos’s online panel right after the debate, 37 per cent said Smith won, compared with 28 per cent for Redford, 13 per cent for Liberal Leader Raj Sherman and 10 per cent for NDP Leader Brian Mason. Thirteen per cent said they didn’t know who won.
Thirty-one per cent said Redford lost, 27 per cent picked Sherman, 16 per cent said Smith and the same amount chose Mason. The rest didn’t know.
When asked what impact the debate had on respondents’ impression of each leader, Mason fared the best, with 41 per cent having an improved impression and only 14 per cent with a worsened impression
Redford had the most negative swing, with 24 per cent indicating an improved impression and 39 per cent a worsened one.
Redford did best on the question asking which leader looked and sounded most like a premier, with 38 per cent of respondents choosing her over the others.
Smith did best on the other performance measures, garnering the most votes as the leader with the best ideas and policies, the one who best reflects one’s own values and priorities, the most likeable one and the best speaker.
The survey is considered to be accurate within 4.2 percentage points 19 times out of 20, and the the data were weighted to ensure that the sample characteristics reflect the actual Alberta
voting population based on age, sex, region and past voting behaviours.
Here are the raw figures from Ipsos Reid. Keep in mind that the margin of error is higher once the responses are broken down into subgroups.
Alberta Debate Tables
© Global News. A division of Shaw Media Inc., 2012.