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Alberta Politics

Phone poll asks: would you vote for the NDP led by David Eggen?

Ian Donovan David Eggen MLA
NDP MLA David Eggen (right) helping out first-term Wildrose MLA Ian Donovan (left) at one of his colleague’s first protest rallies as an MLA.

Is there an undeclared race underway to become leader of the Alberta NDP?

An interactive voice response poll calling Albertans on February 11 suggests there just might be. The automated phone poll conducted by the Toronto-based Research House began with innocuous questions aimed at gauging opinions about the current Progressive Conservative government and other political party leaders, but it soon shifted toward questions about the NDP leadership.

First asking for the approval or disapproval ratings of Edmonton-Strathcona NDP MLA Rachel Notley and Edmonton-Calder NDP MLA David Eggenthe auto-pollster then questioned whether they would vote for an NDP led by Mr. Eggen.

Here is the audio of the question:

It has been suspected for months that current NDP leader Brian Mason could retire before the next election (he has served as leader since 2004), but, if this is a legitimate poll, this may be the first public evidence we have that his potential successors are testing the waters… or kicking-tires.

A teacher and public health care advocate, Mr. Eggen served his first-term as MLA from 2004 to 2008 and returned for a second term in 2012. Both Mr. Eggen and Ms. Notley are experienced opposition MLAs and would be formidable candidates for their party’s leadership. The NDP last held a contested leadership race in the mid-1990s.

10 replies on “Phone poll asks: would you vote for the NDP led by David Eggen?”

Interesting. I was asked by this poll if I would support Rachel Notley. Different questions based on my answer to some earlier question?

I would vote for the NDP no matter WHO was leading the party….if they gave me a candidate who was credible. Unfortunately, they have a tendency to put up weak candidates against Laurie Blakeman…probably because she’s a pretty strong constituency representative…and not that far afield from the NDP in any case!

You’re wrong Vincent, I’d vote for the NDP regardless of which of the 4 MLA’s lead it! Any of them would make a great leader, but the Alberta public needs to get over that unjust prejudice that the party would drive the economy into the ground and raise taxes… Lord knows the PC’s have already done the same thing for years, though they call their taxes, “user fees”…

Well, Ian, let’s see:

The NDP raised regressive ‘sin’ taxes paid by people of the assigned sex more-likely to be homeless, unsheltered homeless, and to die while unsheltered homeless in an attempt to give money to the brewers they like, directly…

… they’re destroying the long-term energy economy by refusing to get real about the ecological devastation of methane…

But hey, at least they’re keeping doctors who stand between those women who don’t have functioning uteri and their reproductive medicine, by funding illegal HRT gatekeeping and spending $100 million in ending a public choice for IVF…

So, you wanna talk about the PCs calling their taxes user fees? Fine. You call your bigoted gatekeeping, greenwashing, government ‘intersectional,’ as though where was anything intersectional about making it harder for trans women to get estrogen than cis*women an abortion, or exporting the health risks of our fossil fuel industry to poor kids living in Bangladesh.

Sincerely,

A queer trans woman who was a closeted kid in a GSA expected to play ally, and who has seen the long-term data.

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