Once a star candidate, Nenshi is losing lustre, Alberta poll suggests. Can the NDP leader recover?

Naheed Nenshi has had nearly ii years to farm his back up as NDP leader, and has to a lesser extent than 18 months to go before he faces premiere Danielle Smith in Alberta’s next election.

New Democrats cannot be thrilled that their leader not only trails Premier Danielle Smith and the public impression of her leadership — but he’s also been losing ground over time.

The poll also suggests the UCP would win a larger majority in an election if it were held today.

Brown recalls the anticipation that surrounded Nenshi when the former Calgary mayor swept to victory in the NDP leadership race in mid-2024.

“Then Albertans quickly became disillusioned because they struggled to see what Nenshi was all about as leader of the NDP,” she said in an interview. “They struggled to see him make his mark. “

Think of all that’s happened in the past year, too, that may have improved Nenshi’s fortunes.

He finally won a legislature seat and has gotten to square off in question period against Smith, his fellow university debate club alum. The NDP hired a high-profile U.S. Political firm to help promote the leader in a new video campaign.

Nenshi has had a province-wide teacher’s strike and several notwithstanding clause invocations to rail against, among other potential flashpoints for Albertans rankled by the UCP.

And yet, he’s been backsliding.

Impressions of him are poorer than they ever were for his predecessor, Rachel Notley, going back to the waning days of her premiership in 2018, Brown’s polling shows.

The NDP had treated her leadership as a clear asset, although Notley went into the last election more popular with Smith, and her party still came up short. Unless things change substantially, Nenshi will enter the next contest as the less beloved figure.

Notley had her bases of strong support, including women and Edmontonians. A dive into Brown’s poll findings suggest that Nenshi doesn’t resonate with those groups or others. More people ranked him unimpressive than were “very impressed” with him among all demographic groups across Alberta’s regions, income levels, ages, and gender — and Smith rated more impressive among all of them, too.

(One exception: the poll showed Nenshi is more appreciated among Albertans with graduate degrees, a small slice of the populace, though a group for whom Smith derisively calling him a lecturing professor might not come across as a big negative.)

“When will the knives come out for Naheed Nenshi?” David Climenhaga wrote on his long-running progressive politics blog this week, in response to Brown’s poll.

Climenhaga charged that Nenshi is “absolutely failing” to deliver his message, and doubts the veteran politician will change. “As some Alberta Einstein has surely realized, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Knives out? The cutlery remains in the party drawer, various NDP veterans say. The 38-member caucus appears to remain behind him — and New Democrats tend not to be consumed by the sort of backroom manoeuvring and regicide that has felled several Alberta conservative leaders in recent decades.

“I don’t think it’s constructive to point fingers at Naheed for not mobilizing a revolution,” said Alberta Federation of Labour head Gil McGowan, who ran for the NDP leadership himself, before withdrawing. 

“Bickering and backstabbing and infighting play right into Danielle Smith’s hands.”

Deron Bilous, a former Notley government cabinet minister, said he’s optimistic Nenshi and his party will be more “disciplined” and focused in the run-up to next year’s election, after taking time to adjust to provincial politics and solidify his team.

“He’s had a bit of a learning curve,” Bilous said of the man who enters his third year of party leadership in June. 

Shannon Phillips, another former minister, said there’s no appetite within the NDP base to dump Nenshi and go leader-shopping anew. In today’s fragmented media environment and with the constant churn of Donald Trump and chaotic world news, it’s harder for an Opposition leader to punch through the clatter and make an impression on voters by using “old playbook” methods like video campaigns, she said. 

Phillips is impressed at how the Opposition party’s researchers recently unearthed the premier’s private flight on the Saudi Arabia government’s dime, and how the party is trying to push harder against Smith on separatism. 

“What they are doing now in terms of occupying the space on a big issue and actually finding ways to actually land some blows on the government — that's the way you introduce your leader to people,” Phillips said.

“You show [him] as a fighter.”

Among poll respondents who said they would vote NDP, 54 per cent said they're very impressed with Nenshi. That compares to 74 per cent of UCP voters feeling that way about Smith.

Given the mass unpopularity of separatism among Albertans — and the fact the issue splits the UCP base — many New Democrats believe it’s a strong issue for Nenshi and the party. But they’re one of many groups or interests set to combat a referendum, and Phillips said Nenshi’s party turned up late to this effort by not joining onto the successful Forever Canadian petition drive that former Tory stalwart Thomas Lukaszuk led last year. 

Brown wonders if it’s just hard for any Opposition leader to break through right now, with the U.S. Trade pressure creating a rally-around-the-flag attitude that’s buoyed Prime Minister Mark Carney and may help Smith, too.

But there are provinces where polling shows Opposition gaining or overtaking the governing party, and it’s in all of the largest ones: British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec, where the Coalition Avenir Quebec has long lagged behind the Parti Québécois and, more recently, the provincial Liberals.

In each of those provinces, the ascendant Opposition party is either leaderless or with a newly installed one. This could indicate either of two things, or both — that the government’s own struggles are a greater predictor of their poll position than the Opposition’s popularity, or that those other provincial challengers don’t suffer from the negatives that a more established leader like Nenshi might have.

The UCP continues to lean hard into potential downsides for Nenshi. Smith’s party continues to tie him to the more leftist and anti-pipeline federal NDP Leader Avi Lewis, despite Nenshi’s efforts to criticize and distance himself from the new leader.

United Conservatives also tried blaming the ex-mayor for the water infrastructure woes in Calgary, though Municipal Affairs Minister Dan Williams has insisted the inspection he ordered into the history of those utility failures isn’t meant to target a political rival.

Just as Nenshi still has 18 months to improve his standing among Albertans, the UCP will continue to tilt the tables further against his record and reputation.

The survey used a hybrid methodology that involved contacting survey respondents by telephone and giving them the option of completing the survey at that time, at another more convenient time, or receiving an email link and completing the survey online. Trend Research contacted people using a random list of numbers, consisting of 30 per cent landlines and 70 per cent cellphone numbers. Telephone numbers were dialed up to five times at five different times of day before another telephone number was added to the sample. The response rate among valid numbers (i.e., residential and personal) was 11.7 per cent.

Producer and writer

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