Alberta in transition: assessing gaps between public opinion and political culture

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Author(s) / Creator(s)
- Wesley, Jared
SSHRC IG awarded 2023: A gulf has emerged between who Albertans are as individuals, and who they see themselves to be as a community. When asked which values animate provincial politics, most Albertans continue to describe the dominance of "wild west" notions like populism, western alienation, settler colonialism, frontier masculinity, bootstrap individualism, and the primacy of prosperity. In short, their perception of the typical Albertan remains static, gendered, and rooted in a "cowboy" past. When asked about their own political preferences, however, the average Albertan is far less conservative than this persona portrays. Albertans tend to be centrist, even progressive, when it comes to social issues like health care and inclusion. And socio-demographically, the province has shifted even further away from this "cowboy" image, becoming one of Canada's most urbanized and ethnically-diverse provinces. We will deploy a new series of panel surveys to determine whether Albertans are as alienated, conservative, individualistic, and populist as common wisdom suggests, while tracking individual-level changes throughout the early-post-pandemic period.
Date created

2022-10-29
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Type of Item

Research Material
DOI

https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-8ndb-5v67