Politicians on the losing end of a poll are prone to saying that the poll is no more than a “snapshot” of public opinion at the time.

If that’s true, then the most recent “snapshot” of public opinion should be more disturbing to Ed Stelmach than a photo of Stephen Harper in a thong.

Last week, a Calgary Herald poll of 1,000 Albertans put the Wildrose Alliance ahead of the Tories for the first time. A staggering 39 per cent of voters who expressed an opinion would choose Danielle Smith and the Wildrose Alliance over Ed Stelmach and the Tories if the election were held today. Worse, the Tories were tied with David Swann and the Alberta Liberals at 25 per cent and worse yet — if that’s possible — they’re in THIRD place in Edmonton and Calgary.

The poll is the latest in an increasingly ugly series of “snapshots” that have seen the arthritic Tory dynasty downward while the barely out of diapers Wildrose Alliance is skyrocketing.
What does it all mean?

In some ways it means a lot, and in a lot of other ways it means nothing. Since we’re not having an election today, and there is no vote in the next couple of years, last week’s poll is essentially unimportant – that “snapshot” defence actually works. But it does send some interesting messages for each party.

Lost in the commentary about the PC-Wildrose showdown is the result for the Alberta Liberals.

Certainly, the perennial bridesmaid party must be cheering the collapse of Tory support, with visions of vote splitting victories dancing in their heads. Many Liberals are so desperate to get rid of the Tories they might be inclined to vote Wildrose next time just to smite their mortal enemy. But if you look deeper, the Liberals must be concerned. Liberal support is up from the 20 per cent in the last Environics poll, which is good, but it’s not far off the  average share of the popular vote (27 per cent) for the ALP over the past three elections. It’s got to be disturbing that with such widespread public discontent with stumbling Stelmach and his exhausted party, the public is not looking towards Swann and the Alberta Liberals as the heirs apparent, but to a party with one seat in the legislature, fuzzy policies, and no track record. The evidence just keeps piling up that there is no way a liberal party, in caps or lower case, can win in Alberta.

For the Tories it’s all bad, maybe the worst poll the party has seen in its nearly 40 years in power. Once you start circling the drain, it’s awfully hard to reverse the flow, and that could be exactly the position the Tories find themselves in today.

Falling out of favour in Calgary is no surprise; sophisticated Calgarians have never taken the slightly hay seedy Stelmach to heart. Falling out of favour in Edmonton is more of a concern. Despite being from outside the city, he’s a northern Albertan and a Ukrainian-Canadian, two factors that weighed heavily on the results of the 2008 election, when Liberal Edmonton turned Tory. But the one result that must give Tories pause, if not heart palpitations, is the rural result — 44 per cent for the Wildrose, 25 per cent for the Tories. Rural voters, those supposedly rugged individuals, have marched in lockstep to the polls to vote Tory for decades. If Stelmach loses the support of rural Alberta, he and the Tories are finished.

So it’s all good news for Smith and the Wildrose, right?

Not quite. With increased support comes increased scrutiny. Right now, the party is little more than a bunch of vaguely worded phrases about responsible government and lower taxes. They’ve got tons of policy — available at http://www.wildrosealliance.ca/our-policies — but much of it is boilerplate, feel-good stuff, along with some vaguely worrisome buzzwords called “School Choice” legislation and “Truth in Sentencing” for criminals. Also of interest is a lengthy document on their website, under the title “A Message to Albertans,” which states that the Tories have “an anti-industry hidden agenda” against the oil industry. Man, if you thought the Tories were sweet on Big Oil, the Wildrose would turn the entire province over to the suits in the Calgary skyscrapers.

The Wildrose is in the process of putting some flesh on their policy, and this is where the real trouble for the party could emerge. In her acceptance speech upon winning the leadership, Smith said  “We’ve been doing a lot of cringing and ducking to avoid being labeled ‘extremist’. We should now stop. It’s undignified. Our grassroots party is about common sense ideas, timeless ideas that reflect the mainstream values of average Albertans.”

I guess the best way to avoid being labelled extremist is to not be extremist. If the Wildrose can cobble together a platform that avoids calling for public executions, then they may be onto something.

While Smith is the party’s biggest (perhaps only) real selling point, her past views are well known thanks to her stint as a columnist for Calgary Herald and a very brief turn as a Calgary school trustee.

While on the Calgary school board, she suggested up to 30 Calgary schools should be closed. A quick search of past Smith columns online finds that she has called privatization of health care “a must”, has advocated for the abolition of school boards, and has called full-time kindergarten “unreasonable.”

Smith is a hard-core conservative, as is her party. If will be interesting to see if the party retains its rock-ribbed conservatism, or muddies the brand a little to appeal to a broader audience.