Odds are, given the sample size, that was a single individual respondent hitting the wrong option, or throwing it in there as a joke. It’s understood and self-admitted that the provincial level polling shouldn’t be taken as particularly reliable. The margin of error figures always apply to the poll as a whole. The guy who runs Ekos flat out said that he doesn’t believe that poll accurately reflects LPC support in Alberta. Artefacts like that are an inevitable product in of polling based on statistical sampling.
Note though that all the criticism and guffaws Ekos is getting now is the same criticism and guffaws they got several weeks ago, when they turned out to be a week or two ahead of everybody else in accurately identifying the shift in trend. I think their poll is an outlier in favour of LPC, but it probably does reflect that the overall trend is now in the LPC’s favour. That’s consistent with what others are saying. There should be another Ekos poll out within the week; I’ll be curious to see how that looks.
