In what they called an Alberta referendum deep dive, the Angus Reid Institute determined that “question wording may overstate support for some government proposals.”

The institute ran two different online surveys. One conducted in mid-August polled 1,000 participants on the referendum questions being asked on October 19 in Alberta. Two weeks later, they repeated the poll but with rewritten items, split into single concepts and rebalanced.

They then treated differences between the two as evidence that the government’s wording inflates Yes support. That is a wording experiment. It is not a test of the referendum, of voter intent, or of whether a Yes constitutes a mandate.

The questions being posed in the referendum are indeed long and convoluted. They are what is being presented to voters, though, and to break them down into separate elements doesn’t provide a useful measure of public support.

For example, on the immigration question, “Do you support the Government of Alberta taking increased control over immigration for the purposes of decreasing immigration to more sustainable levels, prioritizing economic migration and giving Albertans first priority on new employment opportunities?” there are several elements to the question. They split the ideas and reported that 80% disagreed with at least one element, so the 33% No determined by initial polling on the question “may be drastically underestimating opposition.”

People routinely vote Yes on packages they only partly like — budgets, platforms, omnibus bills, trade deals. Showing that some Yes voters reject one clause is not proof that the package vote is fake. It is proof that a package is a package.

The Angus Reid Institute did not merely unbundle the questions. It rewrote the choice.

The official job clause is about Alberta taking increased control over immigration, so Albertans get first priority on new jobs. The pollster’s version was “employers should hire the most qualified eligible worker regardless of time in province” versus “people already living in Alberta should get greater priority.” Those are totally different questions.

The number of different ways a question can be asked is infinite, and they all will garner different levels of support.

In a long release using many words, all the Angus Reid Institute study concluded was a self-evident truth: that people have different views on different questions. That doesn't mean support for the real set of referendum questions has been overstated in prior polls.