Calgary city council is riding a wave of popularity unseen for years, underpinned by stratospheric approval ratings for Mayor Jeromy Farkas, according to a new survey.

According to new data from Probe Research, Mayor Farkas has an overall approval rating of 81 per cent, while individual city councillors have an overall favourable rating of 73 per cent, and city council as a whole at 69 per cent.

Probe Research conducted an online, representative survey sample of 595 Calgarians between April 27 and May 6, asking them a series of questions on the performance of Calgary city council.

An online survey like this cannot be assigned a typical margin of error, though a similar randomized sample size would have a margin of error of +/- four per cent, 19 times out of 20.

Robson Fletcher, data analyst with Probe Research, said the numbers look very positive for the current city council.

“I think it’s pretty clear that this mayor and this council are enjoying an extended honeymoon period since they were elected,” Fletcher told LWC.

Fletcher said the council’s membership overhaul and new policy directions — citywide rezoning, reducing the tax rate — could be linked to the popularity.

One thing that also stood out to Fletcher was the number of Calgarians who feel as though the City of Calgary is now going in the right direction. Nearly 60 per cent of those who responded felt positive about it.

“That stands in stark contrast to how Calgarians feel about the province, how they feel about the country, and how they feel about the broader world. In all those cases, less than half of Calgarians felt Alberta is moving in the right direction, Canada is moving in the right direction, or the world is moving in the right direction,” he said.

“Yet we see this little island of optimism that Calgarians exist in when it comes to their own city, and I think that probably ties into the high ratings that the mayor and council are still enjoying after last October’s election.”

In a 2023 survey by ThinkHQ, city council approval ratings were among the lowest ever recorded. Recent City of Calgary satisfaction surveys showed trust in the City of Calgary at 38 per cent (2023). That number has since jumped up to 54 per cent.

Communication matters: Bratt

Mount Royal University political science professor Duane Bratt said the numbers reflect more than the notion of following through on campaign promises.

He said it’s about communication, too. The handling of the Bearspaw South feeder main situation stood out to Bratt.

“Look at the contrast with dealing with the water main break versus how (former mayor) Jyoti Gondek dealt with the water main break,” he told LWC.

“That could have been a bad news story, and it wasn’t. It became a very positive news story.”

Farkas’s appeal cuts across different political ideologies, with him scoring in the mid-to-high 80s among both the UCP and the Alberta NDP supporters. He also scores high in all age groups, all quadrants, and with both men and women.

Bratt said that Farkas has been different in his approach to municipal politics than in the past.

“That reflects the big change after his election defeat in 2021, and it reflects the way he ran his (2025 municipal) campaign,” Bratt said.

“He is committed to some of the big campaign promises, like repealing blanket rezoning, he dealt with the tax issue, but he has also not been afraid to challenge the premier.”

For his part, Mayor Farkas credits council’s success with its commitment to being pragmatic.

“We really try to park the ideology, trying to park the politics, and when you run in a partisan environment, it’s almost a guarantee that half the people will like you and the other half will dislike you no matter what you do, and the fact that we’ve been able to get above that 50 per cent level is because we’re a largely independent council,” he told LWC.

He said Calgarians expect them to work together, issue by issue, challenge by challenge, to move the city forward.

As for popularity across the board, Farkas said it comes down to picking your battles.

“When it comes to working with the provincial government and the federal government, you have to support them on the things that are going right for Calgary, and you have to offer a critique, but solutions on the things that aren’t going well,” he said.

“So, when it comes to my engagement with the provincial government, of course, I’m going to speak up, say, on their biggest property tax hike in our city’s history, I’m going to speak up on that. But when they extend significant support and help on emergency response for us to fix our water main, I’m going to applaud their leadership.”

The Probe Research survey also covered top city issues, with affordability and inflation, plus housing costs topping the list. Crime and public safety, along with poverty and homelessness, came in significantly behind it.

Infrastructure concerns also registered at 11 per cent.

“I think the other issues that are getting mentioned there, in the six per cent, seven per cent range, those are certainly on people’s minds,” Fletcher said.

“But by far and away, it’s the cost of living and the cost of housing that are dominating in terms of what people are concerned about in Calgary today.”