Former city councillor Mike Walters is an unabashed federalist and has been knocking on doors. He has concluded that like Brexit, the Alberta independence movement has potential to defy polling indications.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Credit where it’s due, he understands that motivated grassroots efforts beat complacent polling leads. Walters is correct that anything can happen when voters feel their concerns have been dismissed for too long. He just happens to be on the wrong side of which group feels most dismissed right now.

Just weeks before U.K. citizens voted to reject membership in the EU, established pollsters were dismissing support for Brexit as being deep into minority territory at 37%. The support for Brexit didn’t swing 15% in a few weeks. It was always there, but pollsters couldn’t see it.

Project fear was a campaign managed by elites with no connection to, nor concept of, what the average citizen on the ground was thinking. The establishment felt confident if it pushed down from the top hard enough and offered threats of potential social and financial collapse if Brexit were embraced, the lowly voters on the ground would complacently choose to maintain the status quo.

Despite the stark lesson offered by the Brexit experience, the Canadian establishment is following the same playbook as the U.K. elites did. And it could lead to a similar outcome.

Few federalists are willing to get their hands dirty and go to the doors themselves. Walters has been doing so, and he clearly is getting a message that the Alberta pollsters and academics are missing.

Walters has passed the fact check test, but pollsters may not. But will his federalist compatriots heed his warning?