Nearly half of mayoral race voters undecided
Poll reveals crowded field of candidates muddies picture for almost half of voters
An unusually high number of Vancouver voters are undecided about how they’ll vote in the mayoral election that’s less than five months away, a new poll shows.
The new data, collected by Research Co. and provided exclusively to Postmedia, represents the first “horse race poll of the campaign,” said Research Co. president Mario Canseco.
It found 47 per cent of respondents said they weren’t sure who they would vote for if the mayoral election were held today.
“That’s a big story,” said Canseco. “Going back to other municipal elections I’ve covered, four or five months before the election, you get around 30 per cent who are still undecided.”
One reason so many voters are undecided, Canseco said, is there’s an unusually crowded field of mayoral candidates right now.
The data provides a first glimpse of voter attitudes now that the field of mayoral candidates has become clearer.
In the past two weeks, the city’s two largest parties selected their respective mayoral nominees in entrepreneur Ken Sim for the Non-Partisan Association and Squamish Nation leader Ian Campbell for Vision Vancouver.
Earlier this week, UBC professor Patrick Condon officially launched his campaign for the mayoral nomination of the Coalition of Progressive Electors.
Meanwhile, Green Coun. Adriane Carr — who topped Canseco’s early polls on potential mayoral candidates back in April and May — announced last Friday that, after months of consideration, she had decided to run for a third term on council this year, instead of taking a shot at the mayor’s chair.
The new Research Co. poll asked for people’s impressions of eight declared mayoral candidates.
In addition to Sim, Campbell, and Condon, respondents were asked about independent candidates Shauna Sylvester and Kennedy Stewart, and a trio of candidates with upstart parties: Coalition Vancouver’s Wai Young, ProVancouver’s David Chen, and Hector Bremner, who’s currently an NPA councillor but expected to run with his own new party.
“You have so many choices,” Canseco said.
“If we only had two or three choices, like we did in the last election, the level of undecideds would be considerably lower than what we see right now. But now you have three or four candidates from the centre-right, and three or four candidates from the centre-left.”
Among decided voters, three candidates stood above the rest. Asked who they would vote for if the election were held today, 26 per cent of decided voters picked independent Kennedy Stewart, the federal NDP member of Parliament for Burnaby South.
Coming in second — and within the margin of error — 23 per cent of decided voters picked the NPA’s Ken Sim, who co-founded local companies Nurse Next Door and Rosemary Rocksalt.
Vision’s Ian Campbell came third, picked by 18 per cent of decided voters.
Results were based on an online study conducted from June 9- 11, among 400 adults in the City of Vancouver. The margin of error is 4.9 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
Stewart is “definitely doing well with some groups that he needs to win the election,” including voters in east Vancouver, Canseco said, adding that the MP is also doing well with those over age 55, which was a bit of a surprise, because older voters traditionally tend to support the centre-right NPA.
Although the poll found that Sim isn’t seeing the kind of support the NPA has traditionally seen in the past (the party has dominated local politics for most of its 81-year existence) he is holding onto most of the voters who supported the last NPA mayoral candidate, Kirk LaPointe, in the 2014 election, which was “crucial,” Canseco said.
After the top three, the poll found lower levels of support for the rest of the field, with 10 per cent of decided voters saying they would vote for Bremner if the election were held today, nine per cent picking Sylvester, eight per cent for Condon, four per cent for Chen and three per cent for Young.
The fact that the incumbent mayor, Vision Vancouver’s Gregor Robertson, isn’t seeking re-election also helps makes this race more wide open, Canseco said.
“The reason why we continue to see all of these candidates in the race is everyone thinks they can get to 26 or 27 per cent and win
The reason why we continue to see all of these candidates in the race is everyone thinks they can get to 26 or 27 per cent and win this thing.
this thing,” he said. “We’ve never had a mayor elected with such a low number of votes.”
It still seems likely that at least some of the current candidates will drop out of the race at some point between today and Oct. 20, Canseco said.
But it’s possible we could see a situation where, shortly before election day, there are four or even five candidates all within a few points of one another.
“It would be an incredibly nightmarish situation for me,” Canseco said, with a laugh.
“I’m hoping for a clearer picture between here and October.”