64% in Ottawa back vote reform, poll finds

With Friday’s noon deadline approaching for Canadians to have their say on electoral reform, a new Mainstreet/Postmedia study shows nearly two in three Ottawa residents support changing the way we vote.

“People in the Ottawa area are again proving to be particularly engaged when it comes to the discussion on electoral reform,” said pollster Quito Maggi, president of Mainstreet Research, which surveyed a random sample of 866 Ottawa residents.

Sixty-four per cent of poll respondents favoured some form of electoral reform, while only 17 per cent want to keep the current first past the post (FPTP) system.

The House of Commons Special Committee on Electoral Reform began a cross-Canada tour in September, holding a national consultation with formal hearings and public sessions. Friday’s public meeting in Fredericton is the final one.

At last estimate, 2,800 Canadians had participated in an online consultation launched in August. The deadline for submissions is Friday, Oct. 7, at noon.

Nearly half of Ottawa residents surveyed in the Mainstreet poll — 45 per cent — said they were following the issue, and 14 per cent said they were following it “very closely.” Only 16 per cent said they weren’t aware of the federal government’s plan to reform the way we vote.

That proportion was consistent among male and female respondents, though numbers spiked among voters aged 65 and over, with 59 per cent saying they were keeping a close watch, and only seven per cent unaware of electoral reform.

Despite efforts to publicize the consultations, however, only 31 per cent of respondents said they were aware of their MP’s holding consultations on electoral reform.

Mainstreet also queried respondents on their familiarity with the voting methods under consideration.

People were most familiar with the single transferable vote (72 per cent), a proportional representation system used in Australia’s upper house in which voters rank candidates in order of preference, with the result based upon how each candidate ranks overall.

A majority of respondents (58 per cent) were familiar with Canada’s current first past the post system, 58 per cent were also familiar with the term proportional representation, 53 per cent were familiar with alternative vote, and 48 per cent were familiar with mixed member proportional representation.

The survey was conducted Oct. 1 and 2 by landline and cellphone, with results weighted by age and gender based on the 2011 census. It carries a margin of error of plus or minus 3.33 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.