With Vancouver’s municipal election just over a week away, a new poll suggests a tight race for mayor, with Green Party candidate Pete Fry holding a one-point lead over incumbent Ken Sim among decided voters.
The Canada Pulse Insights poll, done exclusively for CityNews and OMNI TV, puts Fry at 28 per cent and Sim at 27 per cent, within the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.
Vancouver Liberal candidate Kareem Allam trails at 19 per cent.
Among decided voters who say they will definitely vote or have already cast a ballot, Fry leads Sim by the same narrow margin, 29 per cent to 28 per cent.
TEAM for a Livable Vancouver candidate Colleen Hardwick sits at 13 per cent among decided voters, followed by Vote Vancouver’s Rebecca Bligh at seven per cent and Bright Future Vancouver’s Muhammad Ahmad at three per cent.
John Wright, CEO of Canada Pulse Insights, calls this a “very fragmented field” with a couple front-runners. He says it is “very apparent there are two different streams going head-to-head here.”
“You’re going to have Pete Fry, who has a group of people who are more about the environment, more about ethics, more about accountability, more about affordability, more about housing,” he said.
“That’s a very distinct agenda.”
On the other hand, he says, those constituents supporting Sim are distinctly different.
“Affordability is the most important issue to them, but then it’s crime, it’s municipal taxes, it’s accountability for the bottom line; they’re more meat-and-potato issues,” he said.
“Those tend to be factors where people will get out more so and vote. If they’re older voters, they oftentimes own homes and they are taxpayers, and they need to get out and vote because they take it more seriously. So it’s a different group of people.”
The poll says 10 per cent of all respondents are still undecided, even after voters who initially said they were unsure were asked whether they were leaning toward a candidate.
Wright says it is typical to have about 18 to 20 per cent who are undecided in any election campaign — with 10 per cent who just won’t show up.
“The eight per cent are looking at the personalities oftentimes, not just the issues, and they’re trying to see if they can connect with somebody who can represent them, because what elections are about are about who can be your change agent,” he said.
“You can have half the population saying that they want to have change, but then the question is, what kind of change do you want?”
Undecided voters may be swayed over the next few days, he says.
“We’re on the verge of Thanksgiving weekend. It’ll make a difference where people can get together and talk about these things,” he said. “But these people are watching very carefully those primary leaders in the field and will make their decision probably closer to Election Day.”
Wright says that overall, with such a tight race, the undecided voters can make a huge difference.
“If they get out to vote, then they could either tip the scales a little bit or a whole lot, depending upon who gets out to vote,” he said.
“So the critical thing with looking at these kind of numbers is that with it being so close with the top line candidates, it’s about getting the vote out.”
Sim won the 2022 mayoral election with just over 50 per cent of the vote.
Vancouverites head to the polls Oct. 17. Advance voting has taken place Oct. 3 and 7, with more scheduled for Oct. 10 and 13.
The poll surveyed 500 adult Vancouver residents online between Sept. 28 and Oct. 6. The margin of error is plus or minus 4.4 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, according to Canada Pulse Insights.
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