Current Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke is leading what is turning out to be an otherwise divided field of challengers going into the municipal election this weekend.
According to a new Canada Pulse Insights poll, done exclusively for Rogers OMNI TV, 33 per cent of decided voters plan to vote for Locke. This is 17 points ahead of former mayor Doug McCallum of the Safe Surrey Coalition and Linda Annis with Surrey First, both at 16 per cent.
Troy Van-Vliet (SURREY NOW) and Mike Starchuk (Imagine Surrey) are at 12 per cent, according to the poll, and Honveer Singh Randhawa (Conservative Electors Association) is at nine per cent.
Eight per cent of voters remain undecided.
“Right now we have Brenda Locke cruising into a second term,” said John Wright, CEO of Canada Pulse Insights.
“There’s not a lot of time, not a lot of undecided, so it would appear that Brenda has probably got a good chance of winning.”
Wright says the opposition is “splintered,” making it hard for voters to get behind any one opposing candidate.
“Doug McCallum has a lot of baggage, and it’s not moving his vote forward anymore,” he said.
While the poll puts Locke well ahead of her competition, more than two-thirds – 68 per cent – feel she and the current city council are out of touch with voters’ needs. This includes 45 per cent of Locke’s supporters, and 79 per cent of those planning to vote for another candidate.
Affordability and the cost of living top residents’ concerns, the poll found, with 46 per cent of respondents saying this is one of their top three concerns. Thirty-two per cent say crime, policing, and public safety are their top priority, followed by housing affordability and home ownership (30 per cent) and health care and access to care (30 per cent).
Poll results are based on an online survey of 483 Surrey residents, conducted between Sept. 28 and Oct. 9. It has a reported margin of error of +/- 4.5 percentage points.
In 2022, Locke beat out McCallum by just 973 votes, coming in at 28.14 per cent and 27.31 per cent, respectively.
The municipal election is this Saturday, Oct. 17.
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