{"id":613979,"date":"2026-04-19T07:14:36","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T07:14:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/613979\/"},"modified":"2026-04-19T07:14:36","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T07:14:36","slug":"poll-shows-44-of-calgarians-feel-positive-about-mayor-farkas-while-many-remain-unsure-calgary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/613979\/","title":{"rendered":"Poll shows 44% of Calgarians feel positive about Mayor Farkas while many remain unsure – Calgary"},"content":{"rendered":"

Six months after his narrow election victory, a new poll shows that Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas<\/a> appears to be enjoying a \u201choneymoon\u201d with Calgarians, while many have yet to form an opinion.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The poll, conducted by Pollara Strategic Insights, asked Calgarians how they feel when they hear from Farkas. Sentiments were positive for 44 per cent of respondents, the results show.<\/p>\n

According to the poll,\u00a010 per cent of respondents said they felt excited, while 34 per cent noted they were comfortable with the mayor.<\/p>\n

In terms of negative sentiments, the poll showed six per cent felt frustrated, while just one per cent felt angry.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe majority of Calgarians did not vote for him in the last election campaign, but he\u2019s been able to at least get them to the point where even if they didn\u2019t vote for him, they\u2019re at least comfortable with what he\u2019s doing,\u201d Pollara chief strategy officer Dan Arnold told Global News.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tA graphic showing the breakdown of responses in a Pollara poll asking how Calgarians felt when they heard from Mayor Jeromy Farkas.\t\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tGlobal News\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Farkas was elected mayor in last fall\u2019s municipal election after defeating runner-up Sonya Sharp by a narrow 616 votes after a recount.<\/p>\n

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He secured\u00a026.1 per cent of the vote in an election where just 39.04 per cent of eligible voters cast a ballot.<\/p>\n

According to Arnold, Farkas is \u201coff to a good start\u201d in his first six months of governing while \u201cnot rocking the boat.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s really expanded beyond, by leaps and bounds, above what he actually got in the last election campaign,\u201d Arnold said.<\/p>\n

However, the poll showed that while eight per cent of respondents had no feelings regarding the mayor, 40 per cent said they \u201cdon\u2019t know enough\u201d to provide an opinion.<\/p>\n

Lori Williams, an associate professor of policy studies at Mount Royal University, said the poll\u2019s results show a mixed reception for the mayor.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe good news for Jeromy Farkas is that his approval is in positive territory,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat is quite highly problematic is the number of people who really don\u2019t have a sense that they know him or really have a basis to form an opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked how familiar they are with Farkas, 21 per cent of respondents said they knew \u201ca lot about\u201d him, while 42 per cent said they knew \u201csomething\u201d about the mayor. Twenty-two per cent of respondents said they knew \u201cvery little\u201d about Farkas and another 15 per cent said they hadn\u2019t heard of him.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tA graphic showing the breakdown of responses in a Pollara poll asking how aware Calgarians are of Mayor Jeromy Farkas.\t\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tGlobal News\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

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According to Williams, the results are \u201ca bit of a mystery\u201d as the mayor has been visible in very public matters, including the second rupture in less than two years of the Bearspaw feeder main and its subsequent repairs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a sense during the election that voters didn\u2019t know these candidates very well, and it doesn\u2019t look like that\u2019s improved a lot since the election,\u201d Williams said. \u201cIt may be because there\u2019s so many attention-getting problems that are happening at the national and the provincial level.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Farkas was first elected to city council representing Ward 11 in 2017 and ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 2021.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey say in politics that you can\u2019t make a second impression but I was really grateful for the opportunity Calgarians gave me to be able to serve here and now as mayor,\u201d Farkas told Global News. \u201cOur city council team is focused on being just that: a team, focused on the issues that matter the most to Calgarians.<\/p>\n

Farkas said he believes the polling is a reflection of the work council has done in its term so far, including budget deliberations that ended with a lowered municipal property tax increase.<\/p>\n

When asked about the number of Calgarians who don\u2019t know enough about him to form an opinion, Farkas brought up the city\u2019s communication during the feeder main break.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt really showed us that we need to provide Calgarians with all the information that we have access to, the good, the bad and the ugly,\u201d he said. \u201cCertainly, as mayor, that\u2019s my commitment is to reach every single Calgarian to make them feel included in the decisions that we do here at the city.\u201d<\/p>\n

The online poll was conducted by Pollara Strategic Insights with 1,151 voting-aged Calgarians between March 16 and 25. It has a margin of error of \u00b12.9 per cent (19 times out of 20).<\/p>\n

\n\t\t&copy 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Six months after his narrow election victory, a new poll shows that Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas appears to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":613980,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194293],"tags":[49,2798,206586,48,24156,109504],"class_list":{"0":"post-613979","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-calgary","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-calgary","10":"tag-calgary-politics","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-city-of-calgary","13":"tag-jeromy-farkas"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=613979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/613980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}