Another poll from Barb Justason, who’s provided us the voters with information for this campaign that usually the political parties keep to themselves. My Globe story is here.
The basic numbers: 68 per cent of decided voters opting for Mayor Gregor Robertson; 32 per cent for NPA challenger Suzanne Anton. Twenty per cent are undecided, btw. For council, 37 per cent support Vision; 29 per cent NPA; 19 per cent Green; 11 per cent COPE.
Approval ratings (which are different from “how would you vote tomorrow” show that approval levels have stayed the same for the mayor and Anton, but his disapproval ratings have dropped in the last two months and hers have gone up.
Those numbers have to be looked at with caution, as every pollster will tell you. No more than 35 per cent of people vote in any Vancouver campaign, so you have to factor in who actually votes among those people on the phone with the pollster. Younger, poorer, more transient, renter voters less likely to come to polls, as any number of studies have shown.
That means NPA voters are likely to be more dominant on voting day than these poll numbers indicate.
Another factor: Vision and COPE voters likely to support each other’s candidates, but we don’t know exactly how many. 100 per cent? 90 per cent? 75 per cent? Not sure. If it were 100 per cent, the combined Vision/COPE slate would have 48 per cent support, easily trumping other parties. But I’m guessing that’s not the case.