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Vision Vancouver poll numbers tick upwards

February 11th, 2011 · 73 Comments

This is the latest from Justason Market Intelligence, which has gone in for a series of polls on civic issues this year. (Usually, we have no idea what people are thinking in this town til close to election day.)

Interesting numbers on Vision Vancouver, the mayor, casinos, bike lanes and more.

Barb Justason notes that, even though polling numbers have improved for Vision, the disapproval ratings for the mayor are holding steady, as are disapproval numbers for issues like the handling of the Olympic village and the Hornby bike lane.

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  • Paul

    @Frances. Please don’t paint all of us with the same brush. I am tremendously against most of the Vision politicians on this city council. Gregor Robertson, Andrea Reimer, Geoff Meggs and Raymond Louie top my list of people who I view as harmful to this city.

    But I won’t discredit everything that is positive for them, especially not a poll that shows any of them doing a little better.

    Certainly I can see a few people who are quick to discount anything pro-Vision, but I can guarantee you there are many more of us who see the issues and fairly judge for ourselves where we stand on them.

    It’s unfair of you as a journalist to label all people who take issue with Gregor Robertson and Vision Vancouver as unreasonable.

  • The Fourth Horseman

    Actually, I think that the science and art of polling is undergoing a revolution right now.

    Online vs land-line phone (and no cell phone yet!), a multitude of special interest groups, immigrants and long-time citizens, various cultural mores. Many people who will no longer give their opinions to pollsters.

    That is what interests me most. One can make an assumption that we are living in a rather fragmented society. It was easier when we had one dominant culture and one means of contacting them for polling.

    I always wonder: who are they speaking to in those polls, how are they taking the poll?

  • Max

    I understand where companies get land line contact numbers.

    But with personal e-mail addresses, I’d be curious to know how a polling company readily lays their hands on that info.

  • Declan

    “I have to say that I am startled to see that anti-Vision commenters are so determined to discount anything that appears to be even mildly pro-Vision”

    Really? I would have thought the widespread accusations of fraud against the city engineering department without any supporting evidence (and that’s just one of many examples) would have been sign enough.

    Evolution, global warming, polling, cycling counts, flouridation, vaccinations, crime stats, census, etc. etc. – if the conclusion is wrong the science is invalid, it’s a pretty consistent approach on the right wing (and to a lesser extent, on the far left wing as well), I find.

  • Richard

    Well, if indeed polls are skewed by pollsters being enable to reach people who are only using cell phones, they would understate support for Vision and cycling lanes as both are more likely to be supported by the younger people who are more likely not to have land lines.

    I suspect, however, that 19 out of 20 +- 4.9% of pollsters know this and are adjusting for it accordingly.

  • Todd

    Frances said: “She’s doing the polling for the same reason that other pollsters do political polling and then release the results to the media for free (Angus Reid, Ipsos Reid, Mustel and more): it’s a marketing thing. Her sample size would be considered absolutely credible by people in polling”.
    ————————————————–

    Bang on Frances. Mustel, Ipsos, ARS, et al are all quite accurate and I would suggest the same here with Justason.

    And land lines, cell phones, VOIP phones as well as properly calibrated online panels are all part of the polling mix.

    It’s the Stratcom polls commissioned by VV that people should be more leary about esp. when they don’t release detailed tables/results. Ditto for the NPA camps and their own polls.

  • Frances Bula

    @Paul. You’re right, I apologize. It’s a particularc small group of anti-Vision people. I was imprecise and over-generalized. And they’re certainly not the only ideologically blind group in the world. A friend of mine who covers health issues gets constant emails from people who discount all science related to health issues (all skewed by the influence of Big Pharma, didn’t you know). I’ve had groups in the past from various quadrants of the ideological world who refuse to believe information from Statistics Canada or the police or whatever.

  • Frances Bula

    @Everyman. There are lots of interesting shifts going on in the polling business to adapt to technology. Don’t forget that when they started out, they didn’t even use telephones but went door to door. That was considered the only reliable methods and telephones were suspect. (Read Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman for a vivid description of those days.)

    Polling is a multi-billion-dollar business and these people — and the clients who are desperate to find out which toasters or politicians people like — are very far from giving up and saying, “Oh, it’s too complicated to figure out how to reach people. Let’s not do it any more.” Polling and market research companies are adapting in all kinds of ways. They’re using multiple technologies — note that Barb used both phone (about 430 peole) and online (another 280) to test her answers. And online, by the way, doesn’t mean going out on Craigslist and asking people what they think. Polling companies assembles huge bodies of people who say they’re willing to answer poll questions online — sometimes in the hundreds of thousands. Then they do random selection from among that group to generate a good sample size for any one poll they’re doing.

    Re why people say they’re going to vote COPE or Vision or the NPA. It’s often not that connected to the individual candidate but more a general impression that the potential voter has about that party. The whole thing about political polls is that very few people have really specific information about the people or issues they’re being asked to judge. They have impressions based on certain symbolic narratives or striking events that have lodged in their brains amid the information overload that they (all of us) are dealing with. So a person who says they’ll vote for COPE may not be thinking of Cadman or Woodsworth. They’ll just have a vague recollection that someone from COPE stuck up for some issue that that person took a mild interest in.

  • Bill McCreery

    @ Bobee 42.

    Anyone who knows Vancouver’s West End knows that ‘sewing up the West End’ for any political party isn’t going to happen, so your mirth can be shared.

    However, thank you for volunteering to vote in November. It is not necessary to make quite such an ultimate sacrifice however. I would be pleased to offer my services to take you to the polling station, but with the proviso that you remain one of the quick. I will not even try to convince you on the way as to how ‘move your arm’, I’d just be happy to see you and others marking your ballots.

  • Bill McCreery

    @ Frances 31.

    Please do not forget that I have accepted that the Justason poll is reasonably accurate. It confirms what I’m being told by experienced Vancouver political observers. In addition, every other person who is unhappy with Vision has not necessarily rejected this poll either.

    Complacency and believing your own arguments are very dangerous. That is why it is necessary IMO that those who do feel strongly that Vision are doing significant damage to Vancouver must get out and convince the wider swath of the population who do not haunt the hallowed halls of the blogous-sphere that change is necessary.

  • ThinkOutsideABox

    This is what I can count on without a poll telling me. At election time:

    1) A certain percentage will vote for Suzanne Anton because her last name begins with an ‘A’.

    2) A certain percentage will vote for Gregor because they think he’s hot.

    3) A certain percentage will vote for ABV councilors (anyone but Vision).

    4) A certain percentage isn’t even paying attention and couldn’t name a single councilor.

    @ Todd, totally agree, and also about your assessment of Stratcom. One of their push polls conducted on behalf of real estate developer Westbank was recorded and posted in its entirety on West End Neighbours’ website. Of all the rezoning options provided, the poll didn’t ask people if they were likely, or somewhat likely, to support the development if they built within existing zoning guidelines.

    I trust Barb Justason’s polls and those still wondering, Vision didn’t pay for it, it was self sponsored. There is no point in dwelling on that for this particular poll, just as it was pointless to suspect that Andrea Reimer was on the phone as a Stratcom caller for the poll mentioned above, as many were doing.

    Now for an alternate view by a pollster:

    http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/breakingnews/pollsters-advise-voters-to-be-wary-of-polls-ahead-of-possible-spring-vote-116112554.html

    “Pay attention if you want to but, frankly, they don’t really mean anything,” sums up Andre Turcotte, a pollster and communications professsor at Carleton University.
    —
    “The way it’s working now is a real dog’s breakfast. It’s not working,” says Ekos Research president Frank Graves, who provides bi-weekly surveys to the CBC.

    Deep breaths everybody, shake it out.

  • f.H.Leghorn

    Consultants of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your honoraria.

    If you give your opinions away they’re not worth much, and yet the polling firm turns around and charges for them. It’s modern info-magic, something from nothing, money for free. Mostly the pollsters’ clients want to know how much impact their marketing is having on the average uninformed Joe or Jane Consumer.

    Sometimes its cheaper and more effective to use the marketing budget to just buy a politician people already like than try to get people to like them, particularly when they have been exercising their judgement for a year or two in office.

    Even journalists charge a little something for their point of view. If they don’t, they’re just bloggers

  • The Fourth Horseman

    Confirms what I said, think outside the box @61

    MSNBC made a similar assessment some months ago.

  • Nelson100

    Whatever the poll numbers say, an informal and very non statistical poll of my friends and coworkers ( spanning a wide ranger of incomes, neighbourhoods and perspectives) seems to suggest a high level of unhappiness with Vision. It’s not usually the bike lanes that come up, rather development issues and general lack of public consultation.

  • Bobbie Bees

    Well, I just conducted my own survey this morning. This survey consisted of one question. The sample group consisted of one person.

    The question asked was ” What is your opinion of polls?”

    The answer given was “they’re full of cr@p and can mean anything you want them to mean.”

  • Dan Cooper

    37 JamieLee wrote, “I am not a fan of Vision but I will vote a majority of them and COPE on school board…”

    This was the big thing I noticed in this poll: Vision and COPE between them have 2.5 times the voters (about 70%) of the NPA (about 20%). Assuming the two parties remain in coalition, they have a powerful lead even if the Greens go their own way or into coalition with the NPA.

  • Dan Cooper

    Curses! As usual, I looked at the numbers and immediately forgot them. Above should read, “Vision and COPE between them have more than 2.5 times the voters (around 70%) of the NPA (around 25%).” I suppose I could have even said “almost 3 times (72% to 25%).

    Mea culpa.

  • ThinkOutsideABox

    Here’s what I noticed, people from Gregor on up, to down, to side to side in the party fold, have made it a point to label blame on the previous council and the NPA, but it appears that hasn’t worked with the public according to this survey’s results. The obvious reasons to me would be that there are current Vision councilors who were in the previous council, and it’s now two years on since the current councilors made hay out of the village and won the election. They now “own” it.

    Another interesting observation of this survey has to do with higher buildings. Whether it was council or the planning department doing the hoodwinking, at every opportunity in public, Director of Planning Brent Toderian would point out that opinions in the public about allowing higher buildings were evenly split.

    But Justason’s poll shows 37% were in favour of higher buildings and 46% were not. Those in favour don’t even come within the margin of error. Regardless, Vision councilors and Suzanne Anton pushed ahead with the policy.

  • Bill McCreery

    @ Box 69.

    I think you’ll find that Suzanne Anton did not vote of the downtown higher buildings motion a week or so back. And, yes, the Justason poll is no doubt more accurate than Mr. Toderian’s opinion.

    It will be interesting to see if Vision and Cope can hang together in November. It’s difficult to see how Cope could do so given how they’ve been treated. Among other things as well, if they do, a lot of voters will lose respect for them. Either way, they are very vulnerable if they once more get 1 or 2 token slots in each forum. From what I have seen their agenda often differs from Vision’s, so how can they argue that remaining the complacent lap dog will serve their supporters? It has not and will not.

  • ThinkOutsideABox

    @ Bill,

    Good to hear. I was under the impression she was favourable given her comments to speakers to the motion where she gave the impression she liked tall buildings.

  • Chris

    On the topic of polls and margins of errors (since many people here don’t seem to understand them).
    http://threehundredeight.blogspot.com/2011/02/should-we-be-wary-of-polls.html

  • Gassy Jack’s Ghost

    Actually, Toderian said it was evenly split between those who took the time to fill out the forms, which he qualified by saying it was only about 75 out of over 500 participants at the open house. There are undoubtedly concerted efforts to get people out to answer these surveys by those with special interests, both pro and anti (see for example, Skyscraper forum). I guess the upshot being, unlike a poll, the City surveys can be skewed, and not a random sampling.

    It also raises the issue of how the results are presented in the final reports. The architect who analzyed (very critically) the View Cone report at civicwatch claimed his survey response wasn’t even included in the report (as one of the 75 responses). And at Shannon Mews, the Straight reported a while back that the two leaders opposing the towers allege that they were fraudulently misrepresented in the report to make it look like they supported the towers!

  • Gentle Bossanova

    Ghost makes a good point. To poll on a referendum or an election question is different from polling on development options.

    Which horse is going to win the race is something a bookie can have a fair grasp on—if fairness means coming out on top or something like that.

    What development form is most suited to making good urbanism… Oh no, Las Vegas is not the model to follow for that! Gambling (shamefully skewed to give the house the advantage) and pre-election polling (science in the service of democracy) share something in common in the manner in which the outcomes are deceptively predictable.

    Decisions about urban form, on the other hand, are multi-valent and do not profit from simplistic bean counting. What happens in Las Vegas can stay in Las Vegas. But what makes good urbanism has been known for centuries, and only befuddled in the suburban goings-on of the second half of the 20th century.

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