Most Vancouver residents think the city is headed in the wrong direction: survey

Vancouver City Hall (Rick Schwartz/Flickr)

How do Vancouver residents feel about the state of their city 15 months ahead of the October 2022 civic election?

The newly released results of a survey conducted last month by Abacus Data, one of the first polls to gauge public opinion for the election, suggest most residents think the City of Vancouver is headed in the wrong direction.

See also:

According to the survey, 57% of respondents believe Vancouver is on the “wrong track,” with an overwhelming 81% choosing “mostly because of poor choices made by those at City Hall.”

This also aligns with an earlier survey conducted by the municipal government in early 2020, before the onset of the pandemic, which found that 55% of over 10,000 survey respondents believe their life in the city is getting worse.

When Abacus Data asked who they would vote for today as the Mayor of Vancouver, independent incumbent Kennedy Stewart and Ken Sim are neck-to-neck at 13% and 14%, respectively. This is followed by Green Party councillor Adrianne Carr at 6%, independent councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung at 3%, and independent councillor Colleen Hardwick and former Vision Vancouver councillor Andrea Reimer each at 2%.

Mark Marissen and NPA Park Board commissioner John Coupar have also launched their own mayoral campaigns, with each individual polling at 1%. Sim, who narrowly lost to Stewart by under 1,000 votes in the 2018 civic election, while representing the NPA at the time, announced his plan earlier this year to run again.

It should be emphasized that 58% of respondents said they are “undecided” at this early time.

Amongst only decided voters, 34% would vote Sim for mayor, followed by 31% for re-electing Stewart, 13% for Carr, 7% for Kirby-Yung, 4% each for Hardwick and Reimer, and 3% each for Marissen and Coupar.

Decided voters also gave their input on who they would re-elect as a city councillor, with 28% for Carr, 16% for Kirby-Yung, 13% for COPE’s Jean Swanson, 12% for NPA’s Melissa De Genova, 10% for Green Party’s Pete Fry, 7% for OneCity’s Christine Boyle, 6% for Hardwick, and 3% each for independent Lisa Dominato, independent Rebecca Bligh, and Green Party’s Michael Wiebe.

Kennedy Stewart (Daily Hive)

As an independent, Stewart has experienced difficulty with driving forward some of his key policies in city council, but last week he announced his intention to shift gears by recruiting “like-minded people who share common values” to run for city council.

Although he has not formally aligned himself with a party at this time, Sim has also indicated he will form a slate of candidates for councillors and Park Board commissioners, with the commissioners committed to ending the separate elected governance of the Park Board in reaction to its string of controversies.

Abacus Data’s survey was commissioned by Sim’s campaign. The company states it had a sample size of 1,000 interviews, with 700 conducted online and 300 conducted by phone, with those on the phone focused on engaging the city’s large Chinese-Canadian and Indo-Canadian electors who may have language barriers. The survey has a margin of error of =/- 3.1% 19 times out of 20.

Half (50%) of the respondents were Caucasian, followed by 33% Chinese, 6% South Asian, and 5% Southeast Asian. More than half (54%) own their home, 37% rent, and 9% live with family.

Ken Sim (Daily Hive)

See also: