Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson on Monday November 17, 2008.Carmine Marinelli For The Globe and Mail
The city's first-term Vision Vancouver party is getting increasingly low grades from the public over its handling of the Olympic village, says a new poll obtained by The Globe and Mail.
That is accompanied by a noticeable increase in disapproval ratings for Mayor Gregor Robertson - up to one in three people polled now, compared to one in five in August.
That's not because people are switching sides, though.
Instead, most of that disapproval is coming from people who weren't sure in August what they thought of the mayor, says pollster Barb Justason, whose company Justason Marketing surveyed 400 people during the week of Nov. 12-18.
"What we're seeing is that people are no longer reserving judgment," Ms. Justason said. "They're starting to make decisions."
Nearly 60 per cent of people polled, who were called the week that the Olympic village was put into receivership, disapproved of the way the city was dealing with it, compared to only 43 per cent who were disapproving in August.
The poll did still indicate that 45 per cent of people polled said they were likely to vote for Vision, compared to only 30 per cent for the Non-Partisan Association - the centre-right party that was in power last term - or 21 per cent for COPE, the city's left-wing party.
It also showed that people still overwhelmingly like the way Mr. Robertson and his Vision team are "making the city more environmentally conscious."
Those results, Vision representatives say, mirror more or less what they're seeing in their own internal polling, although they maintain that the party and the mayor still have the support of well over half of people they survey on most issues.
"The Olympic village is an issue that taxpayers are clearly worried about," said Vision's executive director, Ian Baillie. "When they are confronted with a question about it, they're generally in a sour mood."
He said he didn't put much faith in any other changes in numbers obtained in previous polls, since most of them are part of the usual variation as issues come and go.
Ms. Justason's poll also tested out the names of potential mayoral candidates for the Non-Partisan Association.
When people were asked who they would vote for if current NPA Councillor Suzanne Anton were running for mayor, some people who had previously said they would vote for either Vision or COPE changed their minds. That put Vision and the NPA within three percentage points of each other.
"That showed us that having a known candidate can be a game-changer," Ms. Justason said.
Mr. Baillie noted, though, that Ms. Anton is actually more popular than her own party, so the numbers could be deceiving. And he said a question like the one posed by Ms. Justason may have the effect of inviting people to reconsider on the basis of new information.
The Hornby bike lane, a $2.3-million trial that created a concrete-barrier-separated lane all the way across the downtown on a busy arterial, is still the subject of divided opinion in the city. Both the Justason and Vision polls have shown that there's almost an even split among Vancouverites on whether it's a good idea.
Ms. Justason's recent poll asked a second question - whether people approved of the way the city had handled the Hornby bike lane. Only one in three people thought the city had done a good job of that.
There has been a flurry of polls on city politics in recent months, with polls given exclusively to one media outlet or another. Polling news can be useful ammunition for political parties by persuading potential candidates to think there's either no point in running - if one party seems to have an unbeatable lead - or an as incentive to run, because the ruling party seems vulnerable.
Special to The Globe and Mail
Frances Bula