Early polls show voters are weighing their options for Vancouver mayor this fall

We are a little over two months away from the municipal election in Vancouver, and with several candidates set to be on the ballot for Mayor, voters remain undecided as they weigh their options.

Gone are the days of two very dominant parties. For the first time, the city is seeing seven parties putting up full slates of candidates, and polls are suggesting it could be a very tight race come October.

According to a recent online poll from Research Co., which surveyed just over 400 Vancouverites, if a vote were called today, ABC incumbent Ken Sim could take the lead in the mayor’s race, with 22 per cent. Green Party candidate and current councillor Pete Fry and Vancouver Liberals candidate Kareem Allam are tied for second, both receiving 14 per cent.

However, from those same findings, more than a quarter of votes are still up for grabs.

“Usually, campaigns pick up in B.C. at the municipal level after Labour Day,” said Research Co. president Mario Canseco.

“You start to get more action from the candidates, but there’s also the complexity of having so many established parties. We’ve never had seven slates…when it comes to council, park board, or the school board.”

Canseco says the results show Sim’s support is lower than it was in the last election.

“Fewer than a third of voters would actually cast a ballot for him, but the opposition is so disjointed that there is no guarantee that somebody is going to emerge as the de facto rival.”

A separate poll by Pallas found similar results for those hoping to challenge Sim, with Fry leading with 18 per cent support and Allam at 14 per cent.

However, with a small sample size and over two months still to go, a lot could change by election day.

Daniel Westlake, term assistant professor for SFU’s School of Public Policy, says that uncertainty doesn’t mean the polls are not useful.

“They give us a sense of where the race is, and I think the takeaway from this should be there are lots of different candidates within margins of error of each other,” Westlake said.

“So it’s a very muddy, very confused race.”

In April, COPE, OneCity, and the Greens reached an agreement to limit the number of progressive candidates on the ballot to avoid splitting the vote, also agreeing to a good faith effort to determine which mayor is better suited to run in the race come October.

However, these early findings show William Azaroff with OneCity and Stephanie Allen with COPE currently polling in single digits.

“If any one kind of block of voters — be it an anti-incumbent block or a centre-left block or pro-development block — if they’re split across a wide range of candidates, that can be really bad for those voters and make it difficult for any of those candidates to be successful.”

The final list of candidates won’t be confirmed until after Sept. 18.