First BC-STV Referendum poll
Posted April 22, 2009 by Sacha Peter - Link
Category: Polls, Referendum
Comments (3)
No STV has been the “first past the post” to publish the full results of an Ipsos-Reid poll on BC-STV. The pro-STV side alluded to conducting their own poll (via Angus Reid Strategies), but they never replied to my inquiries with respect to source data.
The summary results (link, local copy), and the detailed data tables (link, local copy) are made available. There were 800 people surveyed, from March 24 to 30, 2009.
60% of people sampled (478 people) did not know there was a referendum coming up in this provincial election; slightly more women than men.
Despite this, 324 (41%) said they would lean toward or vote for FPTP and 340 (43%) said they would lean toward or vote for STV. The remainder (135, 17%) indicated they would not vote or do not know how to vote.
Not surprisingly, most people know about the existing electoral system, while most people do not know about the STV system (even if the referendum were to pass, I wouldn’t think the numbers would change that much in 2013!).
Something that slipped into the summary results (last page) was the union affiliation of the sample; 29% were affiliated with a union, 70% were not. Finally, 21% of the survey had a household income of $100,000 and above, something I thought was a little strange.
The FPTP/STV 41/43 result normalizes to 48.9% / 51.1%, if you expand this out to 100%.
Also ambiguous is the question “How likely is that you will change your mind and vote for the other option on Election Day?”, as it does not separate between FPTP and STV supporters – this was a critical question that either was not asked, or was omitted from the survey details.
I would also like to take this time to thank No STV for releasing the poll results.
Interesting stuff!
Angus Reid Strategies claimed that 65% were in favour of STV and that certainly did not make any logical sense, for various reasons.
Another interesting Ipsos finding:
“Three quarters (76%) feel the current electoral system is very or somewhat fair.”
Based upon the Ipsos preference finding as well as the above Ipsos finding, I’m re-inforced in my belief that STV will likely fail with less than 50% support on election day.
Really strange how the Pro-STV campaign haven’t publicly released their poll – did they think they would be the only ones to conduct one?
I also wanted to comment on the questions regarding knowledge of both systems. Down to the individual respondent, the numbers appear to be almost exactly reversed: Great deal/fair amount of knowledge – FPTP 65%, STV 35%; Little/nothing – FPTP 35%, STV 65%.
I do not doubt the fact that most do not understand STV, even though this is its second time around, however I doubt that those 46% who chose a “fair amount” for FPTP could explain why, say, even though one party gets more votes, another can still form government. I am always disappointing when polls do not ask a simple question to see if the respondents actually understand.
In a poll after the coalition debacle late last year, 51% responded that they thought the Prime Minister was directly elected. I’m sure they would have also said that they understood FPTP!
@BJ: Why doesn’t 65% make logical sense? In the last referendum 58% or 59% (I forget precisely which) voted in favour of BC-STV so it seems plausible to me. Angus Reid was reporting the percentage in support of BC-STV *of those who are decided.* The number makes perfect sense.
@G jr: First you criticise the Pro-STV campaign for not releasing their data (fine) and then you go on to make your own claim without any data whatsoever! On what basis do you claim there’s a relationship between level of knowledge and electoral system preference? Presumably it’s merely anecdotal on your part (with a biased sample since the sample of people any one of us encounters regularly is biased) and I strongly question it.