Vancouver election: New poll shows Ken Sim and Pete Fry battling for lead in mayoral race

Vancouver mayoral candidate, from left, Kareem Allam - Vancouver Liberals, Colleen Hardwick - TEAM, Pete Fry - Green, Rebecca Bligh - Vote Vancouver and Ken Sim - ABC. Photo by Arlen Redekop /PNG

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New polling for Postmedia News shows the race for the Vancouver mayor’s office shaping up to be a tight showdown with the challenger, Green Coun. Pete Fry, slightly ahead of the incumbent, ABC’s Ken Sim.

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In a poll conducted by Leger for Postmedia, 23 per cent of respondents said they would vote for Fry if the election were held today, followed closely by Sim at 19 per cent.

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The other three candidates were all in single digits. TEAM for a Livable Vancouver mayoral candidate Colleen Hardwick and the Vancouver Liberals’ Kareem Allam were tied with six per cent each, followed by Vote Vancouver’s Rebecca Bligh at five.

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The poll found 62 per cent of respondents believe Vancouver is heading in the wrong direction, compared with Surrey, Burnaby, Richmond and Coquitlam where less than half of respondents said the same. The Vancouver mayor’s approval rating was only 32 per cent, with 62 per cent of respondents saying they disapprove of the job he’s doing.

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Those numbers are “almost the worst that you can get out of any election that we cover,” said Steve Mossop, Leger’s executive vice-president for Western Canada.

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“Those numbers often spell doom” for an incumbent politician at any level, Mossop said, but he still considers Fry’s lead at this stage “tenuous.”

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It’s more common in municipal races than provincial and federal elections to see a high number of undecided voters late in a campaign. The Leger poll, conducted between Sept. 23 and 30, found more than a third of respondents were undecided.

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“That means that we’re not going out there with a prediction that Pete Fry is going to win. But what I will say is that it does look like Ken Sim is in a bit of trouble,” Mossop said.

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“When you have that ‘wrong direction’ number over 50 per cent, whoever’s in power is vulnerable. … In the 35 elections I’ve covered, it’s a litmus test, if you will, for election day,” Mossop said.

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The incumbent mayor would be even more vulnerable if he were up against a single main candidate, he said, “but when there’s more candidates that have even a chance of winning, it can make those incumbents do better.”

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Leger’s online poll, with 1,207 adults from around Metro Vancouver and 365 respondents in the City of Vancouver, is reported to be accurate to within plus or minus 2.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. Results were weighted according to age, gender, region, and education.