Just a few days after I published my own poll (conducted using Google Survey) on the referendum on electoral reform in BC, we now have a new Mainstreet poll. And it's showing exactly the same results!
Before talking about this poll, how remarkable is that? A $200 poll conducted using Google Survey can do just as good of a job as a full fledged, regular poll! You might not be excited about it but the political nerd/statistical geek in me is super excited. This is potentially revolutionary. Polling cost have already come down a lot in the last decade thanks to IVR and online sample, but Google Survey is just dirt cheap.
So, anyway, the new Mainstreet poll puts the "keeping the current system" at 50.5% among decided voter while "proportional representation" would receive 49.5%.
My own poll had 50.25% for keeping the current system (Note: yes when I published on Tuesday, "switching to PR" was slightly ahead -at 50.1%- but that's because I wanted to publish even though I still needed around 20 observations to be collected. Google Survey is great but it's crazy slow for the last few observations. It took almost a day and a half to collect these last 20 observations. When it was done, "keeping the current system" was back on top. It's irrelevant ultimately, with margins of error this was and is a 50-50 race).
The debate tonight between Horgan (NDP Premier of BC and pro-PR) and the Liberal leader Andrew Wilkinson (deeply against PR, as is most of the BC Liberals) will be interesting and incredibly important. Proportional representation was ahead in every poll done before this referendum. So Horgan and his partner, Green leader Andrew Weaver, are currently losing this campaign it seems.
Turnout so far has been... abysmal! Only 1.4% of registered voters have returned their mail-in ballot. Of course not everybody got their ballots at the same time and the postal strike doesn't help. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if the overall turnout, at the end, doesn't go above 30%.
It'll ultimately come down to turnout and undecided. Unfortunately Mainstreet doesn't indicate how many people are undecided. I'll ask them. [ Update: I asked and they didn't offer an undecided option at all; This goes a little bit against what I had seen before where the question without undecided would be more pro-PR than the question with the option]. The poll also confirms what my own poll was showing: people under 35 are the biggest supporters of proportional representation.
The Mainstreet poll also confirms what is common sense: if we switch to PR, Multi-Member proportional is the preferred system. Maybe surprisingly, the never used before Dual member proportional is third while the weird urban-rural proportional is second. I would have expected the opposite.
