There is a tight race between Simon Yu and Terri McConnachie to become the next mayor of Prince George, while a significant number haven’t decided who they’re voting for, according to a Citizen online poll that ran from Oct. 4 to 11.
In total votes, Yu received 355 votes (30 per cent) of the vote, followed by McConnachie with 287 votes (24 per cent). Roy Stewart received 170 votes (14 per cent), Adam Hyatt earned 90 votes (eight per cent), Lisa Mitchell took 30 votes (three per cent) and Chris Wood took 17 votes (one per cent).
A total of 247 respondents (20 per cent) voted that they hadn’t decided yet.
The numbers moved around a little bit for some candidates when the poll was broken down by local respondents (810 votes, 68 per cent of total votes) and non-local respondents (386 votes, 32 per cent of total votes).
Local respondents gave Yu 225 votes (28 per cent), McConnachie 196 votes (24 per cent), Stewart 118 votes (15 per cent), Hyatt 73 votes (nine per cent), Mitchell 18 votes (two per cent) and Wood five votes (1 per cent). A total of 175 local respondents (21 per cent) voted that they were undecided. With 810 local votes cast, the margin of error is plus/minus 3.42 per cent, 19 times out of 20.
Non-local respondents gave Yu 130 votes (34 per cent), McConnachie 91 votes (24 per cent), Stewart 52 votes (13 per cent), Hyatt 17 votes (four per cent), Mitchell 12 votes (three per cent) and Wood 12 votes (three per cent). A total of 72 non-local respondents (19 per cent) voted that they hadn’t decided yet.
How reliable are municipal election polls?
In 2014, a Prince George Citizen-CKPG News poll, conducted by Ontario-based Oraclepoll, put candidate Don Zurowski 10 percentage points ahead of Lyn Hall among decided voters. Undecided voters, however, made up just over half of the poll.
On election day, Hall won, with 53 per cent of the vote, compared to Zurowski’s 45.
