Gregor Robertson has lowest approval rating among Canada’s big city mayors: Poll

A new poll has found a low popularity rating for the Mayor of Vancouver, Gregor Robertson.

The survey, by Mainstreet Research, shows Robertson has the lowest approval of mayors in 10 Canadian cities.

“Overall, every Canadian mayor we polled has a net positive approval rating – though some Mayors are faring radically better than others” said Quito Maggi, president of Mainstreet Research. “Jim Watson of Ottawa leads the way with a 79 per cent approval rating and +63 net score (approval-disapproval) while Mayor Gregor Robertson of Vancouver sits at 50 per cent approval and a +5 net score.”

Maggi said he wouldn’t characterize Robertson’s approval rating as “quite low” however.

“He certainly scored lowest out of the 10 mayors that we did test,” he said. “Although he came at the bottom end of the scale, I wouldn’t actually characterize his number as low.”

Maggi said usually when they do these surveys in the new year, respondents are generally in a good mood coming out of the holidays. But this year, the cold weather in Vancouver and the icy roads and sidewalks may have contributed to a higher disapproval rating.

“Normally we would see a pretty even split between ‘strong approval’ and ‘somewhat approve’ and the same on the disapproval side, we would see a relatively even split between ‘somewhat’ and ‘strongly disapprove’ but in Mayor Robertson’s case, unlike the rest of the mayors across the country, we’re seeing 80 per cent of his approval coming from ‘strong approval’… and the same on the ‘disapproval’ side.”

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When respondents were asked about city councils, Vancouver’s council reported a negative net score of -1. This was in comparison to Calgary and Montreal with +6 and +9 and Ottawa and Saskatoon’s city councils with net scores of +38 and +30.

The full ranking is:

1. Jim Watson – Ottawa
2. Charlie Clark – Saskatoon
3. Naheed Nenshi – Calgary
4. Denis Coderre – Montreal
5. Don Iveson – Edmonton
6. John Tory – Toronto
7. Michael Fougere – Regina
8. Brian Bowman – Winnipeg
9. Drew Dilkins – Windsor
10. Gregor Roberton – Vancouver

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The poll was conducted from Jan. 3 to 4, 2017 and margins of error for the 10 city polls conducted vary from +/- 3.91 to +/- 4.00, 19 times out of 20.