A new poll suggests Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi’s approval rating has continued to slide, dropping four percentage points since March.
According to the Mainstreet/Postmedia poll, released on Thursday, Nenshi’s approval rating currently sits at 52 per cent.
A poll from the same organization in March found the mayor’s approval rating 56 per cent.
In January, his rating was even higher, sitting at 65 per cent.
“That’s a drop of 13 per cent over four months,” Mainstreet Research president Quito Maggi said in a news release.
“It remains to be seen if this is the floor, or if his numbers could go down even further in the future,” he added. “Of course, it’s also possible we could see his numbers rebound in the months to come as well.”
Nenshi is running for re-election in Calgary’s municipal election on Oct. 16 and Mainstreet suggested that even with a 52 per cent approval rating, Nenshi would likely be re-elected if an election were held today.
There are currently four other declared candidates seeking to win the mayor’s job and they all claim Nenshi is vulnerable to an upset at the ballot box: Andre Chabot, David Lapp, Shawn Baldwin and Paul Hughes.
“With a largely unknown field of candidates running against Nenshi, I don’t think he is in trouble just yet,” Maggi said.
“That being said, we don’t yet know what effect the election campaign will have on the mayor’s approvals and favourability scores,” he added. “It’s possible his opponents may run negative campaigns, and that even if he ultimately wins, he does so amidst lower ratings.”
“No one should underestimate the mayor who has proven that he is an effective campaigner and savvy with social media.
“The mayoral campaign is not in full swing just yet, but we will be watching closely to see what happens next,” Maggi said.
The poll from Mainstreet Research surveyed 811 Calgarians via landlines and cellphones on April 11 and 12 and was released on April 27, 2017. Respondents were screened to confirm they were eligible voters. Responses were weighed using demographic information to targets based on the 2011 Census.
According to Mainstreet, the poll carries a margin of error of ± 3.44 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.