With less than a week to go in Hamilton’s municipal election, a new poll from Mainstreet and iPolitics is suggesting former Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath has taken the lead in the mayoral race.
The analysis, based on a one-day telephone survey conducted last Thursday among 694 Hamiltonians, suggests 36 per cent of voters are leaning towards Horwath, with former chamber of commerce boss Keanin Loomis in second at 28.7 per cent.
The poll puts former mayor Bob Bratina in third with 12.1 per cent, past taxi union boss Ejaz Butt in fourth with just 2.8 per cent, while 20 per cent are undecided.
Mainstreet analyst Robert Martin said in a statement that Horwath’s base appears to be “younger and more urban” with Loomis’s “older, suburban and higher-income.”
“There’s a suggestion here that maybe the wealthier kind of suburban voters are turning away from her, but Horwath is dominant with younger voters and voters with (a high school education), so basically she’s going to be dominant in downtown Hamilton,” according to Martin.
Current mayor Fred Eisenberger continues to see positive reaction from the same sample of residents with 13.4 per cent and 39.7 per cent “strongly approving” and “somewhat approving” of work currently being done in the office.
The majority of voters, 37 per cent, agree creating affordable housing is the “most important” of five major issues the survey suggested were key to voters in the city.
Over 25 per cent of residents honed in on a decrease in municipal taxes as key, about 22 per cent on roads and infrastructure, eight per cent on improving transit and seven per cent said an improvement in city services should be top priority.
A whopping 76.5 per cent agree housing is unaffordable in the city, with a lowly 6.6 per cent considering homes are affordable.
The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 per cent, according to Mainstreet.
Frontrunners agree affordability tied to housing is key this election
Last Thursday, Andrea Horwath told 900 CHML’s Hamilton Today she’s quite aware housing is the key issue, saying recent door-to-door campaigning has shown it to be topic number one with Hamiltonians.
“No matter if I’m in Stoney Creek … in Ancaster … downtown or if I’m in Flamborough, people are really worried about the housing crisis from one end of the spectrum to the other,” Horwath said.
The mayoral hopeful says she’s been listening to not-for-profit as well as private sector housing providers, believing the two need to work together to bring prices even more.
“There are some 3,000 units that the collective of not-for-profit providers have literally ready to go, but they need the city’s support to be able to unlock funding from the feds and the province,” according to Horwath.
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“We should be unlocking that funding with them. It’s going to take all of us to be at the table.”
In July, Keanin Loomis pledged to “kick-start” a plan to build 50,000 homes over 10 years in Hamilton by expediting the development approvals if he gets elected.
The initiative would include the allocation of 1,000 units per year for affordable housing, surpassing the current annual allotment of 250.
“What we have to do is … take down the barriers at city hall, reduce the red tape, facilitate these development proposals, and get people to work in building places that our children need so that they can move out of the house,” Loomis told Global News.
Bratina believes the solution is much more far-reaching than just building tens of thousands of new homes, contesting infrastructure investments are necessary as well as easing taxes for those hoping to buy.
“You can’t build 50,000 new houses (and) residential units over the next few years because you can’t flush those toilets. The infrastructure is not in place,” Bratina told Global News.
“Secondly, the priority for our young people is to have incomes, whether we can get them into the number that they need to actually buy a house in terms of market conditions and costs these days.”
Mayoral candidate Ejaz Butt previously told Global News in an email that he’s in favour of capping rents for private rentals in addition to building more public housing with a 40 per cent subsidy for low-income Hamiltonians on city waiting lists.
So far, 31,719 votes have been submitted via advance weekend polls ahead of the October 24 city election.
The city will have 157 polling stations staffed by about 1,700 people across all 15 wards on Monday.
Ninety-one individuals have signed on in hope of becoming a voice in council, including nine mayoral hopefuls looking to succeed Mayor Fred Eisenberger.
Jim Davis, Solomon Ikhuiwu, Hermiz Ishaya, Paul Fromm and Michael Pattison are the other mayor candidates registered for Monday’s vote.
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