Latest News

Munter leads Ottawa mayoral race: poll

Last Updated: Monday, October 23, 2006 | 10:08 AM ET
CBC News

Former Ottawa councillor Alex Munter is on track to become the next mayor with nearly twice the support from decided voters of incumbent Bob Chiarelli, poll results suggest.

However, half of all poll respondents said they would likely switch their votes to another mayoral candidate between now and the Nov. 13 election — and the votes will likely flow between Munter and Chiarelli, according to Raynald Harvey, the president of the polling company Unimarketing.

Harvey said voters are most likely to jump between Munter and Chiarelli because their supporters tend to share a similar profile.

"I think that the battle will be between those two candidates," he said, but warned that the other front-runner, Larry O'Brien, could slip between the other two and come out in front.

Unimarketing, which released its results on Monday, polled 727 Ottawa residents between Oct. 13 and 18 for the CBC's French language service, Radio-Canada, and for the newspaper Le Droit.

The poll suggests that 44 per cent of decided voters plan to vote for Munter, compared to 32 per cent for Larry O'Brien and 24 per cent for Chiarelli.

Only one per cent of Ottawa respondents planned to vote for any of the other four mayoral candidates — Piotr Anweiler, Robert Larter, Barkley Pollock and Jane Scharf — even when the results include voters who say they will probably change their minds.

These numbers did not include the 24 per cent of respondents who said they were completely undecided or don't intend to vote for any of the candidates.

If respondents who were "somewhat decided" are included in the results, Munter's support is a little weaker — only 41 per cent compared to 30 per cent for Chiarelli and 28 per cent for O'Brien.

But Harvey said Munter appears on track to stop Chiarelli from winning another term.

"He has 44 per cent of the people that said they will not change their mind, and this number is, for me, more crucial," Harvey said.

He also stressed that anything could happen to tip the vote in a different direction during the next three weeks.

Transit tops list of issues

The poll also suggests that 27 per cent of voters think transit is the top issue in the election and 26 per cent think property taxes are most important.

Another 20 per cent feel crime and public safety is the hottest election issue.

Poll results suggest that voter turnout could be much higher than the 2003 turnout of 33 per cent. About 73 per cent of respondents said they would definitely vote and 17 per cent said they would probably vote.

However, only 58 per cent people contacted responded to the poll.

And the pollsters cautioned that in previous surveys, voter turnout did not correspond to poll predictions.

For example, a poll taken three weeks before the election in nearby Gatineau, in October 2005, found that 68 per cent of respondents said they would definitely vote. But voter turnout was only 48 per cent.

The Ottawa poll was conducted by interviewing eligible voters in the city and is considered accurate to within plus or minus 3.6 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.