‘No’ side in the transportation vote is in the lead: poll

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VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – The “no” side has it for now, when it comes to the upcoming plebiscite on how to pay for transportation funding.

The newest numbers in an Insights West poll show a definite advantage.

It shows the “yes” side has lost some significant ground since the last numbers came in. Mario Canseco with the firm says the trend started two months ago.

“It’s more than 15 points [back]. We started back in December with more than half of residents saying they would vote “yes.” Now it’s down to 38 per cent; roughly two out of five would say that they would vote ‘yes.'”

The News1130/PlaceSpeak survey also has the ‘no’ side in the lead. Click here to have your say in the discussion.

Age seems to be a factor; Canseco says those 55 and over are more likely to vote “no” because most of them drive or use transit.

“They aren’t really seeing a lot of benefits here. They just see more taxes. But they don’t see any benefits for them. And this is one of the reasons the ‘yes’ side is really struggling right now. Even though they have connected really well with those who bike, those who walk and those who take public transit, they really haven’t figured out how to talk to drivers.”

The other interesting part is that neither side has much faith in TransLink to handle new projects, says Canseco.

“Even if you’re voting ‘yes,’ you’re not doing this because you have a lot of confidence in the mayors or in TransLink to get things done well. You only have about one in 10 ‘yes’ voters that say they have confidence in them doing things well. And ‘no’ voters are definitely not happy with the way things are going. More than 80 per cent of them say they are voting ‘no’ because they don’t have a lot of confidence in TransLink.”

“This is one of the major difficulties,” he tells us. “The ‘no’ side has really succeeded in really making this vote about something related to governance. And even though the ‘yes’ side has been trying to talk about the future, it’s really not working well and there are a lot of people moving towards the ‘no’ side because they like what they’re seeing.”

Voters on the ‘yes’ side just say the plebiscite is the best way to deal with transportation problems.

Insights West transportation vote

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