When Canadians are confronted with the reality of their voting system — a party regularly winning a majority of the seats in the House of Commons with nowhere close to a majority of the votes — most of them don’t like it.

But as much as proponents of proportional representation might think it would naturally follow that most would want to replace the first-past-the-post system they know with some form of proportional representation they don’t, it’s not quite that simple.

Such is the electoral reform enigma, a new online survey from EKOS Research finds: Canadians don’t like first-past-the-post, but they don’t love the alternatives either.

Almost one year ago, in December 2015, EKOS asked if there was agreement with the statement: “It is unfair that a party can hold a majority of the seats in the House of Commons with less than 40% of the vote”.

At the time, 56 per cent deemed that unfair. From October 12 to October 18, they asked 1,622 Canadians again and saw a slight increase — up to 61 per cent.

When they got down to brass tacks, however, asking Canadians to choose between three options — first-past-the-post (FPTP), a preferential ballot and proportional representation (PR) — the latter wasn’t overwhelmingly popular.

And it only became less so when people became better informed — when they were given arguments for and against each option.

FPTP not being fair, in other words, didn’t mean widespread support for proportional representation.

With a brief introduction, 43 per cent said PR would be the best option; 29 said FPTP and 26 said preferential voting.

With a detailed introduction, PR declined in popularity (to 37 per cent); FPTP rose in popularity (to 35 per cent); and preferential voting remained at 26 per cent. You can read the two introductions here.

That difference is statistically significant, EKOS President Frank Graves told iPolitics.

“It kind of reinforces the point that maybe this gets more difficult when the rubber hits the road,” he said.

Though as iPolitics reported Thursday, six in 10 Canadians, according to EKOS, want the prime minister to keep his electoral reform promise to make the 2015 election the last to use first-past-the-post, finding something resembling a consensus looks unlikely for now.

In appearing to back away from that promise last week, the prime minister said the bigger the change, the greater the public support it would require; he didn’t explain how that support would be measured, however, or quantify it any way.

After months of electoral reform committee meetings and town halls across the country, EKOS’ data show Conservative supporters continuing to favour the status quo and a national referendum before any change, the NDP and Greens wanting proportional representation and Liberals fairly evenly split between the two and the prime minister’s preferred option: the preferential ballot.

In three separate polls now, EKOS has found the Canadian public evenly divided on the referendum question.

The special committee on electoral reform will deliver its recommendations by December 1. The prime minister’s promise was to introduce legislation within 18 months of forming a government.

Whatever ends up being in that legislation, disappointment is looking increasingly inevitable.

“Our data certainly show there is no walk in the park to electoral reform. You’re going to have lots of people really unhappy if you do (change the voting system). But I think the case is, you’re going to have more people unhappy if you don’t,” Graves said.

“Is there a case for moving forward on this? Absolutely. Are there risks? Sure there are. But there’s also exposure and liability for not doing this.”