Exclusive poll: The referendum on electoral reform in BC is a toss-up

Full disclosure: I voted to switch to proportional representation. I have never hidden the fact I was pro-PR even if adopting PR pretty much puts me out of a job since projections wouldn't be as important anymore. Just because I have an opinion on this topic doesn't mean I can't be impartial when doing an analysis.



According to a poll conducted exclusively for this blog by Google Survey, British Colombians are almost perfectly divided on the electoral reform referendum. An important share of the population is however undecided and could ultimately make the difference.









Google Survey uses the usual Google database (usually used for marketing purposes) to create a representative sample of the Canadian population. They are fairly cheap (20 cents per answer as long as you only ask one question; It increases to $1 and more if you want multiple questions). This poll was done from October 31st to November 6th ( so right after the peak in interest for this referendum, thus when people would likely start voting; They have until the end of the month to do so). The sample size is 1200 respondents, although the final number of observations is just over 800 because many respondents didn't have an age and/or gender and were therefore dropped (given a weight of zero). The specific question I asked was "There is currently a referendum on electoral reform in BC. You have or will receive your voting package in the mail. Which following option do you intend to vote for?". I only asked this one question and didn't try to replicate the format of the referendum where a second question exists (you have to choose between 3 potential proportional systems). I did it for monetary reasons and because, quite frankly, the main question is whether BC will switch or not. No actual margins of error since the poll is online but a probabilistic sample of that size would have margins of 3.4% 19 times out of 20.





Here are the results.





First observation: it's close! So, so close. Among decided voters, it's essentially a 50-50 race. And it has been like that all along the period during which the data was collected. "Keeping the current system" was actually ahead for the most part until the last 50 observations. This referendum doesn't have a qualified majority threshold, so 50%+1 would be enough.





Notice however the very high number of people who are undecided. I wish I had the budget to ask them a leaning question but I didn't. I'm not surprised by the high number though. Electoral reform can be seen as a complex issue, or one that doesn't matter. It also seems that online polls, and Google Surveys in particular, have a higher share of undecided. It's interesting to see more people being undecided on this topic than regarding Bernier's tweet!





Let's compare these numbers to the Angus-Reid poll of September. At that time, 33% were undecided, 31% in favour of keeping the current system and 33% wanted to switch. This meant that among decided voters, it was 52-48. My poll numbers match pretty well (not withstanding the higher number of undecided). Can we take it as evidence of a negative trend against proportional representation? Not really since once you apply the margins of error, both polls pretty much match.





With that said, we had seen a trend over the last year according to Angus-Reid. I mentioned it in my post about that poll . It's not clear if Horgan and Weaver are currently losing their referendum or if it's more a question of allowing a "not sure/Don't know" option in the poll. It is possible that pro-PR people are simply less sure of their choices than anti-PR ones. So the 40%+ of undecided in this poll might actually break slightly in favour of switching (note: I expect most of them not to vote at all). The Tyee wrote about comparing different polls with different methodologies already.





Still, I think it's fair to say that this referendum could be very close and I'm not sure the YES campaign is winning so far. Fear mongering arguments (proportional representation will literally allow a nazi party to have seats!...) and others, more valid arguments (the systems offered are half defined, in particular MMP where they haven't even chosen what kind of lists we'd use!) can easily convince some voters against taking the risk to switch. If Horgan is serious in his desire to adopt proportional representation, he'll need to give a convincing performance on Thursday. I'd suggest to maybe emphasize more on the fact that we'd vote again after 2 elections to confirm we want to keep PR. Also, I maintain my position that this referendum would be an easier sell if we could all agree that only MMP is a viable option (Dual member proportional is a system never applied anywhere, invented by a student in mathematics in Alberta and is, ultimately, just a modified version of MMP with more complex features such as vote transfers and forfeited seats; Urban-Rural proportional is too complicated -it mixes STV and MMP- and I can't see it winning). Doing so could clarify the choice for people. Just my 5 cents of course.





Ok, let's look at more numbers since, after all, I paid for this poll and I'm going to milk it. First, by age:







It seems to be Millennials vs Baby boomers (and older Gen X). The general trend isn't surprising but the extend of the difference between age groups might be bigger than expected. Millennials and later Gen X really, really support proportional representation while older Gen X and Baby Boomers, really don't.



The 18-24 is a little bit surprising and might be due to an overall small sample size (or way too many undecided, see below).



