Two new polls released this week show candidates Linda Hepner and Doug McCallum trading lead spots in the race to replace Dianne Watts as Surrey's mayor.
The first poll, commissioned by Surrey First and released October 20, shows Hepner in the lead with fellow candidates McCallum and Barinder Rasode in second and third, respectively.
The telephone poll was conducted by the Innovative Research Group between October 6 and 12 and surveyed 300 residents.
Of those surveyed, 27% said they would vote for Hepner, 22% for McCallum and 15% for Rasode. Thirty-two per cent said they were still undecided while 3% said they would be voting for another candidate. Two per cent said they would not be voting at all. The margin of error for the poll is listed as 5.7%.
However, the second poll, released October 21 by Mainstreet Technologies, showed McCallum in the lead with 22%, Hepner in second with 20% and Rasode in third with 8%. Five per cent of those surveyed by Mainstreet were voting for someone else, while 45% remained undecided.
The total number of participants in Mainstreet Technologies' poll was 1,584 and was conducted on October 20 using automated phone surveys. Mainstreet's margin of error is listed as 2.46% and only focused on mayoral candidates while Innovative's poll looked at other aspects such as election issues.
In the Innovative Research Group's poll, crime remained the top of mind issue for most residents at 36%, while keeping property taxes down and reducing wasteful spending at city hall were both tied for second at 16% each.
As for those who might dismiss the poll for it being commissioned by Surrey First, Greg Lyle, president of Innovative Research Group, said the company would have no benefit in producing polls favourable to one side over another.
“We normally do polls for the media and if we go in and screw around with the numbers for a local poll we destroy our chances of being able to do any more of that sort of research,” he said. “I suspect if the numbers weren’t as good they wouldn’t have released it. From our perspective there’s no upside in cooking the numbers for us.”
Lyle added the sample of 300 residents were weighted by age, gender and region using information from Statistics Canada in order to provide a demographic representation close to that of Surrey’s. Mainstreet Technologies' poll primarily interviewed those aged 35 and up, with 12% of respondents in the 18 to 35 range.
The poll comes a week after a different poll by Insights West put Doug McCallum as the lead mayoral candidate with Hepner and Rasode coming in second and third respectively. That poll was conducted online and surveyed 520 Surrey residents.
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