28 Oct Polling During the Saskatoon Election

Insightrix’s Final Online Panel Survey Accurately Predicts Saskatoon Civic Election Outcome

Much has been discussed about the Clark surge in the 2016 Saskatoon Civic Election. When a swing in votes happens over a matter of hours and days prior to Election Day, it can make polling very interesting.  But it is important to keep in mind that a poll is a reflection of opinion at the time the poll was conducted. In the case of Saskatoon, no publicly released poll identified Charlie Clarke to be in the lead.

Based on the polls conducted before the election, the surge was dramatic in magnitude and happened over the last few days of the campaign. Below is the decided voter poll results conducted in Saskatoon for the past month, including one final Insightrix poll that was not released to the public.[1]

The Insightrix poll, conducted for CKOM just prior to Mainstreet Research on Oct 20^th – 22^nd (Thursday to Saturday), showed Clark (30%) higher than the preceding Mainstreet Research poll (25% on Oct 18^th).  Moore and Atchison support remained steady at 34% and 35% respectively. This slight increase for Clark showed the beginning of the surge.

The day before the election, Insightrix conducted another poll with 600 SaskWatch Research® panel members which further emphasized the rapid shift in voting intentions for the Saskatoon Civic Election.  These results were not released given that such information would have been communicated to the public on Election Day. In this final poll, Insightrix Research had Clark in the lead.

Research Details
A total of 600 randomly selected SaskWatch Research® panel members participated in the online research study on October 25th, 2016. Quotas were set by age and gender to match the general population of the city. Since the research is conducted online, it is considered to be a non-probability proportion sample and therefore, margins of error are not applicable. Comparisons to the other Insightrix poll used the same methodology, quotas and sample source. This final study was an independent poll conducted by Insightrix Research.

Insightrix continues to be proud of our SaskWatch Research® panel and the strength with which it can measure public opinion in Saskatchewan.  If you have any questions about our poll results, please contact:

Lang McGilp
Research Director
Insightrix Research Inc.
Tel: (306) 290-9599
Email: lang.mcgilp@insightrix.dev1.commandbase.ca

[1] For the Mainstreet Research polls between October 4^th and the 18^th, a decided voter count is not posted on their website.  As such, a decided voter count was estimated based on removing the undecided voter count from the total and rebasing the responses.