The ‘somewhat’ caveat: Why I think approval for Mayor Farkas and Calgary city council is so high
Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas and his fellow members of city council are enjoying sky-high approval ratings.
That’s according to a poll my partners at Probe Research and I just released.
The numbers are so strong, they might seem surprising at first: 81% of Calgarians approve of the mayor’s performance after about six months in office, 73% approve of their local city councillor and 69% approve of city council, as a whole.
Those are enviable numbers by any political standard.
They do come with a caveat, however.
As someone who likes to dive deep into data like this — and as a former city hall reporter, myself — two things jump out to me when I look at the bar chart below.
The first is those giant, light-green bars. They represent Calgarians who “somewhat” approve of their mayor, councillor and council as a whole. And they make up the majority (roughly six in 10) in each case.
The second thing that jumps out to me is the lack of any grey bars in the chart. Grey bars typically represent “don’t know” or “no opinion”. That wasn’t an option in this survey.
The question we asked was: “Focusing on municipal politics now.... Do you approve or disapprove of the performance of…” and we provided four response options: “strongly approve”, “somewhat approve”, “somewhat disapprove” and “strongly disapprove.”
That was a deliberate choice: we wanted to know which way Calgarians lean, including those who don’t follow municipal politics closely. But it also means these topline approval numbers should not be interpreted as intensely held views across the board.
I used to be a city hall reporter (at the now-defunct Metro Calgary newspaper, R.I.P.), and I know it’s easy to get into the city hall bubble. When you’re hyper-engaged in the goings-on at city hall and spending your days talking with other hyper-engaged folks, it can seem like everyone is hyper-engaged.
One of the best ways to pop that bubble, I found as a reporter, was to go out and do “streeters” — asking random people on the street about a particular municipal issue of the day. You get a lot of blank stares. These days, I bet it’s even harder. With increasingly fragmented media and national and international news sucking up so much of people’s already limited attention, it’s extremely tough for municipal affairs to break through.
Today, as the father of two young kids and a more casual (dare I say, normal) consumer of news on municipal issues, I’m well aware that most people don’t pay super-close attention to the goings-on at city hall. But they still care. And they still vote. And their opinions still matter, even if those opinions are vague at this point.
It’s been less than a year since this new council was elected, which is not a lot of time to form a strong opinion. And we see that in the survey results. Only 29% of Calgarians “strongly” felt one way or another about Mayor Farkas, with 23% strongly approving and 6% strongly disapproving.
The remaining 71% “somewhat” felt one way or another. Fortunately for Farkas, those folks break overwhelmingly in his favour, with 58% somewhat approving and only 13% somewhat disapproving.
One other data point in our survey also bodes well for the current mayor and council: a majority of Calgarians (58%) believe the city is headed in the right direction.
That sense of optimism about Calgary’s trajectory stands in stark contrast to how city residents feel about their province (only 37% say it’s headed in the right direction), their country (49%) and, especially, the world (just 15%).
So, while many Calgarians may not be following every decision made at city hall, the overall feelings they have formed so far toward their mayor and council are decidedly positive — even if those feelings aren’t strong.
In municipal politics, that’s a real win.
For the full results, methodology and data tables, see the report on the Probe Research website.
You can read more about this survey — and the reaction to it — in these recent news articles, too:
