This past week we got to try out our new and improved poll – an option that allows us to create polls on the local level that are more relevant and accurate in their scope and results than in the past.
Without getting too technical, our new polls allows GuelphToday (and other sites in the Village Media family) to better capture relevent data, detect and prevent fraudulent votes, detect and prevent robots and filter out non-local and duplicate votes.
It also gives us the option of not allowing our polls to be linked elsewhere – thus allowing special interest groups to share them with their like-minded allies, potentially skewing the results.
GuelphToday launched the first of the new version this week.
While not all polls you see will be local, you will certainly see much more of them in the future. One word to the wise, after voting on a poll you won't see it again the next time you come on to the site unless you click the 'previous polls' button on the existing poll, where you can check the updated results of a poll.
As we saw with our poll this week when we asked people which was their preference of the ward boundaries and council makeup being contemplated by the city, they can be quite telling. Our first poll looked at the different options currently being considered. A decision comes in June.
GuelphToday's poll showed that most prefer a switch to eight wards, each with one full-time councillor.
A total of 1,325 votes were cast in the poll, including 505 local votes (note: some local votes would have been captured in the "outside Guelph" group).
The poll had a 4.35 per cent margin of error. The most telling number? 44 per cent of local voters and 45 per cent of all voters felt that switching to eight wards, each with one full-time councillor, was the preferred model moving forward. That was 13 per cent more than the next most popular choice.
The results:
- 131 / 10% Five wards each with two part-time councillors
- 176 / 13% Six wards each with two part-time councillors (keep things the same)
- 426 / 32% Six wards each with two part-time councillors (but with new boundaries with population parity)
- 592 / 45% Eight wards each with one full-time councillor
The city has conducted its own survey as part of the engagement process on the final recommendations and the consultants will be revealing a recommended model to council in June, which will likely include results of its own poll.
It will be interesting to see the difference in participation and outcome of that poll.
