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Mayor Brian Bowman's approval ratings dropping: Poll

Mayor Brian Bowman's approval ratings dropping: Poll

A new poll suggests Winnipeg Mayor Brian Bowman's approval ratings have dropped 10 percentage points since last June.

The Mainstreet Research/Postmedia poll of 605 people conducted in the first week of January suggests 53 per cent of people approve of Bowman as mayor.

That's down from 63 per cent from the last Mainstreet poll eight months ago.

Respondents were asked if they approve or disapprove of how Bowman is handling his job as mayor.

The Mainstreet poll also suggests Bowman's approval rating doesn't differ much between women and men.

"Winnipeg residents are slightly more positive about their mayor than they are about their city council. Compared to Mayor Bowman's approval rating of 53 per cent, 50 per cent of those surveyed said they approve of the performance of Winnipeg city council," said Quito Maggi, president of Mainstreet Research, in a news release.

Winnipeg city councillors had the lowest approval ratings at 43 per cent.

"Overall, local city councillors are polling higher than their respective city councils, though they lag on net scores in Toronto and Winnipeg and run about even in Ottawa," Maggi said.

The poll looked at the mayors of 10 cities across Canada. Bowman's approval rating was eighth, while Ottawa and Saskatoon's mayors sat in the top spot.

Only 19 per cent of people polled said they strongly approved of Bowman, the lowest among the mayors in the poll.

However, 31 per cent of people under 35 who were polled said they strongly approved of the mayor, while only 11 per cent of people between 35 and 49 responded the same.

In a July 2016 Probe Research poll, 69 per cent of Winnipeggers said they approved of Bowman's performance as mayor. That was a decline from a 77 per cent approval rating in a September 2015 Probe Research poll.

According to the news release, the Mainstreet Research poll interviewed 6,103 adult Canadians — 605 in Winnipeg — on Jan. 3 and Jan. 4 via a mixture of landlines and cellphones. Probabilistic samples of these sizes would yield margins of error from +/- 3.91 to +/- 4 per cent, 19 times out of 20.