Strong regional, partisan split on toll question, Vote Compass responses show
Majority outside Metro Vancouver and north of the Fraser say users of new bridges should pay for them
A majority of respondents to a Vote Compass survey said the cost of new bridges in the Lower Mainland should be paid for by user tolls, but people who live south of the Fraser were less likely to agree.
Overall, a slim majority either agreed or strongly agreed users of new bridges in the Lower Mainland should pay for them.
That sentiment was particularly strong for people who live outside the Lower Mainland, with 60 per cent of those respondents agreeing with the statement.
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North of the Fraser, residents were more divided on the question, with 47 per cent agreeing or strongly agreeing and 38 per cent disagreeing. Half of Fraser Valley residents, 51 per cent, also agreed with the statement.
Metro residents living south of the Fraser, who pay most of the tolls, were least likely to agree, with 37 per cent agreeing and 46 per cent disagreeing.
Voting intention also appears to influence the toll question.
More than two-thirds of Liberal supporters agreed or strongly agreed that bridge users in Metro Vancouver should pay for them, along with 51 per cent of Greens. Support for tolls was much weaker among NDP supporters.
The Liberal Party has promised to cap bridge tolls at $500 per year if re-elected, while the NDP has vowed to eliminate them.
Almost two-thirds of Vote Compass users agreed Uber and other ride hailing services should be allowed to operate in B.C.
Agreement was strongest among Liberal supporters, with 70 per cent saying the province should allow ride hailing services, compared with 65 per cent of Green and 55 per cent of NDP supporters.
About Vote Compass
Developed by a team of social and statistical scientists from Vox Pop Labs, Vote Compass is a civic engagement application offered in British Columbia exclusively by CBC News.
The findings are based on 3,944 respondents who participated in Vote Compass from April 17 to April 24, 2017.
Unlike online opinion polls, respondents to Vote Compass are not pre-selected. Similar to opinion polls, however, the data is a non-random sample from the population and has been weighted in order to approximate a representative sample.
Vote Compass data has been weighted by geography, gender, age, educational attainment, occupation, religion, income and language to ensure the sample's composition reflects that of the actual population of British Columbia, according to census data and other population estimates.
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