Local poll will help strategic voters in the North Okanagan decide their candidate

October 07, 2015 - 5:45 PM By Charlotte Helston INFO-TEL.CA
NORTH OKANAGAN - People in the North Okanagan-Shuswap riding are doing what they can to make sure their strategic votes count in the upcoming federal election. A non-partisan group has decided to fund a poll to help people in the riding choose who best to vote for if they want to out the Conservatives. One of the individuals involved in the initiative is Dr. Warren Bell, who says the group got together informally about a year ago. “All of us might have had a political affiliation, but like gunslingers we dropped our guns, or our party affiliations, at the door. We were primarily feeling like there was time for change in Ottawa,” Bell says. “Over the last year we evolved our thinking and came to the point where this seemed like the best thing to do.” Bell says it wasn’t hard getting people in the community to pitch in for the $1,250 poll by Oraclepoll Research, the results of which are expected to be released Oct. 8. The poll was conducted by live operators asking citizens a series of questions. “My sense is there is broad interest in this initiative,” Bell says. The main purpose of the poll, Bell says, is to help people vote strategically. “We’re not trying to tell people who to vote for, we’re trying to give them a tool to decide for themselves,” Bell says. “Lots of people have ideas about who will win, the trouble with that is it’s hard to be sure how accurate they are.” No other polls have been conducted in the riding, although a group called Leadnow is working on getting enough pledges to crowdfund for a local poll. “Any kind of information that helps people decide how to vote is useful,” Bell says. The Sicamous physician says all the candidates in the riding are good people, but he’s resigned himself to voting strategically to get Stephen Harper out of office. And while he already knows he’s voting strategically, not even he knows who he’ll be voting for until the results of the poll come out. Check back at Infonews.ca later this week for the results of the poll.