Calgary water crisis not helping Mayor Gondek’s approval: Poll

The handling of the Calgary’s broken water main line is apparently doing nothing to help improve the approval of the city’s mayor.

The latest poll from ThinkHQ suggest Mayor Jyoti Gondek’s approval is down even further from a record-low six months ago.

The survey results have Gondek at a 26 per cent approval rating compared to a 64 per cent disapproval rating. The approval is down another four points since December 2023.

“Often, politicians who capably lead during a crisis are rewarded with public support,” says ThinkHQ president Marc Henry. “No such boost for mayor Gondek, or if there is, it’s masked by unmeasured lower ratings driven by other issues.”

Almost half of the respondents (48 per cent) say they strongly disapprove of the mayor’s performance.

Gondek’s numbers are the lowest approval rating for any sitting mayor in the Calgary’s history.

“These ratings are unprecedently low,” Henry says. “It seems driven primarily by negative public reactions to policies like the single-use bag bylaw and blanket rezoning.”

City councillors aren’t faring much better with only 25 per cent of those surveyed approving of the job council is doing. That number is also a record-low with 66 per cent disapproving of council’s performance.

The leger poll released at the start of June, before the city’s water emergency, saw one-in-ten residents saying Gondek is doing a satisfactory job addressing their most important issue, and that they would vote for her if an election were held tomorrow.

There are 482 days until Calgary’s next municipal election.