The CTV News Ottawa mayoral debate is Wednesday, Oct. 14 at 10 a.m. Watch on CTVNewsOttawa.ca, listen on Newstalk 580 CFRA and watch on the Newstalk 580 CFRA YouTube Channel. Nearly half of residents have a neutral view on the direction the City of Ottawa is going, but exclusive polling for CTV News Ottawa finds more residents in the suburbs believe the city is heading in the right direction. Nanos Research surveyed 762 randomly selected Ottawa residents between Oct. 4 and Oct. 8. Respondents were asked how they would rate the direction Ottawa is going on a scale from 0 to 10. “Residents of Ottawa give mixed reviews on the job that Ottawa City Hall does at listening to citizens,” Nik Nanos, Chief Data Scientist with Nanos Research, said. “Ottawa residents are twice as likely to rate that the city is going in the right direction (34 per cent) than the wrong direction (15 per cent).” The survey finds 48 per cent of respondents are “neutral on the direction” the city is going heading into a next four-year term of council. Residents in Ottawa’s east and west ends were more likely to say the City of Ottawa is heading in the right direction, while downtown had the highest number of respondents say the city is heading in the wrong direction. Nanos Research found 41 per cent of respondents in Ottawa’s east and west ends said they believed the city was heading in the right direction (7 to 10), while 26 per cent of downtown respondents and 28 per cent of people in rural areas said the city was heading in the right direction. Twenty-one per cent of respondents living downtown said they felt the city was heading in the wrong direction (0 to 3 out of 10), while 17 per cent of respondents in rural areas said the city was heading in the wrong direction. The survey shows 11 per cent of residents in the west end and 13 per cent of respondents in the east end felt the city was heading in the wrong direction. Is City Hall listening to residents? Some respondents feel City Hall is not listening to people in neighbourhoods, particularly in the downtown core. Nanos Research asked respondents if they feel Ottawa City Hall does a “very good, good, average, poor or very poor job” at listening to people in neighbourhoods across the city. Thirty-seven per cent of respondents said the city is doing an average job of listening to people in their neighbourhoods. According to the survey, six per cent of respondents said they felt “very good” that the City of Ottawa is listening to people in their neighbourhoods, while 20 per cent said they felt “good.” Nineteen per cent of respondents said they feel the city does a “poor job” of listening to people, while 11 per cent rated the city’s listening to people as “very poor.” The downtown area had the highest number of people rate the job done by City Hall at listening to people as “poor” or “very poor.” The survey shows 29 per cent of downtown residents rated the city’s job at listening to people as “poor,” while 10 per cent rated it as “very poor.” The survey shows 15 per cent of respondents in rural areas ranked the city’s job of listening to people as “very poor,” while 20 per cent said it was “poor.” Ottawa’s east end had the highest number of residents who ranked the job done by City Hall at listening to people as “good” or “very good,” with 25 per cent saying the city did a “good” job listening to residents and eight per cent rating the city as “very good.” Methodology The Nanos Research survey was conducted exclusively for CTV News Ottawa between Oct. 4 and Oct. 8. The survey included 762 Ottawa randomly selected residents with interviews completed by telephone and online. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 per cent, 19 times out of 20.
