How Mayor Ken Sim Is Poised to Win Re-Election

Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim is not popular. And yet, he is the current front-runner to win the city’s mayoral election when ballots are cast in two months.

A crowded field of opponents splitting the vote among Vancouverites opposed to Ken Sim partially explains this contradiction. But beneath that arithmetic is a deliberate political strategy that inverts the big-tent approach that first swept Sim and his ABC Vancouver party into office in 2022 .

Instead of preserving that original, broad coalition, Sim and ABC have consolidated a smaller, more durable and distinctly conservative electoral fortress.

An August Research Co. survey found that 39 per cent of Vancouverites view Sim favourably, while 52 per cent view him unfavourably.

Thus, Sim’s net favourability sits at minus 13, the worst of any mayoral candidate tested.

The Vancouver Greens’ mayoral candidate, Pete Fry, enjoys the strongest net favourability at plus 12, followed by the Vancouver Liberals’ mayoral candidate, Kareem Allam, at plus 10.

Yet among decided voters, Sim leads the mayoral race with 30 per cent of support, a staggering 11 points ahead of both Fry and Allam, who are tied for second at 19 per cent each.

Somehow, currently, the candidate Vancouverites view least favourably is the candidate they are most likely to elect.

The paradox can be explained by parsing through Sim’s support by demographic.

Among decided voters who own their home, Sim has 36 per cent support, nearly double that of the next closest mayoral candidate. Among renters, however, Sim falls to 22 per cent, in a virtual dead heat with both Allam and Fry.

In terms of voting intention, Sim leads across genders, every age bracket and primary residence status. But his electoral advantage is, by far, the largest among Vancouverites who own their home.

That contrast reveals the foundation of Sim and ABC Vancouver’s fortified castle of support: homeowners.

That fortress is considerably smaller than the coalition that elected Sim as mayor and ABC to a supermajority on city council four years ago.

In the same survey, nearly 40 per cent of decided voters who backed Sim in 2022 now intend to support someone else for mayor. Much to Sim’s electoral benefit, however, those voters have scattered in different directions, as no other mayoral candidate has captured more than 16 per cent of Sim’s 2022 voters.