Manitobans don't want tax dollars spent on political parties: Vote Compass

A majority of Manitobans do not support the idea of funding political parties with taxpayer dollars, according to new Vote Compass data.

• Manitoba NDP to accept public vote subsidy, Tories say no

78 per cent of PC voters oppose taxpayer funding for parties, while smaller majorities of Green and Liberal voters agree.

Opinion is more evenly divided among NDP voters, with 34 per cent supporting subsidies and 46 per cent opposing them, said Gregory Kerr, research Manager with Vox Pop Labs.

The findings are based on 9,982 respondents who participated in Vote Compass from March 15 to April 7, 2016.

According to Elections Manitoba, campaign finance legislation was introduced in Manitoba to promote financial equity and fairness primarily with respect to election campaigns.

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A public subsidy was put in place after the NDP banned corporate and union donations to political parties more than a decade ago.

When it comes to private donations to political parties, most Manitobans are satisfied with the current limit of $3000 per individual.

A large proportion, 12 per cent, however, indicated that they simply didn't know—likely due to general unfamiliarity with the legal limit, said Kerr. 

Developed by a team of social and statistical scientists from Vox Pop Labs, Vote Compass is a civic engagement application offered in Canada exclusively by CBC News.

The findings are based on 9,982 respondents who participated in Vote Compass from March 15 to April 7, 2016. Unlike online opinion polls, respondents to Vote Compass are not pre-selected. Similar to opinion polls, however, the data are a non-random sample from the population and have been weighted in order to approximate a representative sample.

Vote Compass data have been weighted by geography, gender, age, educational attainment, occupation, and religion to ensure the sample's composition reflects that of the actual population of Manitoba according to census data and other population estimates.