Taxation the biggest election issue for Manitobans, finds Vote Compass

Early results from CBC'sVote Compass show that Manitobans care deeply about taxation this provincial election.

Although the civic engagement tool is not considered an opinion poll, Vote Compass's findings are based on 3,029 respondents who participated in Vote Compass from March 15 to March 21, 2016.

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Manitoba political analyst Chris Adams said the results revealManitobansare breaking away from the typical election concerns.

"Health care is traditionally a very high issue area for voters across North America and we know in particular in Canada," said Adams.

"In this election, it looks like taxation has really superseded both the traditional ones, health care and education."

The first Vote Compass results suggesthealth care and the environment trail closelybehind taxation. Education is the sixth most important issue.

Adams said those who tend to think about taxation on election day tend to vote Progressive Conservative in Manitoba.

"That's not very good news for the NDP right now," he said.

Adams added the NDP and Liberals could take some comfort inthe fact Vote Compass suggests theenvironment and health care are among the topthree important issues for Manitobans.

Men, women differ on values

Vote Compass revealed clear differences between the genders of respondents to the tool.

For women overall, health care was actually the most important election issue, for men taxation was the most important issue.

Along with health care, female respondents viewed environmental issues as a larger concern than men as well as childcare and poverty issues. Men valued taxation, deficit and spending, the economy, accountability, and energy and agriculture as more important than women using Vote Compass.

"This really does fit the literature about differences between gender," Adams said.

"I would have thought it would have been a more nuanced difference, but it's stronger than I expected."

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 3,029 respondents who participated in Vote Compass from March 15 to March 21, 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.