Our 1st Vote Compass report: economy, health care top election concerns list

The economy and health care top the list of concerns of Saskatchewan people but the environment ranks high, too, a Vote Compass report says.

The voter engagement tool lets people answer a series of questions to determine where they sit on the political landscape with respect to political parties.

The parties include the Saskatchewan Party, the NDP, the Liberals and the Green Party.

(Vote Compass didn't have enough data to include the Progressive Conservative Party of Saskatchewan or the Western Independence Party.)

The tool also lets us know which election issues are engaging the public's attention.

Between March 7 and 10, thousands ofreaders gave it a spin, producing a sample size of 4,117.The results have now been tabulated.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the economy and health care were the No. 1and No. 2issues with Saskatchewan residents. Women in Saskatchewanhad the same two top priorities as men, but they ranked health care No. 1.

The issuerankedthird most important might be a little less obvious: the environment.

The other issues canvassed, listed in order of importance, were:

1. Employment
2. Education
3. Deficit & Spending
4. Taxation
5. Poverty
6. Public services & privatization
7. Accountability
8. Energy & agriculture
9. First Nations
10. Infrastructure
11. Childcare

Other findings from the March 7-10 Vote Compass report:

• Sask. Party supporters think the economy (1) and employment (2) are most important.
• Liberal supporters think health care (1) and the environment (2) are most important.
• NDP supporters think health care (1) and the economy (2) are most important.
• Older people, those over 55, are more likely to think the environment is a more important election issue.

Saskatchewan voters go to the polls on April 4.

About Vote Compass

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 4,117 respondents who participated in Vote Compass from March 7 to March 10, 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, occupationand religion to ensure the sample's composition reflects that of the actual population of Saskatchewan according to census data and other population estimates.