Vote Compass: Floor-crossers should face immediate byelections, say Albertans

More than 80per cent of Albertansthink elected politicians in Alberta who switch parties shouldface the voters in an immediate byelection, according toCBCVote Compass.

Overall responses:

However, support for the measure was slightly weakeramong those who identify as supporters of the Progressive Conservatives,with 47 per cent strongly agreeingfloor-crossersshould resign and seek re-election.

Response by party affiliation:

• Alberta Vote Compass

MelaneeThomas, a professor of political science at the University of Calgary, says the results are not surprising, given the unprecedenteddefection byformer WildroseleaderDanielle Smith andeight fellowMLAs to the governing Progressive Conservatives last December.

Thomas says voters may see floor-crossings as a betrayal oftheir voting intentions.

"This is where you see some emotion coming into politics. People say, 'Hey, wait a minute, this isn't what we thought we were getting when we voted.'"

However, Thomas adds that switching party allegiance is an accepted, if uncommon,part of the parliamentary tradition.

"We don't elect parties, we elect individuals to represent a particular,geographically-bounded area. So when they cross the floor this doesn't change. Where I think we see the public discontent is from confusion about the system," she said.

Susan Elliott, an independent political consultant in Calgary and former PC campaign manager in 2012, says voters in Albertaare likely weighing both the party and the individual when they cast their votes.

She also says that, given recent events, it'snot surprising that Wildrosesupporters would be lessfavourabletofloor-crossers. However, at 47 per cent, she says Vote Compass alsodemonstrate discomfort with the idea amongPC supporters.

"I think there are lots of PCs who felt some trepidation at welcoming thesepeople that they fought so hard against as recently as three years ago, " she said.

Both Elliott andThomas say the issue of floor-crossing, though high-profile, has likelyalready been factored intovoting intentions by the Alberta electorate.

Campaign donations: Restrictionsforindividuals?

Vote Compass users also weighed in on the issue of campaign donations, with 61 per cent of respondents agreeing that donations should be restricted to individuals.

Broken down by party affiliation, Green Partysupporters were most likely to favour limiting donations to individuals, while PC supporters were least likely to agree with such a limit on the nature of campaigndonations,

Note from Vox Pop Labson the methodology:

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 26,763respondents who participated in Vote Compass from April 7-19, 2015.

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, religion, religiosityand civic engagement to ensure the sample's composition reflects that of the actual population of Canada, according to census data and other population estimates.