Corporate News Opinion Poll on Protests, Games: Feb 2010

[This content should have generated the headline: "there is still strong
support -- 55 per cent -- for the protesters' core argument that the Games are
a waste of money"]

Vancouverites love the Games

Sympathy for anti-Olympic protests dropping, poll suggests

By Doug Ward, Vancouver Sun, February 18, 2010

Residents of Metro Vancouver and the Sea to Sky corridor have shed their
ambivalence about the 2010 Winter Olympics and now are enthusiastic about the
Games, a new poll shows.

The Angus Reid survey, released Wednesday, found that a strong majority of the
region's residents -- 79 per cent -- are closely following the Vancouver
Olympics.

"Olympic fever is sweeping the Lower Mainland," Angus Reid research director
Hamish Marshall said.

"In the months and weeks leading up to the Games, people had to think about the
good and bad things about the Games," Marshall said.

"But now that the Olympics are here, people have embraced them wholeheartedly."

Fifty per cent of residents say they are excited about the Olympics and have
not been inconvenienced in their daily lives by the Games, according to the
survey. That is a 15-point jump over an Angus Reid survey conducted only last
week.

The rise in support for the Games mirrors earlier predictions by Vanoc
officials that Metro Vancouver residents would endorse the Winter Games once
the Olympic torch arrived in the city and the competitions got underway.

The poll results, Marshall added, are good news for Vanoc after "a rough couple
of days" prompted negative reviews in the foreign media, especially the British
press.

The polling analyst said Vanoc is primarily concerned about how British
Columbians and Canadians feel about the Games. "What the Guardian newspaper in
Britain thinks doesn't really matter."

Seventy-six per cent of respondents said Canadian Olympic athletes have made
them proud to be Canadian.

With support for the Olympics climbing, Metro Vancouver residents are less
tolerant of anti-Olympic protest than they were a few weeks ago.

The percentage of residents who believe protests should be restricted to
certain places and times during the Olympics has jumped eight points to 45 per
cent.

Marshall said the rise in the number of residents who believe limitations
should be placed on anti-Olympic protest is directly linked to the move
Saturday by a small group of self-styled anarchists to vandalize stores,
newspaper boxes and cars in downtown Vancouver.

"When people turn on the TV to watch athletes and instead see people throwing
newspaper boxes into the Bay department store, sympathy just melts away."

Despite the rise in negative feelings toward protesters, there is still strong
support -- 55 per cent -- for the protesters' core argument that the Games are
a waste of money that could have been spent on more important things, according
to the poll.

The online survey was conducted from Feb. 15 to 17 among 497 Canadian adults in
Metro Vancouver and the Sea to Sky corridor. The margin of error is plus or
minus 4.4 percentage points.

A second Angus Reid poll found that a majority of Canadians rated the Winter
Games' opening ceremony very highly.

Asked to rate the event on a scale of one to 10, fifty-five per cent gave the
event marks that range from eight to 10, while 37 per cent provided average
scores (from four to seven) and six per cent gave low grades (from one to
three).

The online survey of 1,007 Canadians, conducted over the past two days, found
that 56 per cent in B.C. watched the opening ceremony.

dward@vancouversun.com