And suspicions are it is aimed at the mayoralty race.
The automated phone survey is asking people to rate a list of city councillors, Sara Templeton, Andrew Turner, Jake McLellan, Phil Mauger and Jamie Gough.
McLellan and current Deputy Mayor Turner are all People’s Choice city councillors. Turner is also expected to be the favoured People’s Choice mayoral candidate for the October 2022 election.
Former mayor and now political commentator Garry Moore was randomly surveyed. He told The Star yesterday while the questions don’t specifically say the mayoralty, he believes that is what it is all about.
“It was obviously somebody testing what people think about potential mayoral candidates for next election,” Moore said.
“The campaign has commenced. Potential candidates are polling already. The election isn’t until October 2022. Sigh.”
The survey does not include a question about Lianne Dalziel who has not yet said if she will run for a fourth term. Dalziel was unavailable for comment yesterday.
The People’s Choice chairman Joe Davies did not answer questions from The Star if the survey was about the mayoralty race.
“This survey is focused on issues in Christchurch and local government politicians. We do this to ensure that we stay in touch with the issues that are affecting our communities,” he said.
“We survey the favourability of council politicians to measure their impact on public opinion. The party has not received the results from the survey yet and we will not be making any further comment on internal polling.”
He also did not respond to a question as to why Dalziel was not part of the poll questions.
McLellan said he too received an automated survey call. He said he was not aware The People’s Choice was undertaking the survery before he received this call.
He wanted to listen through the survey, so gave each candidate, including himself, an average rating to be fair.
The first Mauger heard of the survey was from The Star. He said he was flattered his name is included in it. He had not made any decisions on running for mayor.
Templeton said she has no problem with the early survey, or her name being included in it.
Turner and Gough could not be reached for comment.
