Vote Compass: Tax hikes for smaller class sizes get some support

Education involvesbillions of dollars in spending every yearin Saskatchewan, and notsurprisingly it's a topic that has come up on the campaign trail this year.

Now a new report from Vote Compass, CBC'scitizen engagement application,suggests people in the province support spending more on Kindergarten-to-Grade-12 schools to reduce class sizes, even if it means tax increases.

"Half of the population of Saskatchewan supports reducing class sizes, even if it costs taxpayers more, though Liberal, Green, and NDP voters are more inclined to agree than Saskatchewan Party voters," said Gregory Kerr, research manager for Vox Pop Labs, which created Vote Compass for CBC.

"These tendencies roughly align with the positions adopted by the parties, with the exception of the Green Party, which has stated that it would not seek to reduce class sizes without first seeking public input."

While 50 per cent of people in Saskatchewan agreed with spending more (and paying more) to get smaller class sizes, 24 per cent disagreed. The rest said there were neutral or didn't know.

The findings are based on 4,735 respondents who participated in VoteCompass from March 9 to March 21.

The online tool lets people find out where they fit in on the political landscape in relation to the Saskatchewan Party, the New Democrats, the Liberal Party and the Greens.

• Vote Compass: Education issues and the Saskatchewan election

It also lets the public weigh in on issues that could come up during the campaign. The economy andhealth care have proven to be the two issues the public caresabout the most.

• Vote Compass: Try out our citizen engagement application

The latest report from Vox Pop Labs asked the public about education.

In addition to asking about spending more to reduce class sizes, Vote Compass also asked whether private religious schools should not get provincial funding.

Opinions were all over the map, but generally people support the view that these schools should not get money from the province. In other words,50 per cent agreed with no funding, while 31 per cent disagreed with no funding.

Vote Compass broke the results down to religious affiliation.

Half of the population of Saskatchewan supports reducing class sizes, even if it costs taxpayers more.Greg Kerr,. Vox Pop Labs

"It comes as no shock that the group most steadfastly opposed to government funding for private religious schools is composed of those who do not adhere to any religious faith," Kerr said.

"A whopping 76 per centof those who identify as atheist, agnostic, or as having no religious affiliation believe these schools should not receive government funding."

A third question asked Saskatchewan residents how much financial support university students should get from the government.

Again, most people supported opening up the province's purse-strings.

Fifty-five per cent said there should be more spent to support university students, while only 8 per cent said there should be less. The rest said spendingshould be the same or didn't know.

People who self-identified asSask.Party supporters were different from those supporting other parties in that they gave a strong vote to the status quo.

In fact, 47 per cent of Sask. Party supporters said support for university students should stay at the same level.

"The parties are roughly aligned with their respective bases on the issue of provincial funding to help university students pay for tuition, with the majority of NDP, Green and Liberal voters supporting greater funding, and the bulk of Saskatchewan Party voters indicating that they are happy with current expenditures," Kerr said.

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, VoteCompass is a civic engagement application offered in Canada exclusively by CBCNews. The findings are based on 4,735respondents who participated in VoteCompass from March 9to March 21, 2016. Unlike online opinion polls, respondentsto Vote Compass are not pre-selected.

Similar to opinion polls, however,the data are a non-random sample from the population and have been weightedin order to approximate a representative sample. Vote Compass data havebeen weighted by geography, gender, age, educational attainment, occupation,and religion to ensure the sample's composition reflects that of the actualpopulation of Saskatchewan according to census data and other populationestimates.