The Canadian public opposes legalization of polygamy by 85% to 10% with the remaining 5% having no opinion. This finding represents no change in public opinion since COMPAS’ previous poll on the topic two and a half years ago in October, 2006.
Canadians were asked:
Polygamy, when a man has more than one wife, is an issue in the news in Canada. There’s a test case in the courts of B.C. today, and some experts believe that there’s a chance the judges might decide to make polygamy legal. In your opinion, should the judges

• Leave polygamy alone as being against the law (85%), or
• Make polygamy legal? (10%)
• UNPROMPTED DNK (5%).

The poll was completed March 3, 2009 using professional interviewers supported by computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) technology. Based on a national representative sample of n=300 adults, the poll is deemed accurate to within approximately 4 percentage points 19 times out of 20. By convention, the more uneven or imbalanced the results in a poll, the more accurate it is considered to be for any given sample size. Because of the extreme imbalance of results, the poll is considered as accurate as a poll of n=600 people where the results are split evenly.

This is the first part of a two-part study commissioned by the Institute for Canadian values. The second part, a larger, more comprehensive study to be completed next week, will

• Present a detailed analysis of what Parliament should do depending upon the decision of the courts,
  
  
• Examine in great detail the reasons why Canadians oppose legalization,
  
  
• Examine in great details the reasons that lead the 10% minority of Canadians to favour its legalization, and
  
  
• Report in detail on the positions of men and women, young and old, and French and English-speakers on the judicial, Parliamentary, and principled aspects of the controversy.