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share.... and Indi? or NSV perhaps :P
I'm all for Corrigan, hey they have eared the reputation as the best run city. Generally i'm not keen on one party dominance as debate and discussion can become lacking but hey they seem to prove me wrong.
Anyone have any insight into Surrey, are their any progressive on council (Surrey First dosen't strike me and progressive sicne its Watts party) can the Surrey Civic Coalition win any council seats?
Anyone have any insight into Victoria? looks like there is only one Slate, Open Victoria.
NDP supporters should be shouting the praises of the NDP affiliated Burnaby politicians every single chance they get. We need to be promoting our own accomplishments and what better example than Burnaby to show what NDP policies can accomplish particularly in financial and economic matters. Corrigan's team is an NDP team in everything but name.
Georgia Straight endorses a minority council:
http://straight.com/article-540451/vancouver/straight-slate-voting-day?p...
Gregor for mayor.
Council: Louis, Woodsworth, Aquino (COPE); Sandy Garossino (Ind), Elizabeth Murphy (NSV), Jang, Meggs, Louie (Vision), Bickerton, McCreery (NPA).
Parks: Greenwell-Baker, Granby (COPE), Jamie Lee Hamilton (IDEA), De Genova, Pasin (NPA), Barnes, Sharma (Vision)
The NPA must have a massive war chest, as I have been completely inundated with pamphlets, mailers, elevator ads, billboards, signs, radio commercials, emails, etc promoting the NPA slate. I think I might have received one pamphlet from Vision, and nary a peep from COPE.
It might just be the circles I move in, but nobody seems willing to admit they are voting for Vision. All my friends are either lefties who think Vision is NPA Lite, or more right-leaning people who think Gregor is "Mayor Moonbeam" and who are pissed off about the weak response to the Stanley Cup riots, the ongoing presence of Occupy Vancouver, etc. I remarked to a friend that Vision should be careful - I am constantly amazed at the extent to which people are willing to vote for someone who purports to offer a 'law-and-order' agenda. I have always felt that it was no accident that downtown voters voted for Lorne Mayencourt (twice) running on a 'safe streets' agenda.
I still think Gregor and Vision will likely win, but that is only because the NPA has offered such a profoundly mediocre and weak slate of candidates. Anton got the mayoral nod by default as the only sitting councillor, and the only council candidates I recognized were Elizabeth Ball (former councillor) and Sean Bickerton (who ran last time). Everyone else is a complete nobody. Ladner at least had some half-decent candidates running with him last time. If the NPA had gotten its act together early and assembled a better slate, they'd probably be giving Vision more of a run for their money.
The "Take Back Vancouver" rag from the NPA was just embarrassing.
Why does the NPA spend 80-90% of their time telling us about Vision? Are they so embarrassed by their own lack of a substantive platform that all they can do is rant about Vision? They're giving their political foes plenty of free publicity.
Any predictions? These are mine:
Mayor: Gregor Robertson (VV)
Council: Sean Bickerton (NPA), Heather Deal (VV), Kerry Jang (VV), Mike Klassen (NPA), Raymond Louie (VV), Tim Louis (COPE), Geoff Meggs (VV), Andrea Reimer (VV), Tim Stevenson (VV), Ellen Woodsworth (COPE).
Vision/COPE majorities on both the Parks Board and the School Board.
I'll bite.
Mayor Gregor Roberston re-elected with a 10% margin or slightly less.
VV/COPE majority council but with increased NPA presence: 3 - 4 seats.
Gregor, the comely coward, has been declared re-elected. At this point, all 7 Vision councillors are leading--only COPE's Allan Wong has won for the School Board. Ellen Woodsworth is currently eleventh.
Aaaaand the reality check...
As of the time of writing, 132/135 polls reporting, council elected all 7 Vision candidates, 3 NPA (Affleck, Ball, Yuen), and COPE has been shut out completely. Adriane Carr is biting at Yuen's heels in 11th place, and Ellen Woodsworth is at 12th.
Carr is now 60 votes away from Yuen with two divisions left to report. Woodsworth is about 130 off and looks to miss out. Shame.
Adrienne Carr has just won the final council seat by 91 votes
Last poll just reported (from West End) and the Green's Carr has finally leapt above the NPA's Yuen to take the 10th and final spot leaving 2 NPA councillors.
COPE wiped out except for lone school board seat.
In Burnaby, the left BCA has swept council and school board with Corrigan winning by 76%.
In Surrey, the right Surrey First has also swept council and school board with Watts winning by 80%.
[dp]
Relatively good results all around I'd say. It sucks that COPE was basically wiped out and it's unfortunate that the NPA wasn't completely shut out, but otherwise I'm pleased. Had COPE not been stupid and dumped David Cadman they probably would have had at least one councillor.
As for the Mayoral results, I'm pleased that Anton got crushed. Diss Gregor all you want but he's infinitely superior to her. Heck, she made Ladner look good in comparison. All Anton's campaign seemed to be based on was, "Stanley Cup Riots bad = Visions fault, Occupy Vancouver bad, me go and kick them out = NPA "leadership", bike lanes bad = Vision's fault." It was all a bunch of pseudo-hot button crap and I'm pleased she fell on her stupid face trying to exploit it.
As for outside of Vancouver I don't entirely understand why people around here hate Robertson but make Corrigan's out to be some sort of god. The guy's policies on regional transportation are often quite conservative, even to the right of Vancouver's NPA, and he's not particularly environmentally friendly. If I were to categorize him, I'd say he's centre/centre-left Mayor like Robertson, just in a more 'blue collar' way, whereas Robertson has more of a yuppie/hipster appeal. BFD (big fucking deal).
Complete and utter triumph for Vision Vancouver. Pretty decent night for the Greens. Disappointing result for the NPA. Total disaster for COPE.
I'm most disappointed to see Ellen Woodsworth lose. One of the hardest-working councillors, who definitely deserved re-election.
I was glad to see the voters of Abbotsford so soundly reject the privatization of their water supply. My understanding is the federal Conservative government was trying to foist it on them. On an ideological level, this was best thing I saw tonight.
Ellen Woodsworth got about 3000 more council votes than last election. Same with Bouey and Blakey on school board. But NPA strength buried them in this silly electoral system.
One can surmise that if David Cadman had been nominated by COPE after all, he also would have gained about 3000 more votes, winning a seat in place of Adriane Carr.
Clearly RJ Aquino did not benefit from the alphabet effect tonight.
"NPA strength"? They only elected two councillors and three school trustees, for goodness' sake! (Plus they got their clocks cleaned in the mayoral race.)
Turnout was up this election from last time, so raw vote totals are a meaningless measuring stick. The question is whether a candidate or party's percentage share of the vote increased or decreased over last time.
Bummer about COPE.
Relative strength anyway. The NPA vote was significantly stronger than in 2008.
Anyone know why each municiplity outside of Vancouver reports all results at once, while Vancouver reports its results poll by poll?
How did that happen? It seems the COPE-Vision alliance was met with more enthusiasm in 2008 among the left than it was this time around, so you would have thought COPE had a chance to expand its representation.
Well, for starters, let's not forget that Woodsworth barely scraped in last time. She got the 10th council spot, and there were only 1,600 votes separating 10th and 13th place. She also gets penalized by her last name, since for some bizzare reason the names are listed alphabetically on the ballot rather than in random order (this is also, I am convinced, why Suzanne Anton was the lone NPA survivor in 2008).
Looking at the races for Council, School Board and Park Board, it looks to me that there were anywhere from 10 to 20 thousand people who cast a ballot for Vision who did not also vote for COPE. Robertson beat Anton by roughly the same 20,000-vote margin that he beat Ladner by, so I'm not convinced that there was a surge in NPA support that buried COPE. What seems to have happened is, as you pointed out, is that this time around, COPE was unable to take advantage of Vision's coat-tails. Even among Vision voters, there seems to have been some ticket-splitting as Raymond Louie got nearly 10,000 votes more than Tony Tang.
I can only speculate as to why so many Vision voters did not also back COPE, but it may have had something to do with the fact that there were fears that at least one of the COPE candidates (Tim Louis) was not particularly friendly to Vision and would end up destabilizing the alliance. I imagine there will be a big push among some COPE activists to formally end the alliance "since it didn't do us any good" and run a full slate of candidates. The problem, of course, is that it would free Vision to do the same, and I doubt that COPE would do all that well in a head-to-head battle with Vision.
"Letter of the week"
Thereby guaranteeing that no minority voice can be elected; 51% or go home? No thanks.
In Victoria, I supported David Bratzer for school board trustee but he didn't win a seat. However some of his "running mates" in a loose coaalition did and hopefully this will be enough to break the power of the olde boys.
Tom Ferris, olde boy supreme from the trustees was in shock at the result (as well he should be). Bratzer is a cop with strong views on drug legalization. The "war on drugs" is a huge failure and he wants to build the post war world.
Bratzer questioned the school board on some of their spending and selling of school land about 6 months ago. He put it in a podcast. He used very diplomatic language but even so, after listening, I was of the view that there are rats on the school board and they must be replaced by good people like Bratzer.
I remain confused about why municipal politics cannot bring themelves to use the normal political lablels like ndp conservatiive, etc. My GF in a different district had a mad rush to figure out who she wanted to vote for. If they had a simple label, she would have just voted for the ndp slate. Mabye with an exception if someone had a dodgey past.
Also, municipal elections must be lucrative, there were far more posters than there ever was in a federal or provincial election.
Well, what it would allow is for candidates with overlapping-but-not-identical constituencies to run against each other. I'm pretty sure COPE would be able to pull 51% between first and second choices in some East Van wards under single-member IRV, even in competition with Vision and the NPA.
Even if FPTP does have the special characteristic that a unique candidate with lots of competitors can win with a minority of the vote... that doesn't make me like it, because it's still a severe distortion. In any case I'd still be pulling for something STVish rather than single member wards.
I think it often comes to pass that municipal politicians of the "same" political stripe as federal/provincial parties have battles and disagreements that could not be easily expressed if they had to be part of a cohesive party line. Moreover, public sentiment may be detrimentally attached to party names. If COPE were called the Vancouver NDP in 2002, I'm sure they'd have been considerably less popular.
In Burnaby the unfair electoral system has again rewarded the BCA with a lock on all seats on both the Council and the School Board. The homophobic Parents' Voice people got too many votes but came nowhere near getting elected. The Mayor polled so high that it is clear that voters from al the other slates voted Corrigan for Mayor. I think that the system needs reform but boy I love the outcomes where I live now however I have lived in places where despite getting a solid third of the votes no left wing person could get elected.
In Cumberland the Mayor (a wishy washy fence sitter) was acclaimed. However the town elected all progressive councillors including Roger Kishi (Catherine Bell's partner) who polled in second place in his first run for council. Maybe Cumberland will get a Ginger Goodwin Way after all. Small town with a great heritage and in dire need of a council that understands the difference between good and bad development.
I agree that when COPE members didn't renominate Cadman it sent a very bad message to unaffiliated voters. He had the white male prestige and name recognition to get reelected, likely instead of Carr. His was a respected environmentalist voice, the kind that pulls votes in neighbourhoods where they like composters and capitalism.
Agreed. One detail about STV: in parliamentary elections STV districts should be at least 4-seaters, preferably 5s, 6s or 7s, so as to get fair diversity. But for municipal elections with loose parties and independents, some New Zealand municipalities use smaller wards. Take Wellington City, New Zealand's capital and third largest city, which has only 179,466 people. It's the largest place in NZ that uses STV. It has 14 councillors from 5 wards (four 3-seaters and a 2-seater). They don't display affiliations after their election, but they seem to have been two endorsed by Labour, one by Green, and 11 independents, although they had a couple of municipal parties and I'm not sure if some of their candidates won. My point is, even four wards with 2 or 3 councillors each elected by STV would give each voter competing councillors. Two 5-seater wards might be even better.