Friday, November 26, 2010

Election tea leaves

The full election results are in with the City.  

The Referendum
Yes won every poll in the City and won them all by a large margin.    The closest the two sides came was 55% Yes to 45% no.  

Interestingly Yes did very well in Burnside Gorge even though this is a neighbourhood that benefits the least from the new bridge.   You have to go out of your way from Burnside Gorge to use the bridge.   For most people living in the Burnside Gorge neighbourhood, the best bridge is the Tillicum bridge.  It also is the neighbourhood that had the lowest turn out

Council Race
There were 1176 people that voted in the referendum that did not vote in the council election.   In two areas of the city more than 10% of the referendum voters did not vote for a council candidate - Burnside Gorge and Vic West

Highest voter turn out at a single polling station was the Fairfield New Horizons with 1924 votes. The lowest was Burnside Gorge.

Total council race turnout was 15389, down from 17080 in 2008 and 17015 in 2005.   This is a 10% drop in voter turn out.

The advance poll, Sundance, Central Baptish and Vic West saw increases in turnout, all the other polling stations saw drops.   Sir James Douglas dropped by 28%.

Marianne Alto dominated the race and won every poll, the closest race was at Margret Jenkins where she bested Barry Hobbis by 6 votes.  This is the only poll that was close by any measure.   Her top poll in votes was Fairfield New Horizons at 530 votes and her best percentage was at Oaklands at 36.04%

Barry Hobbis did best in Fairfield, James Bay and Vic West, it is north of Fort Street that his vote collapses and he finishes as low as fourth in some polls.  Interestingly, the second best poll for Barry Hobbis was Vic West which was one of the best areas for Yes in the referendum.

Steve Filipovic had a much more consistent vote across the city.   He had not clear highs and lows.   He also did not do well in his home turf of Vic West.  He did not break 20% in any poll.

Rose Henry had two strong polls, Central Baptist (18.62%) and George Jay (20.50%).  Her lowest vote was at Margret Jenkins at only 7.44%.

Susan Woods had a couple of good polls that pulled her totals up but most of them were between 6.66% and 7.89%.    It is here three high polls where she pulled her vote ahead of Paul Brown, otherwise the two of them were very close together.

The five candidates had no areas of strength in the city as none of the scored over 5% in any polls in the city.

1 comment:

David Bratzer said...

The strong Yes vote in Burnside Gorge is partially explained by the fact that Dean Fortin was executive director of the Burnside Gorge Community Centre for 17 years. Mayor Fortin has strong roots in that community. He also wrote an op-ed piece in support of the new bridge in the last edition of the Burnside Gorge Community News.