BC municipal elections

[Hatman 🍁]

BC goes to the polls on Saturday. What's exciting about them is the fact that some places (including Vancouver) have municipal parties.

I haven't been paying much attention yet, but there has been some news about the Occupy protests in Vancouver. Left leaning mayor Gregor Robertson wants to shut down the protest, and will likely alienate his base. Will be interesting to see what happens.

Basically, Vancouver has 3 main parties, two of which run in the mayoral election. There is the right wing "Non Partisan Association" (i.e. Tories and BC Liberals) and the left wing Vision Vancouver (federal Liberals, NDPers) which is Robertson's party. On city council, the Coalition of Progressive Electors also runs, which is more left wing.  They have a few seats. Note, Vancouver is the largest city in Canada with no municipal ward system, all 10 council seats are elected at large. That's why even in close elections, one party will often dominate council. (they had a referendum to move to a ward system, and it was defeated!) There is also the Vancouver Green Party, which is running former BC Green leader Adrienne Carr for council.

I don't know anything about any of the other races, I'll have to read up on them. Anyone else paying attention?

BTW, some 2008 maps:

[Hatman 🍁]

Thanks for your input, lilTommy. BTW, it was my point about at-large systems, not Teddy's ;-)

It appears that the SCC will not be running a candidate for mayor. It seems odd, isn't there enough left wing areas of Surrey to make a race competitive?

By the way, in Burnaby the main opposition party is Team Burnaby. They have no seats on council, though as you mentioned. They are running Tom Tao for mayor against Corrigan.

From looking at all the municipal party sites, it appears the left wing parties tend to go with green and blue, while the right wing parties like red and blue.

[Hatman 🍁]

Some other races:

Former councillor Richard Lee is challenging mayor Malcolm Brodie in Richmond. (interestingly for a city full of Asians, there is only one on council, Derek Dang!, but this problem is not unique to Richmond, many high visible minority cities in Ontario have few minorities on their councils)

In Abbotsford, Mayor George Peary is being challenged by 4 other candidates.

Councillor Barrie Lynch is challenging mayor Richard Stewart in Coquitlam.

Mayor Frank Leonard is being challenged in Saanich by David Cubberley and David Shebib.

Mayor Sharon Shepherd face four opposition candidates in Kelowna.

Those are all the cities with 100000+ people.

[Hatman 🍁]

ooh... results will all be posted here: http://www.civicinfo.bc.ca/

candidates for all of BC here: http://www.elections.civicinfo.bc.ca/2011/index.asp?logintype=M

If you don't live in a municipality, apparently the regional districts are also having elections for the rural seats on their councils (I believe the urban seats are filled by municipal councillors, mayors)

[Hatman 🍁]

Yeah, the real battle is the south of Vancouver, and parts of the west end...

Ive been looking through some of the races, and there are municipal parties in some of the smaller municipalities. Delta has a few, for example. The governing party in Langley Twp is their only party, and there appears to be an opposition party running in Victoria, as the only party there.

[Hatman 🍁]

Here's my blog post about the elections: http://canadianelectionatlas.blogspot.com/2011/11/british-columbia-municipal-elections.html

[Hatman 🍁]

Polls close at 8pm Pacific / 11pm Eastern.

[Hatman 🍁]

Polls close at 8pm Pacific / 11pm Eastern.

Tonight?

Yes.

[Hatman 🍁]

I am disappointed that COPE was shut out.

[Hatman 🍁]

The 2011 popular vote result is about the same as in 2008. The map does some voting shifts. Surprised that the NPA was able to win some parts on East Van. They also increased their support in the south of the city. However, Robertson increased his support in the central and NW parts of the city.