Alberta Municipal Elections: October 16, 2017

[Hatman 🍁]

Nenshi losing would be awful. He is one of the best mayors this country has ever had.

[Hatman 🍁]

What did Nenshi do to drop so low in the polls? Incumbent mayors ought to cruise to reelection with 70% of the popular vote.

Not on their third elections. Usually the second election is a landslide, and the third is contested, due to the desire for change.

[Hatman 🍁]

How did Nenshi even get elected in a place like Calgary?

How did the NDP form government in Alberta in 2015?

Nenshi first won in a 3-way race, but I believe even his predecessor was a Liberal.

[Hatman 🍁]

Will these election tell us anything about just how f[ink]ed progressives could be at a provincial level come the next election?

Well, they're non-partisan, but Nenshi losing would be a very bad sign. I'm sure the general provincial mood is not helping his bid for re-election.

[Hatman 🍁]

New Mainstreet poll:

Smith - 48%
Nenshi - 31%
Chabot - 6%

[Hatman 🍁]

Yeah, as a pollster, I am trying to figure out how they managed to get those numbers with a sizeable sample size too...

[Hatman 🍁]

could it be as something as simple as having the names reversed for their cell sample and not noticing? Something is very wrong with their poll...

[Hatman 🍁]

An interesting race is shaping up in Stratchona County; it is full of "also rans".
Here are the mayoral candidates:
-Linda Carr, current mayor. No party affiliation I can find, but she seems to be centre-right.
-David Dixon. Ran for mayor of North Vancouver in 2005. Running on a fairly left wing platform, but is more of a fringe candidate.
-Jacquie Fenske. Former PC MLA (2012-2015) for Fort Saskatchewan-Vegreville
-Rod Frank. Was the Liberal candidate here in the 2015 federal election. Claims to have run on a "fiscal conservative and social progressive." platform... for the 2015 Liberals. Ha!
-Linda Osinchuk. Former mayor, but lost to Carr in a squeaker in 2013. Ran for the Wildrose in 2015, but lost. Interestingly, her PC challenger was also the former mayor, and the candidate Osinchuk beat to become mayor in 2010. Both of them lost to the NDP though!

[Hatman 🍁]

New Mainstreet poll:

Smith - 52%
Nenshi - 39%
Chabot - 6%

(undecideds removed). Still weird youth numbers, but Nenshi leads in the 35-49 cohort at least.

And they polled the Edmonton race too, for some reason:

Iveson - 46%
Koziak - 7%
Undecided - 35%

[Hatman 🍁]

Battle of the pollsters!

Calgary has more people than provinces half of the provinces. There should not be a huge discrepancy in polling. But then again municipal election polling hasn't really been perfected.

[Hatman 🍁]

Here's my profile of the main races: http://canadianelectionatlas.blogspot.ca/2017/10/2017-alberta-municipal-elections-today.html

[Hatman 🍁]

Wow! Rod Frank (the 2015 Liberal candidate) won the mayoral race in Strathcona County!

[Hatman 🍁]

Wow, CTV calling with just 32% of polls reporting? Weird.

And also lol @ Mainstreet

[Hatman 🍁]

I'm happy it was a short night.

wut

[Hatman 🍁]

Wow - Nenshi lost just two wards (13 & 14 in the southwest corner of the city - Harper country).

[Hatman 🍁]

Final results:

Nenshi - 199,122 (51.4%)
Smith - 169,367 (43.7%)
Chabot - 11,945 (3.1%)
Other - 6,872 (1.8%)

Turnout: 58.1%

[Hatman 🍁]

Some of those conservative councillors who were supposed to win in landslides in the north end, ended up winning by smaller than expected margins, probably due to the higher turnout. However, conservatives still have almost all the council seats. The three progressive councillors were re-elected.

Here are the Edmonton results:

Iveson - 141,182 (72.5%)
Koaziak - 13,204 (6.8%)
Others - 40,440 (20.8%)

Turnout: 31.5%

On Edmonton City council, NDPer Aaron Paquette won Ward 4

[Hatman 🍁]

The pollsters who are the most confident and cocky are usually the one's who are the worst and end up having to eat crow after election day.

[Hatman 🍁]

[Hatman 🍁]

The pollsters who are the most confident and cocky are usually the one's who are the worst and end up having to eat crow after election day.

That is sooo true. Remember Forum Research when they confidently predicted that the Liberal would win Brandon-Souris by 30 points???

I don't remember them being quite so awful as Quito Maggi has been. And he is being quite insufferable today on Twitter. I mean, if it was me and I saw how strange our age breaks were, I would tread very lightly about our numbers, as deep down I would have no confidence in them.

[Hatman 🍁]

When it comes to insufferable pollsters, the one who takes the cake has to be John Wright at Ipsos during the 2014 Ontario election campaign. Their polls kept showing the PCs way ahead in contrast to everyone else and they were totally arrogant and condescending about how they HAD to be correct and everyone else was wrong...then the votes were counted and he whimpered away like a dog with its tail between its legs! 

Oh yeah, that election proved how unreliable opt-in online panels are.

[Hatman 🍁]

Final results:

Nenshi - 199,122 (51.4%)
Smith - 169,367 (43.7%)
Chabot - 11,945 (3.1%)
Other - 6,872 (1.8%)

Turnout: 58.1%

That's a new record turnout if I'm not mistaken. 

Highest since the 1930s I think.

[Hatman 🍁]

Hey njall, what do you think of these names I've given to Calgary's ward?

[Hatman 🍁]

I see Calgary is like Halifax where city council has larger districts than the legislative assembly

Winnipeg, Edmonton, Regina and Saskatoon are all like that too. It is quite unfortunate.

It's common in your end too, I believe Saint John, Moncton and St. John's all have fewer wards than provincial ridings.

[Hatman 🍁]

What about Glenmore-Elbow for Ward 11?

Coming up with a name for Ward 7 was the hardest one, so I just went with the federal riding name.

Calgary is quite strange it that it has such small neighbourhoods and seldomly has distinct names for neighbourhood clusters. It makes for coming up with names rather difficult.