Decision 2010: Calgary Municipal Election

[jeffwhit]

Farrell just opened up to a 3 point lead with 40 of 44 reporting, looks like her long night is over and she's back to work in the morning. I've lived in her ward for 6 years, I am 99% pleased with her, so I am happy.

[mersar]

By my math turnout is 52.6%, 53% is possible. About 2900 votes left to be reported I'd estimate.

and according to twitter, Zak has pledged to run again in 3 years (or likely sooner if Mar jumps to provincial) for Ward 8

[Wooster]

Originally Posted by mersar

By my math turnout is 52.6%, 53% is possible. About 2900 votes left to be reported I'd estimate.

That's a massive story in itself.

[DizzyEdge]

Zak did pretty good for a youngin first timer.. well assuming he is a youngin, I didn't really read up on him

[Bassic Lab]

Pincott has widened the gap slightly with the last poll but it is still a nail biter.

Well, I have to say that I'm pleasantly surprised by how well Pashak did. I was worried he'd be blown out of the water. This was definitely a respectable enough showing to keep him following the family career and should give him the edge if Mar jumps to the provincial level midterm.

[DizzyEdge]

I liked how they were commenting on Mar on Shaw I think and said that he felt some heat from the younger pashak and that a few weeks ago Mar started popping his collar and "younging" himself haha.

[Bassic Lab]

Looks like Pincott has pulled away, the gap just exploded to nearly one thousand votes.

I'm really glad that, despite all the talk of anger at council's "social engineering", we have shown that Calgarians were not only happy with Bronconnier's support for sustainability and transit expansion but wanted even more. Between Nenshi's win and Higgins' support we have shown that the angry online newspaper commenter crowd really is stuck in the low 30s while more than 60% of this city is ready to move on from small town thinking.

That and apparently I start typing insane run on sentences at 2:00 AM... Still waiting for those aldermanic results.

edit:

Farrell and Pincott have further widened the gaps while Carra is keeping his, albeit small, lead steady with more polls in.

[DizzyEdge]

"Nenshi’s victory also doesn’t appear to be sitting well with some of Premier Ed Stelmach’s Conservative MLAs in the city, many of whom were backing McIver.

On his Twitter account, Calgary-North Hill Tory MLA Kyle Fawcett tweeted: “Nenshi ... BIG mistake Calgary!”


Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Naheed...Calgary/3690730/story.html#ixzz12n1qQ3Wb

[Bassic Lab]

Originally Posted by DizzyEdge

"Nenshi’s victory also doesn’t appear to be sitting well with some of Premier Ed Stelmach’s Conservative MLAs in the city, many of whom were backing McIver.

On his Twitter account, Calgary-North Hill Tory MLA Kyle Fawcett tweeted: “Nenshi ... BIG mistake Calgary!”


Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Naheed...Calgary/3690730/story.html#ixzz12n1qQ3Wb

Jonathan Denis (at least I think it was him) was on television from the McIver headquarters. He at least had the good sense to say that, while he supported McIver, he was hoping to build a friendly and effective relationship with whomever won. The PCs really have to be careful. The fight with Bronconnier was clearly won by the mayor, who ended up receiving the funding he wanted, and only served to tarnish the party's reputation in Calgary. Picking another fight could send the city's seats to every other party in the next provincial election, which already looks like it could be the first competitive election this province has seen since Klein-Decore.

[The Chemist]

Tories are just upset their lapdog didn't get in... What a bunch of sore losers.

[DizzyEdge]

I'm not particularly impressed with a party that has enjoyed a cushy ride the past 40 yrs to presume to criticize our democratically elected choice of Mayor. Perhaps they need a time out next election.

[Bassic Lab]

Originally Posted by DizzyEdge

"Nenshi’s victory also doesn’t appear to be sitting well with some of Premier Ed Stelmach’s Conservative MLAs in the city, many of whom were backing McIver.

On his Twitter account, Calgary-North Hill Tory MLA Kyle Fawcett tweeted: “Nenshi ... BIG mistake Calgary!”


Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Naheed...Calgary/3690730/story.html#ixzz12n1qQ3Wb

Oh and on that article there was this lovely comment by our favourite ex-poster:

Originally Posted by Herald Comment Board

Corndogger
1:24 AM on October 19, 2010

Political analysts will have a field day with this election campaign. HIggins had some rather 🞵🞵🞵🞵 🞵🞵🞵🞵 PC people behind her and I wonder if this wasn't to test the Wildrose Alliance Party who had a lot of people supporting McIver. McIver's campaign team did a horrible job by not defining what their candidate would do in office and played it way too safe. What in the hell did they spend $700K on?

Nenshi's campaign and his core supporters can't help but remind people of Obama. The big question is will Nenshi realize that what won him the race is the desire to clean up the corruption, etc. at City Hall and not a desire to implement Plan It Calgary and all of the social engineering that goes with it? Obama was elected because people wanted to clean up Washington and get the economy back on track. He's lost the vast majority of his support because he decided the majority wanted healthcare reform, etc. when it was really only his 🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵 supporters. Did Nenshi learn anything from Obama?

Still whining about Plan It's social engineering, which just happened to trounce the opposition in this election.

[Bassic Lab]

Farrell is up 900 votes with 2 polls left.
Carra is up 482 votes with 2 polls left.
Pincott is up 1015 votes with 3 polls left.

It is looking like all three should be pretty safe now, barring the remaining polls including all of the opposition's family members.

[DizzyEdge]

I see it's been pointed out that 2/3 of voters backed a Plan-It friendly candidate.

[DizzyEdge]

Originally Posted by Bassic Lab

Farrell is up 900 votes with 2 polls left.
Carra is up 482 votes with 2 polls left.
Pincott is up 1015 votes with 3 polls left.

It is looking like all three should be pretty safe now, barring the remaining polls including all of the opposition's family members.

Yep, was just going to post that.

[Radley77]

Originally Posted by srperrycgy

Fill us in, I know you were really going for Barb.

A combination of factors really; reevaluation of all the candidates with Kepner-Tregoe in light of new Better Ideas, Nenshi's stance in support of maintaining police officers per capita was a must have, and recognition that inner city crime management has been tremendously successful over the past couple years were important, Wayne Stewart's and Paul Hughes swing vote endorsement, that Nenshi had been to my community hall twice, Barb's admission last week that she was asked to run instead of getting there via a hard work ethic (am sure this was an issue discussed around the table this weekend).

I still support a large number of issues that I think she got right with her platform (for example, support of Plan It), and there are still questions I have for Naheed with regards to ensuring that a feasibility study is done first for Nose Creek LRT versus Centre Street or Edmonton Trail alignment, as well as still not sure about the implementation of airport tunnel, as well as addressing traffic congestion in the SW via ring ring road. From very early on, I thought Nenshi had some good plans, but was concerned with his implementation as well as the electability of an academic that might not resonate well with average Calgarians.

That Barb maintained a lot of her base throughout the election, I think is a sign she ran a fairly good campaign considering being a novice. I know some had argued that her support was wide but not deep, but at the same time, she and her team did bring a platform that was more developed than McIver and was able to maintain that base for much of the election and attract engaged undecided voters.

In further discussions with friends today, I also recognized I generally supported Naheed's principles of trying to innovate and that would be a much better approach than Ric's stance of waiting for an issue to 'materialize' or Barb's stance of doing whatever city administration's recommendation was.

Naheed had been a candidate I was returning to as a result of reconsideration, as he had been on my radar screen since 2007. Little things like the sidewalk chalks this AM that spoke to some of the concerns of my community I think really helped me reconsider my vote.

And finally, a bit of strategic voting comes into play at this point with this sort of last minute decision...

Carra was an easy decision; was hoping for Mar to pull through as well on City Council to be a proportional representation of police issues.

[Bassic Lab]

Originally Posted by DizzyEdge

I see it's been pointed out that 2/3 of voters backed a Plan-It friendly candidate.

For Mayor at least. I am trying to figure out what council will look like but with new faces and a new Mayor to guide them I will likely just have to wait and see.

I see Carra, Farrell, MacLeod, and Pincott all being solidly in favour of an even stronger Plan It. The others are open questions.

[shogged]

well, i was at the polls from 10am to 10pm today in support of nenshi. made it down to nenshi HQ just in time for the victory speech. Was a pretty cool surprise walking into a win because my phone died just as the first polls started reporting. have to say, being there was a tremendous experience!

also want to thank you all for the entertaining read tonight! i came home to about 15 pages of new posts ranging from hilarious chalk talk, to the triumphant return of frinkprof, and might I add, probably the post of the year =D

[Bassic Lab]

Second last poll and Pincott loses 600 votes from his lead, now 449 with 1 poll remaining.

Farrell up 1249 with 1 poll remaining.

Still no movement for Carra.

This is taking forever. The polls closed seven hours ago. After a 600 vote differential in one poll I am no longer comfortable saying that Pincott is safe, let alone Carra. Farrell should be though.

[shogged]

Originally Posted by Bassic Lab

This is taking forever. The polls closed seven hours ago.

it is likely the last poll to be counted is the advanced poll. we have to remember that the team counting that poll not only has 23 thousand mayor votes to count, but the alderman votes all went into the same box and need to be sorted.

also everything gets counted twice, the front and backs of each ballot need to be checked twice. its a very time consuming process for a normal polling station, imagine in the largest polling station of them all!