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Who will the winners be? The campaign organizers say this

November 15th, 2008 · 3 Comments

I talked to a couple of people from both campaigns mid-morning and this is what they had to say.

Vision will win. Early this morning, the NPA was hoping to hang on to at least two council seats — Suzanne Anton the likeliest survivor, Kim Capri and Michael Geller shortly behind. “I’d be ecstatic if we got three,” said one person this morning.

With the news of turnout not being as high as people expected, they’re now hoping for three, maybe four. But that’s still uncertain. Both sides are currently blasting their supporters with emails telling them to get out and vote because turnout is low.

Both sides said their polling told me that there was a 20-point spread between the two mayoral candidates, Peter Ladner and Gregor Robertson.

The only other uncertainty, besides the number of councillors that Vision will have, is whether people who voted Vision also voted COPE, in a straight slate, or if those Vision voters will throw some votes to NPA councillors.

I have heard that MANY federal Liberals were planning to vote Vision, according to NPA information, so it may turn out that they’ll be inclined to send their spare votes to a few NPA councillors rather than Vision ones.

The same uncertainty extends to school board and park board — the Vision voters are committed to Vision, but it’s not clear whether they will vote for the COPE part of the slate.

So the prediction I made on CBC, a 7-4 Vision council, may turn out to be close after all — in spite of my famous ability to be wrong.

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  • Jeff

    I don’t necessarily think that low turnout is *bad* for Vision, they have a much better ground game than the NPA, and I suspect that is a game-changer. Low turnout may be a reflection of apathy on the part of un-affiliated voters. I think Vision has gotten *their* voters out.

  • Bill Lee

    Isn’t that “infamous ability”?
    How does this reflect the Liberal-NDP levels at the provincial
    levels?

    I wish that the City Clerk would allow the ballot data to
    be massaged for : all NPA, All Vision/Cope ballots, A-B-C bias, unfull that is
    less than 10, less than 7 etc. ballots.
    As it is the city ballot counter only give the totals by
    polling station.

    What’s the turnout? And which stations had 95 percent of possible
    voters?

    I do predict that Vision will fall apart before the next election.

    I wish we could go back to the old style of yearly elections.
    |Turn them out themes could be more easily expressed. Why 3 years?
    The expense is small in 90 percent of the cities in the province.

  • RossK

    I’m writing with hindsight here (11pm Sat night), but Jeff made a heckuva point….In fact, I was surpised by how how little the punditry discussed the Big Tents GOTV machine all night long…..Clearly it helped push back the Red Rump faction back to their own side of the divide after the Smilin’ one’s inroads last time out…

    .