Quote:
Originally Posted by Johnny Makarov
Hey there is no chance Farkbutt is going to win the mayorship right?
That means no more Jeremy in council for 4 years!
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I'm more pessimistic.
Bill Smith got 44% of the vote in, what I believe, was in large part a not-Nenshi vote. I think if you asked specifics of people voting for Smith many of them would not be able to tell you much. I'm not entirely convinced people realized he was different than the Edmonton mayor.
Farkas will get nearly all of those not-Nenshi votes. He'll have the backing of the Manning centre with all their 'conservatives' and property developers. That's likely going to be a million dollars of funding he will receive, like Smith did last time (compared to the 600k of Nenshi), for his campaign.
He also has name recognition, which a lot of it is bad, but he has claimed the anti-establishment reputation on council due to his grandstanding antics. So even though he's pretty much the definition of "the establishment" a lot of people fed up with city council will vote for him.
I don't doubt that he would lose to Nenshi, but I think without Nenshi he could get the most votes with 'vote-splitting' if he can still receive 40% of the votes, maybe 35% to Gondek and another candidate or two taking the remaining votes (much like Nenshi's first win where he got under 40%).
At least with the Flames getting their arena they will be less likely to back someone so blatantly like they did Smith last election.