[PGT] Calgary Civic Election Results Discussion

[GirlySports]

Originally Posted by Slava

I just don't believe that though. If one of the stations just said "We're hosting this debate and its October 12th at 7pm". Then she could either show up and do the debate or not. That is how any forum works, or any event for that matter.

The TV stations just plain dropped the ball here, and didn't want to give up dancing with the stars or their other prime time schedule to do it.

More like the TV Stations didn't want to make Barb look bad since she's one of them!

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by Slava

I just don't believe that though. If one of the stations just said "We're hosting this debate and its October 12th at 7pm". Then she could either show up and do the debate or not. That is how any forum works, or any event for that matter.

The TV stations just plain dropped the ball here, and didn't want to give up dancing with the stars or their other prime time schedule to do it.

Indeed. If one of the TV stations had done this, two things would have happened.

1) Huge ratings for them
2) Barb has to come or look like an incompetent.

[GirlySports]

Originally Posted by Slava

^ Maps like that remind me that the coverage on election night was pathetic. The local TV stations should be ashamed of how they covered the election in general...no TV debate for the big 3, and then no coverage that night for the heart of the matter.

If I were running a TV station here I would've gone with full coverage, and the graphics and everything that makes the US presidential elections so fun to watch, even without skin in the game! (If you're a political junkie, anyway)

With what money? Would you have a budget to do so?
This is local politics. All Those US election broadcasts costs millions, the networks try to outdo each other. Even the CBC's Federal Election coverage with the fancy maps and the fancy music costs millions.

I think we all enjoyed SHAW TV anyways

[SebC]

Originally Posted by Cowboy89

Upon looking at the map of the wards I can't help but wonder if wards 7,8,9 are gerrymandering efforts (Especially Ward 7). You can't tell me the people of Dalhousie have more civic issues in common with Sunnyside than Edgemont.

Gerrymandered on whose behalf? It's one thing to say that there's little common interest within the ward, but gerrymandering implies intent to manipulate election results. For a government where everyone is an independent, gerrymandering is much less of a concern than in, say, federal and provincial elections (where we should go with some form of proportional representation and not have to worry about gerrymandering!) Not saying that it couldn't happen though, just that it's unlikely.

[Cowboy89]

Originally Posted by SebC

Gerrymandered on whose behalf? It's one thing to say that there's little common interest within the ward, but gerrymandering implies intent to manipulate election results. For a government where everyone is an independent, gerrymandering is much less of a concern than in, say, federal and provincial elections (where we should go with some form of proportional representation and not have to worry about gerrymandering!) Not saying that it couldn't happen though, just that it's unlikely.

I guess I wasn't making an accusation, but rather looked at the shape and makeup of the wards reflected ridings in other jurisdictions that were gerrymandered.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by Cowboy89

I guess I wasn't making an accusation, but rather looked at the shape and makeup of the wards reflected ridings in other jurisdictions that were gerrymandered.

You're definitely right about ward 7 being a poorly composed ward, but as the other poster mentioned its unlikely it was done with nefarious intent. It seems to me that they should move Dalhousie to ward 1 or 2 and trade university heights into ward 7 if that makes the wards too unequal.

I'd actually be interested in knowing how the ward composition is decided. Who does the research/makes the decision.

[The Goon]

Originally Posted by GirlySports

More like the TV Stations didn't want to make Barb look bad since she's one of them!

Mike McCourt must have missed that memo.

[The Goon]

Originally Posted by Slava

I just don't believe that though. If one of the stations just said "We're hosting this debate and its October 12th at 7pm". Then she could either show up and do the debate or not. That is how any forum works, or any event for that matter.

The TV stations just plain dropped the ball here, and didn't want to give up dancing with the stars or their other prime time schedule to do it.

What will suck is when some of the networks will undoubtedly force-feed us coverage of Toronto's city election this coming Monday.

[FlameOn]

Originally Posted by SebC

I prefer this election map:

From "labradore": http://labradore.blogspot.com/2010/1...e-greeter.html

I find it quite interesting with sprawl being such a huge issue Nenshi's support is still high in wards 6, 1, 2 & 3. Edge of the city land annexation sites and a lot of his complaints about infrastructure costs come from the these wards + ward 12, 13 and 14.

[Kjesse]

Originally Posted by FlameOn

I find it quite interesting with sprawl being such a huge issue Nenshi's support is still high in wards 6, 1, 2 & 3. Edge of the city land annexation sites and a lot of his complaints about infrastructure costs come from the these wards + ward 12, 13 and 14.

Can you explain further? I'm in Ward 6, and own, and as such I'm happy that land to the west of me may cost more to develop. It means increased property values in my low density area.

[FlameOn]

Originally Posted by Delgar

Can you explain further? I'm in Ward 6, and own, and as such I'm happy that land to the west of me may cost more to develop. It means increased property values in my low density area.

I'm in ward 3 and I own as well. Part of Nenshi's campaign raised the issue that people on the burbs are really responsible for a lot of the shortfalls we're seeing in infrastructure and with subsidies to developers right? I'm just surprised all the people whose homes Nenshi says were unfairly subsidized voted so overwhelmingly for him. Though in hindsight its not as surprising since most of the youth and new families are in these areas.

[SebC]

Originally Posted by Delgar

Can you explain further? I'm in Ward 6, and own, and as such I'm happy that land to the west of me may cost more to develop. It means increased property values in my low density area.

And you won't be paying for it, so your property taxes should go down, which will drive your property value up even further.

Really the only people benefitting from the subsidies are the suburban developers and the people who are planning on buying a new house at the fringes... and a lot of those people aren't elligible to vote, as they haven't moved to Calgary yet!

I'm glad enough people were able to figure this out.

It's only if the taxation formula changes that people who own existing suburban homes could get hurt, but that's a lot less likely to happen than ending developer subsidies (which HAS to happen).

[Slava]

Originally Posted by GirlySports

With what money? Would you have a budget to do so?
This is local politics. All Those US election broadcasts costs millions, the networks try to outdo each other. Even the CBC's Federal Election coverage with the fancy maps and the fancy music costs millions.

I think we all enjoyed SHAW TV anyways

Truthfully I have no idea how much these things cost. But to run a local program for 3-4 hours once every three years should be possible? Is it really that hard to have a map show up, or some cool graphics and a slogan calling it the "Brawl for City Hall" or whatever. Clearly there is enough interest to generate ratings, and really a chalkboard and someone updating it would've been more coverage than what the main stream channels provided!

[GirlySports]

Originally Posted by Slava

Truthfully I have no idea how much these things cost. But to run a local program for 3-4 hours once every three years should be possible? Is it really that hard to have a map show up, or some cool graphics and a slogan calling it the "Brawl for City Hall" or whatever. Clearly there is enough interest to generate ratings, and really a chalkboard and someone updating it would've been more coverage than what the main stream channels provided!

Don't have the money or the manpower to hire for a one night program.
I don't think they ever expected the race to be this exciting because setting up a show would take weeks maybe a month. The race only got really exciting in the last week or so.

Heck the blonde girl at the board reporting the Ward results is the WEATHERGIRL!

[Slava]

^FPAG should've been utilized with some coloured chalk!

I know Shaw doesn't have the budget for that kind of thing, but CTV, Global and CBC do.

[getbak]

Unfortunately, it's the state of local television now.

Everything is dictated out of the corporate office in Toronto and anything that falls outside of the couple of hours a day that have been allocated for "local" content isn't worth producing. Also, forget about anything local outside of news coverage, which is pretty much required as a condition of their licence.

Look at how pathetic the coverage of the Stampede has become in recent years. Both CFCN and Calgary 7 used to do big daily productions from the grounds in addition to showing the parade live. This year, CBC Calgary was the only station with parade coverage, and there was a short rodeo and chucks wrap-up show every night on the CBC.


The whole "Save Local TV" campaign was a joke. Truly local tv died out when all the stations started getting consolidated under network ownership in the 90s.

Another unfortunate factor is that CFCN probably received a lot fewer complaints for cutting away from their election coverage than they would have had they not shown Dancing with the Stars in its regular time slot.

[SebC]

I found this interesting:

Youth Can Vote mock election results (http://www.calgarysun.com/news/calga.../15739301.html)

41% Nenshi
25% McIver
22% Higgins

Actual election results (http://election.gov.calgary.ab.ca/)

40% Nenshi
32% McIver
26% Higgins

On the other hand...

The young voters also went against the normal voting grain in aldermanic raises, voting against the incumbent in four of ten wards with a sitting aldermen.

I note that they didn't have very large sample sizes at all for the aldermanic polls. Regardless, here is the council they selected (actual winners in brackets when not the same):

Mayor: Nenshi
Ward 1: Harper (Hodges)
Ward 2: Magliocca (Lowe)
Ward 3: Stevenson
Ward 4: Poon (MacLeod)
Ward 5: Jones
Ward 6: Pootmans
Ward 7: Taylor (Farrell)
Ward 8: Mar
Ward 9: Nixon (Carlo-Carra)
Ward 10: Chabot
Ward 11: Pincott
Ward 12: Crowe (Keating)
Ward 13: Jenkins (Colley-Urquhart)
Ward 14: Fox-Mellway (Demong)

Full results here: http://www.youthcanvote.com/?p=1361

[jdso]

Recount in Ward 14. Wonder what the reason is?

http://www.calgaryherald.com/Ward+vo...682/story.html

[Slava]

^Unless Shawn Kao can get a few thousand votes out of this it won't be enough to restore sanity to that ward!

Weird that they won't recount ward 9. Less than 500 votes is a fairly small spread.

[Mazrim]

There's a few things I don't get:
- They can't say why they're recounting until the candidates know. What would that change if they told the public at the same time?
- They refuse to recount Ward 9, with a much smaller vote spread. Why?
- Why is the official name for Billy the Butcher allowed like that? No quality control for legal names or anything?