We’re having a municipal election on October 15, so the EDGE YK stats team did some analysis of YK election results from the last decade. Here’s what we found:
Candidates
Incumbents rule city elections, period. Of the 17 incumbents who ran in the last three YK elections, 14, or 82 per cent, were re-elected.
However, only incumbents who were among the top three vote getters in the last election were safe from elimination. Two of the de-throned incumbents ranked as high as fourth in votes received in the previous election.
But every Councillor has to step down at some point, and there has traditionally been space for newcomers on YK’s council. In this election, as this magazine goes to press, there are likely at least three of eight seats open. They include mayoral candidates Mark Heyck and Paul Falvo, who are not eligible to run for council, as well as Councillor David Wind, who was still considering whether he’d run again. Of the last four elections, an average of 3.5 newcomers were elected, while 2006 saw a whopping five newbies.
Getting your message out
Although there are distinct preferences in some polls, such as downtown polls tending to vote differently from Range Lake or Frame Lake, candidates who did well tended to rank in the top four at all polling stations.
Voters
Every vote counts. While the difference between eighth and ninth has averaged about 150 votes over the past decade, the margin has been narrowing. In 2009, the ninth place candidate lost by 28 and in 2006 the last candidate was only nine votes away from victory.
The numbers also show losers as unlikely to run again. Of the 20 candidates who lost between 2000 and 2006, only one put their name forward a second time, and he only finished one spot away from being elected!
