{"id":15251,"date":"2010-10-29T14:56:21","date_gmt":"2010-10-29T18:56:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=15251"},"modified":"2013-01-21T15:16:23","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T20:16:23","slug":"some-election-number-crunching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2010\/10\/29\/some-election-number-crunching\/","title":{"rendered":"ELECTION: Some election number-crunching"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

There’s been quite a bit of number-crunching of the results of Toronto’s municipal election in both the paper media (see Headlines<\/a> below) and blogs<\/a>, in part thanks to the “Open Toronto<\/a>” open-data approach the City introduced recently. I can’t resist adding a bit to this discussion.<\/p>\n

One thing that strikes me about the results is that Rob Ford received almost exactly the same number of votes as Mel Lastman did in the first amalgamated Toronto election in 1997<\/a> \u2014 one that was somewhat similar in featuring a suburban populist against a downtown progressive (Barbara Hall). There’s clearly a strong populist vote that can be mobilized in Toronto. I think it’s more complicated than simply some suburban-conservative voting bloc suggested by the maps of wards the candidates won or lost<\/a> \u2014 after all, Ford got, by my rough count, around 85,000 votes in the 13 central Toronto wards won by Smitherman, which is close to his margin of victory.<\/p>\n

Rather, I think a\u00a0 mayoral candidate needs to be able to tap into this populist vein to some extent in order to win \u2014 as David Miller (who like Smitherman faced another progressive candidate as well as a conservative opponent) was able to do to a lesser extent in 2003<\/a> with his broom symbol. Smitherman certainly tried to do so, but in the end could not compete with Ford on that score.<\/p>\n

There’s also been discussion of the fact that, if you add Smitherman and Pantalone’s totals together, it comes to marginally more than Ford’s total (1,800 votes). But to say this means that “Pantalone elected Ford<\/a>” assumes both that voters are one-dimensional, and that everyone who didn’t vote Ford shared a deep horror of him. Neither is true. In one of the most comprehensive late polls<\/a> (PDF), 15% of Pantalone supporters said that Ford was their second choice \u2014 which would have been enough to put Ford over the top if voters had been able to make a second choice with ranked ballots. Another 31% were undecided, and in all likelihood many wouldn’t have made a second choice \u2014 either because they didn’t have a big problem with Ford, or because they had no sympathy for Smitherman either. (In fact, if there had been ranked ballots, Smitherman would probably have ended up with about as many votes as Barbara Hall did in 1997).<\/p>\n

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have ranked ballots<\/a> \u2014 quite the contrary.<\/p>\n

If we had had ranked ballots, there wouldn’t have been all that unproductive fluster about strategic voting in the dying days of the election, and we wouldn’t have any reason to speculate after the election. There would be no questions about Ford’s mandate, but at the same time we would have a much more accurate sense of the size of that mandate. And there were many council races \u2014 nearly half \u2014 where the winner received far less than half the vote. In Ward 10, James Pasternak won with just over 19% of the vote. Even if he and others would still have won with a ranked ballot system, their mandate would have been much clearer.<\/p>\n

Apparently Ford has said he’s in favour<\/a> of the ranked ballot idea, so we can hope \u2014 and work towards \u2014 having it in place for the next municipal election.<\/p>\n

Another interesting number-crunch is voter turnout. Many have noticed that the competitive mayoral race resulted in very high turnout for a municipal election. There’s a general assumption that the mayoral race has much more effect than local council races, but Patrick Cain’s map of electoral turnout by ward<\/a> shows that local council races also have a very strong effect on voter turnout. Four wards had over 60% voter turnout, three of which featured strong (in two cases, successful) attempts to overturn an incumbent, and the other was a very competitive open race. By contrast, the only ward in the centre of Toronto with less than 50% turnout was the very large Ward 20, where Adam Vaughan faced weak opposition and won easily. The strong turnout for this election can be attributed not just to the mayoral race, but also the unusually large number of competitive council races.<\/p>\n

photo by Denis Maricniak<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s been quite a bit of number-crunching of the results of Toronto’s municipal election in both the paper media (see Headlines below) and blogs, in part thanks to the “Open Toronto” open-data approach the City introduced recently. I can’t resist adding a bit to this discussion. 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