Delta Voter Summary
The dust has settled, the election signs have been harvested, and the post election hangovers subsided. Now all the candidates can go back and examine what they did right and more importantly, what they did wrong. It's easy to say you ran the best possible campaign, but lets be truthful about the situation. In an election to fill one position, only one person ran the best possible campaign. In this election, Ian Paton Jr. holds that title.What did Ian do right? What did the other candidates do wrong? Let's take a look at the numbers and see.
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| Delta - Total Votes Click on image to zoom in) |
As you can see from the above chart, not only did Paton dominate the Ladner polls, he held his own with second place finishes in North and South Delta. Take a look at the following charts:
Chart 1 - Ladner | 4887 Votes | 28.32% Voter Turnout
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| Ladner - Total Votes Click on image to zoom in) |
Chart 2 - South Delta | 5378 Votes | 33.51% Voter Turnout
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| South Delta - Total Votes Click on image to zoom in) |
Chart 3 - North Delta | 6527 Votes | 18.67% Voter Turnout
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| North Delta - Total Votes Click on image to zoom in) |
Almost 55% of Ladner voted for Paton compared to second place Sylvia Bishop with a meager 19%. In a town with the lowest voter turnout (by number of voters) that netted a lead of 1769 votes before counting North and South Delta. Hard numbers to overcome with so many people competing for a single vote in a by-election devoid of an all-encompassing wedge issue.
From 100 miles above the ground it's pretty easy to chalk the election up to the folks in Ladner wanting some local representation. The numbers seem to shout that fact out. How much did the "Send a Farmer Back to Council" message resound with the voters? Was campaign spending the big advantage? Hard questions to answer.
But what would happen if we take Ladner out? What if Maria DevRies didn't run? Would North Delta's voter turnout plummet without two South Asian candidates? What if there was only one?
In this multi-part series on the Delta By-election results we are going to examine the numbers closely and add a few scenarios and see how the numbers play out under various voting models.
Very insightful analysis Elvis - As you move forward I think you will find that most would believe that the vast majority of DeVries votes would probably have ported over to Paton regardless. They were definitely right-wing votes that stood very little chance of wandering too far to the left.
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