Sunday, October 21, 2018

VSB Election Outcome vs Election Eve Prediction

On the eve of Vancouver's school board election I made the following prediction as to who, and which parties, would end up on the school board. I got some of this right. clearly my preference for progressive candidates made me slightly more optimistic in their favour than the outcome merited.

These were my picks. 3 Greens, 2 OneCity, 2 NPA, 1 Vision and 1 COPE.

Fraser (Green)
Gonzalez (Green)
Chan-Pedley (Green) 
Wong (Vision)
Bercic (One City)
Jaaf (One City)
Richardson (NPA)
Ballantyne (NPA) 
Parrott (COPE)

Here's the actual outcome. 3 Green, 1 OneCity, 3 NPA, 1 Vision and 1 COPE. I managed the general pattern, but was wrong in terms of which NPA would get elected. I had Richardson and Ballantyne, but the actual outcome was Hansen, Cho, and Ballantyne. I also miscalled which OneCity candidate would get elected. But then that's why I called it "Jumping to Conclusions."  I was very pleased to see Diana Day in tenth spot - but would hav been much happier if she had been elected. While I am saddened to see Bercic lose her spot, OneCity still retained a voice on school board with Jennifer Reddy who ended up 3rd overall in vote count.

















Let's look at the bottom 2/3rds of the list.  There are several interesting things to note.

The main progressive and right wing candidates (Vision, One City, COPE, and NPA) occupied most of the 'almost elected spots - indicating that there was little public appetite for the more right wing splinter groups that emerged this campaign.

Morgane Oger did quite well for an Independent and ranked just between the mainstream political candidates and the more right wing splinter groups.  Oger ran on an explicit social justice campaign that brought issues like SOGI & SOGI 123 to the fore.




















It will be intersting to see how this new school board works. I have no predictions as to who will end up the new chair, it could as easily be a Green as an NPA'er. For that matter I could see a possibility (slim though) of veteran trustee Alan Wong being presented as a choice for chair - but with the lowest winner tally, that would likely be quite a long shot. More of a possibility would be OneCity's Reddy coming up the middle between the Greens and the NPA.

But that is all a matter of speculation as we wait and see whether this new school board can become a more effective board than the one that was just replaced.

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