Vancouver Election Analysis Maps

Note: Check out the updated map here.

I thought I was done with Vancouver election analysis. But COPE asked me to do some extra work to help their membership understand what happened during the election, and since I like COPE I agreed. It meant less time for Skyrim and posting Vietnam pictures, but I got a mention in the Georgia Straight.

The analysis I presented for COPE probably isn’t that interesting to non-COPE members, but here’s a few reasons I think COPE did poorly.

1. David Cadman didn’t run. He likely would have won his seat on council. Every COPE incumbent gained votes (between 1875 and 3736). The worst any incumbent from any party did was Stuart Mackinnon (Green Parks Board Councillor) – he lost 3654 votes. Cadman could have lost over 8,000 votes and still won a seat on council.
2. Vote splitting with the Greens (and to a lesser degree NSV) hurt. You can see it on council, parks board, and school board (see charts below).
3. There seems to be a split between social progressives in East Vancouver and enviros on west side of the city. Both supported Vision, but the enviros supported the Greens and the social progressives voted for COPE.
4. COPE had only one Chinese candidate, and he was the only candidate that won.

City council vote distribution between 2008 and 2011
The NPA’s vote stays consistent, but the Vision/COPE vote splits between 15 progressive candidates. It hurt Vision as much as COPE, but Vision had more room to drop without losing seats. Raymond Louie lost nearly 3000 votes and was still the top candidate.


Looking at parks and school board, if you redistribute the Green votes between the worst Vision candidate and the COPE candidates, you get results scarily consistent with the Vision average. Obviously not every Green vote would have went to Vision/COPE in the absence of the Green party, but it is a strong suggestion that many voters dropped a candidate from the Vision/COPE slate to vote for the Green party.

The Vision/COPE/Green party slate did very well in 2008. In 2011, the NPA slate expanded but the Vision/COPE slate fractured, especially in the West End and Kitsilano where the Green Party did well.

2008 Slate Voting	2011 Slate Voting
Robertson (Blue) vs Anton (Red)	Carr (Green) vs Woodsworth (Orange)

It’s interesting that the mayor’s race between Robertson and Anton split the city along a north-south axis, but the race for the final city council seat between Carr and Woodsworth split Vancouver east-west.