I am going to continue my review of voting data from the 2011 municipal election to include some observations on the results for councillors. The analysis includes only mayoral candidates Lois Jackson and Krista Engelland, and the winning councillors plus seventh place finisher Anne Peterson.
The data analyzed were the results of each polling station, which provide a measure of the extent to which the support for each candidate was general or localized. This may provide some indication of how this council will vote on matters of interest to South Delta.
A general measure of the degree to which voting support was local or broad based is the coefficient of variation (cv). A low cv value indicates little variation in support for a candidate between different parts of Delta, while a high value indicates localized support.
Interestingly, the cvs were higher
- Engelland (0.62) and Jackson (0.48) - for both major mayoral candidates than for any of the council candidates, although this is partly due to the ability to vote for more than one candidate for council.
The past election was very polarized at the mayoral level. The cvs for councillors fell in a fairly narrow range (0.35 to 0.39) with one exception, Ian Paton (0.45), who also got the most votes.
Why was Paton exceptional? Not unexpectedly, he had the highest ratio of votes received to votes cast of all council candidates in Ladner; and he received the second highest in Tsawwassen (after Sylvia Bishop).
Conversely Paton had the lowest ratio of votes received to votes cast (except for Peterson) in North Delta. Paton had the highest ratio of votes received in South Delta to North Delta of any council candidate.
Thus Paton owes his council seat to South Delta support. It will be interesting to see if he votes in concert with his constituents or with his North Delta-centered DIVA party on South Delta issues.
I correlated the poll data of each council candidate with those of Jackson. (A value of one indicates an identical distribution of support; zero means no related support.) Jackson (1.00) has the highest North Delta-centric support of any candidate, so a higher correlation coefficient indicates a more localized base of support in North Delta.
Scott Hamilton (0.89) was highest, followed by Robert Campbell (0.87), Jeannie Kanakos (0.80), Peterson (0.78), Bruce McDonald (0.69), Paton (0.52) and finally Bishop (0.44). Clearly Kanakos and Peterson were drawing from the same well in North Delta, so Kanakos displaced Peterson.
Hamilton and Campbell dwell on Jackson's coattails, so their distributions of support are most similar to hers.
This is unexpected in Campbell's case as he resides in Tsawwassen.
Of all the council candidates, Campbell received the lowest ratio of votes received to votes cast in Tsawwassen (0.11); followed by Kanakos (0.12), then Hamilton (0.13).
Even worse, Campbell received the lowest number of votes of any winning council candidate at his own Beach Grove neighbourhood polling station. Campbell has no base of support in Tsawwassen, which is why he almost lost his council seat. Thus he can be expected to vote with Jackson.
To be continued.
