Thank you for this great learning experience!

The results of the 2018 Toronto Municipal election are in and, despite a few surprises, very much as expected. I take a look at this still continuing journey.

First of all, congratulations Joe Cressy for your re-election as City Councillor in Ward 10 and congratulations John Tory for your re-election of Mayor. Though April Engelberg did not win and came in second, that is an awe-inspiring achievement for a first time candidate, and congrats are in order!

But most of all, from the bottom of my heart, a sincere THANK YOU to my supporters, neighbours, friends and voters who made all this worthwhile!

The results show the incumbent leading with over 55% of the vote, which is a decisive victory and lays to rest the view held by some that the many candidates are “splitting the anti-incumbent vote”.

For the actual number of votes, I will be updating the online spreadsheet I have been using to keep track of this data (linked in a previous article).

A few quick notes.

• both the Vuong and Zuniga campaigns released “secret polls” showing themselves as being second to Cressy – they were both incorrect, obviously
• I have visited a few voting stations on the day of the vote (in condos) and was quite disappointed to find a number of candidate materials displayed within meters of the voting section
• apart from Ms Engelberg, all the other top four candidates benefitted from the support and/or connections of one major party (Cressy – NDP, Zuniga – Conservatives, Vuong – Liberals)
• the claim made by Ms Zuniga, who has previously run for the Conservatives, that she started this campaign with “no name recognition”, rang false to me; if there ever was any candidate with ZERO NAME RECOGNITION, that was me, as despite my heavy work online, apart from some messages posted in the early 90s, most everything I did so far has been carefully “hidden” under pseudonymous identities for privacy reasons (and reasons having to do with my line of work) – all my social media accounts, including my blog, are brand new!
• Ms Keesmaat obtained 16% of the vote in our ward, vs 19% for Mr Tory, while Ms Goldy came in 4th after Ms Gebresellassi, 3rd, which is one more sign that at least downtown, hope and open hearts and minds trump hate
• London “ranked ballot” election results were not available as of time of publication, which stokes my fears that this is a cumbersome process that is hard to audit; after all, Canadians haven’t noticed investment statement mistakes for years (cbc-cibc), or those made by utilities in the past (at a similarly large scale)

I knew I like politics, but now I have the certainty!

Some obvious and important differences between Ms Engelberg and myself (the similarity being that we’re both running for the first time).

• she filed 07/05, I filed on 09/21 (last day), meaning that she had an effective campaign more than 3 times longer than mine
• she had yard signs (and, I’m guessing, spent a significant amount) while I didn’t
• she made brilliant use of videos while I had just one on my Instagram
• what is not so obvious is that she also ran a “sunny ways” campaign, keeping her interactions short and non-conflictual whereas I was a bit more confrontational in my approach; her messaging was also simpler and clearer, and not for lack of depth

Despite still recovering from an earlier MVA with significant consequences, I managed to actually have a campaign on a shoestring budget and make the concept of direct democracy better understood and desirable even to the small part of the electorate I was able to reach.

In the coming weeks, I will continue posting here information and opinions I did not have a chance to publish during the campaign, as my time was split in tiny fragments of canvassing and meeting people (by far, the most important and rewarding part of campaigning), convalescence and working on my other commitments (like everyone else), playing catch-up to the much earlier runners.

Stay tuned especially if you consider running for office or have an interest in politics! I’ll be back soon, with another cartoon!

Sources / More info: ml-to18, imdb-dgent, electionresults, cbc-cibc, wiki-london, london-res, wiki-elxn, tgm-elxn, gn-elxn, cbc-elxn, cn-elxn, jl-ttcupload, vc-top5, tst-YIMBY, tst-wrklv, tst-landslide

Andrei Zodian, #election, #elxn, #election results, #mayor, #council, #councillor, #learning, #learning experience (Tags)