‘Fierce Battles:’ Alberta election observers weigh in on voter turnout in Edmonton, Calgary

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Stiff competition among mayoral candidates may be responsible for generating higher voter turnout in Calgary than in Edmonton in Monday’s municipal elections, Alberta political observers say.

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According to unofficial results, 45.6 percent of Calgary voters participated in that city’s mayoral race, while 37 percent of eligible Edmonton residents voted for a new leader, despite the fact that that both cities had open mayoral races with a pair of top candidates on opposite sides of the progressive-conservative divide. Both the City of Edmonton and the City of Calgary said final election results will be available Friday at noon.

University of Calgary political scientist Jack Lucas said increased participation in Calgary could be the result of a more competitive career.

According to a Leger poll conducted for Postmedia before the election, Calgary respondents were split between Jyoti Gondek and Jeromy Farkas for mayor, while in Edmonton Amarjeet Sohi enjoyed an 18-point lead over Mike Nickel.

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“It was an open race but it seemed to be less competitive,” Lucas said of the Edmonton mayoral race. “Whereas, even though the Calgary mayoral race ended up not being that competitive – it was a decisive victory for Jyoti Gondek – the expectation was that it would go head to head and it is the expectation that really matters to get the people going. to the polls, because they don’t know how things are going to work. “

For political analyst John Brennan, the Calgary mayoral race evoked strong memories of the 1992-1995 mayoral elections between Jan Reimer and Bill Smith, which had some of the highest voter turnout in recent Edmonton history – about 51 and 50 percent, respectively.

“They were very fierce battles,” said Brennan, Reimer’s former executive assistant.

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Both elections saw a woman, located to the left of center, facing a man to the right of center, and while Reimer defeated Smith by a wide margin in 1992, he lost by about 1,300 votes in the next election, he added.

Noting Sohi’s double-digit lead over Nickel in Leger’s poll, Brennan also pointed to a video Sohi posted in the final days of the campaign that cited new poll data suggesting Sohi was locked in a ” extremely tight race “With nickel.

“When you are the favorite, what you worry about is complacency, you worry about your voters going out to vote and not thinking you have it in the bag,” Brennan said. “That happened to Jan Reimer in 1995, and I think Sohi’s campaign was concerned that it might happen.”

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From Edmonton, MacEwan University political scientist Chaldeans Mensa was also aware of both elections. While an ideological divide between the leading candidates defined the mayoral elections in Edmonton and Calgary, the latter was much more polarized, he said.

“We knew it was going to be an ideological contest between a conservative fiscal candidate, Farkas, and a progressive candidate who carried the Nenshi torch,” said Mensa. “That really intense competition between those two parties could have boosted the level of enthusiasm and the level of commitment in Calgary compared to Edmonton.”

Advertising may have also increased participation in Calgary, Mensa added, as Calgary had 10 external advertisers register for their general election, “flooding their counterparts in Edmonton,” who had only two listings .

Mensa also noticed a small but critical difference in the Calgary and Edmonton elections: The former had a plebiscite on whether or not to add fluoride to the water supply, a question that could have drawn more voters.

“The issue of fluoridation has always been controversial in the Calgary context,” he said.

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