As per usual, VanRamblings will bury the lede at the outset of today’s post.
We’re also going to provide you with a civic affairs history lesson, revolving around the formation of Vision Vancouver — who have held power for the past 10 years — and the Non-Partisan Association, our city’s legacy, right-of-centre political party, formed in 1937 by corporate interests to “keep the socialists out of power,” a measure that has met with much success. Sigh.
We intend first to provide a bit of context before we engage in a breakdown of the latest internal party polling results — a conglomeration of words we’ll also explain — the latest iteration of which you see in the graphic above.
We imagine there are some very happy civic candidates seeing the polling results above, while others are suffering heart palpitations. Not to worry.

Every election cycle, the pollsters come out of the woodwork to predict whatever election is taking place, municipal, provincial or federal.
Now, whether it be the Mustel Group, Mario Canseco’s Research Co., Quitto Maggi’s Mainstreet Research, or Shachi Kurl’s Angus Reid Institute, these folks run public opinion research companies for corporate business, as their core bread and butter raison d’etre, and bottom line revenue generator.
None of the companies above are in the election prediction polling game, as a source of revenue that drives the sum and substance of their companies.
The research companies identified above emerge during elections for public relations value, and public relations only, supplying their polling information to the media at a nominal cost, as entertainment value for the “consumer”, and increased readership or viewership for the media companies involved, who also employ the polling information for its entertainment value to their “subscribers”, all of which serves to turns the serious endeavour of democratic engagement into a “race”, devoid of cognitive value to citizens.
During the election cycle, the companies above, or others like them, will “survey” a bit more than 200 potential voters — 236 seems to be the magic number in the 2018 Vancouver civic election cycle — reporting out the far from intensive polling results to a breathlessly anticipatory waiting public.
Internal Party Polling | An Accurate Snapshot of the Public Mood

Bob Penner’s Stratcom, on the left, above (politically, as well), and Dimitri Pantazopoulos’ Maple Leaf Strategies, on the right (ditto) are the “party” pollsters providing accurate polling results to their respective employers.
When philanthropist and former Tennessee resident Joel Solomon decided in 2002 that he wanted to form a Vancouver municipal party to realize his ‘500 year plan’ (don’t ask), he recruited Mike Magee from Stratcom to form a Vancouver civic party that would go on to be called Vision Vancouver. That meant, of course, hiving off elected COPE Councillors Raymond Louie, Tim Stevenson and Jim Green from the civic government of the day.
Long story short, in the 2005 Vancouver civic election, Louie, Stevenson and recent Visionite recruit, Heather Deal (formerly a COPE Park Board Commissioner) were elected to City Council under the Vision Vancouver banner, with Jim Green as the nascent civic party’s mayoral standard bearer. Jim Green lost in his Mayoral bid — widely thought to be the result of dirty tricks by incoming Mayor Sam Sullivan — resulting in a search for the “perfect Mayor”, who turned out to be the cycling advocate / Fairview NDP MLA, Gregor “Hollywood” Robertson. The rest, as they say, is history.
Suffice to say that Stratcom has found employment as the left-of-centre pollster to Vision Vancouver and the labour movement ever since.

Meet Dimitri Pantazopoulos, longtime Stephen Harper pollster, hired by the B.C. Liberals in 2013 to suss out an election where Premier Christy ‘Crusty’ Clark was destined to go down to defeat — public polling had her at a nausea-inducing 33% — until the arrival of the affable Mr. Pantazopoulos, considered to be Canada’s most accurate public opinion research pollster.
Early on in 2013, after intensive province-wide research, Mr. Pantazopoulos determined there were 50 ridings the B.C. Liberals could win. Maple Leaf Strategies polled each of 50 “winnable” provincial ridings daily, identified voters issues of concern, and developed a communications strategy for the rding’s Liberal candidate to address the identified issues of voter concern.
On election eve, May 13th 2013, Dimitri Pantazopoulos told a near suicidal B.C. Liberal party election campaign team that on Tuesday, May 14th Christy Clark would ride to victory with an increased majority government.
At the time, the public polling — you know, media pollsters like Angus Reid — had the BC NDP at 47% and on their way to a massive majority government, with Ms. Clark’s prospects in the doldrums at a woeful 33%.
Only a half hour after the polls closed, at 8:30pm on that chill tenebrous March evening, Global TV projected a majority government for a now ebullient Christy Clark. Dimitri Pantazopoulos projected 50 seats for the B.C. Liberals, Dimitri Pantazopoulos delivered 50 seats for the B.C. Liberals.

The affable, very bright Peter Armstrong just can’t seem to help the NPA secure victory

Alas and alack that’s not what happened after the polls closed at 8pm.
At 4pm, Mr. Pantazopoulos provided the NPA campaign team with exit poll results. The news was dire for NPA officials and candidates: the Non-Partisan Association was going down to defeat yet again. The tears flowed.
Exit polling had voters responding in this manner: “Vision Vancouver and the NPA having been saying much the same thing on transit, on the subway down Broadway, and on housing. Where’s the difference between the two? Better to vote the devil you know, than the one you don’t.” Thus Gregor Robertson secured victory, 83,529 votes to Kirk LaPointe’s 73,443 ballots cast. Melissa De Genova, then a recent NPA Park Board Commissioner won election to Council, joining incumbents George Affleck and Elizabeth Ball.

Gregor Robertson: the thrill of victory. Peter Armstrong: the hurtin’ agony of defeat

NPA candidate for City Council, Ian Robertson, while leading most of the evening in the 10th and last spot for Council, went down to defeat when the last two polls reported in, strong Vision polls that went 80% or better for incumbent Vision Vancouver City Councillor, Geoff Meggs, who defeated a sanguine Ian Robertson by a mere 519 votes: 56,831 votes for Councillor Meggs, and 56,319 ballots cast for Mr. Robertson. And the heavens wept.
The Latest Internal Party Polling Results | What Does It All Mean?
According to the internal party polling, the public polling is largely correct.

With a 53% voter intention of voting Green, as above, Adriane Carr’s Green Party of Vancouver will sweep to victory next Saturday night, Ms. Carr showing coattails in 2018, with urban life philosopher Pete Fry, Park Board Commissioner Michael Wiebe, and architect David Wong set to join Vancouver’s most popular politician on City Council in the next term.
COPE City Council candidate Jean Swanson has sat near or atop the internal party polls since polling began in March.
At number 6 on the “ballot” above, current Park Board Commissioner Erin Shum — long one of VanRamblings’ and the community’s favourite electeds — has run a skookum campaign, skillfully managed by her husband and loving father to their new daughter, B.C. Liberal apparatchik Gavin Dew.
Last evening, after voting at Kits Community Centre, we sauntered over to Choices, and were surprised to see the streets lined with large Erin Shum signs, particularly observable on West 16th Avenue, the number of Ms. Shum’s Building a Vancouver for Families election signs easily outstripping all of the signs for members of her former NPA political party combined.

Note should be made that new mom Erin Shum is running as an independent. Four years ago, we predicted a sterling political career for Ms. Shum. We have to ask — is VanRamblings ever wrong?
And what about this Ken Charko guy? We’ll tell you a secret: we’ve talked (or met) with the populist Trump supporter every day (or evening) for the past month. Although Ken Charko is running with Wai Young’s Coalition Vancouver party, in fact he’s running a Ken Charko victory campaign, having raised more money than most of the Mayoral candidates.
And let us tell you: Ken Charko plays to win. We’re not going to go into detail because, in 2018, as 2014 COPE City Council candidate (and one of our favourite people in the whole wide world), Jennifer O’Keefe, was telling us on Thursday evening, as we stood blocking the produce table at Whole Foods, “Raymond, you’re being nice to everyone in this election. I guess that cancer thing has made you a new man, huh?” Yep, Jennifer, yep.
You know how Grace Vanderwaal sings, “I don’t play by the rules of the game.” Neither does Ken Charko.

Ken Charko with Coalition Vancouver candidate for Park Board, Olga Zarudina

Ken is running the best ground game of any candidate for Council in the 2018 Vancouver electoral campaign. A 2011 NPA Council candidate who fell just shy of attaining victory, the owner of the Dunbar Theatre is back with a vengeance in 2018. Ken’s team (and he has a team, a paid team of four people, out delivering signs, crunching the numbers, meeting with voters in the polls where Ken’s own internal polling indicates strong support — Dunbar, naturally, and a surprise to Mr. Charko, the West End, with the area north of the Cassiar connector solidly in the Ken Charko camp).
Ken Charko has acquired phone lists, and cell numbers of thousands of Vancouver voters likely to go to the polls. Each and every day, Ken phones and speaks (briefly) with 847 — must be his lucky number — voters on their cell phones, which development has led to dozens of calls from VanRamblings’ friends asking, “How did Ken Charko get my number?”
Will Ken’s numbers hold? As Georgia Straight editor Charlie Smith might intone, “Don’t count Ken Charko out — he’s not to be underestimated.”
Melissa De Genova — who, for the record, we both respect and admire — will ride to victory on her City Council incumbency, while Colleen Hardwick looks to achieve victory on the coattails of her father Walter Hardwick’s name, Dr. Hardwick, a multi-term alderman in the 1960s and 1970s, and a distinguished and much-beloved academic and community leader whose work shaped both the Metro Vancouver region and the Fraser Valley.
VanRamblings was fortunate enough to work with Dr. Hardwick on The Livable Region Plan in the late 1980s, the published document responsible for shaping almost every aspect of urban life in our region.
And what of the straggly few challenging for the 10th spot on Council?
If you’ve read VanRamblings at all, you know we’re pulling for Christine Boyle and Derrick O’Keefe. On Monday, we will enthusiastically endorse Sarah Kirby-Yung (you think we gush over Christine Boyle? You ain’t read nuthin’ yet, til you read what we write about British Columbia’s nominally right-of-centre generational candidate & future British Columbia Premier).
Lately, VanRamblings has been thinking, “Omigosh, we’ll be despondent if Christine Boyle doesn’t attain a seat on Council,” and we will be verklempt because everything we’ve written about Ms. Boyle we believe into the deepest fibre of our being. Note to all: this ain’t our first rodeo.

Truth to tell, it is the possibility of a defeat for Sarah Kirby-Yung on the evening of Saturday, October 20th that would cause us the most concern, and bring us to tears. Christine Boyle will live on to fight another day, were she to lose. Sarah Kirby-Yung — the most important, action-oriented, democratic Park Board Chairperson in living memory — is on a mission to reform how right-of-centre parties respond to the needs and expectations of the electorate. Sarah Kirby-Yung is a once in a lifetime candidate.
Sarah Kirby-Yung’s victory at the polls in our current Vancouver civic election is critical to the future of British Columbia. John Horgan, David Eby and the NDP are not always going to be in power. If Ms. Kirby-Yung is to become a future Premier — we would note in passing, the polar opposite of Christy Clark — she must achieve victory next Saturday night (although, we suppose, she could run in the next provincial election — but, honestly, in order for her to realize her goal of leading the province, victory on the 20th would go a long ways towards becoming a future British Columbia Premier).
Believe me when I say, “You want Sarah Kirby-Yung as a BC Liberal Premier over any other candidate in the party, now and long into the future.”
Will the numbers hold as you see them at the top of today’s post hold?
Doubtful.
We’re holding out for victory for all three of our favourites in this election: Christine Boyle, Derrick O’Keefe and Sarah Kirby-Yung. Perhaps the electorate will come to their senses, tune into the election, and elect all three of these transformational candidates to City Council — although, truth to tell, Pete Fry must be included in this life-changing, must-elect group.

We are 7 days away from election day 2018, 7 days away from knowing who will comprise our next Vancouver City Council, Park Board and School Board. At this point, it’s anyone’s guess as to how things will turn out.
The Straight’s Charlie Smith wrote yesterday that he thinks there’ll be a decent, if not good turnout at the polls. We’re less sanguine about that possibility, particularly given the record low turnout at the advance polls.
Still, you never know what’s going to happen, when it comes to elections.
You know what they say, “A week in politics is a lifetime.”

Raymond Tomlin

Raymond Tomlin is a veteran journalist and educator who has written frequently on the political realm — municipal, provincial and federal — as well as on cinema, mainstream popular culture, the arts, and technology.

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