Both right... and wrong

Having previously predicted that Naheed Nenshi would win "roughly half of [voters], with the other half splitting their votes among the other nine mayoral candidates, with only Andre Chabot [...] posting anything like a real challenge," I suppose that I should report on the actual results.

From the Calgary Herald

Doing the math, Nenshi netted 51.4% of the vote; Bill Smith came in at 43.7%, and Andre Chabot at 3.1%, with everyone else splitting the remaining 1.8% of the vote. So, Nenshi did get roughly half of the vote, as I predicted... but Andre Chabot didn't place second. He wasn't even close.

And the idiot? Bill Smith? Well, he didn't win (and for small mercies, let us be truly thankful), but he came a lot closer than he should have. I guess even bad press was better than no press, this time around? Fuck.

Overall, this year's election results overwhelmingly favoured incumbents, which was something of a surprise considering that we're just coming out of a years-long recession in this area. In spite of the Calgary Flames doing their level best to emotionally blackmail Calgarians into voting Nenshi out of office (Calgary Sports and Entertainment Corp. were openly supporting Bill Smith), in spite of right-wing pollster Mainstreet Research's push polling (although Mainstreet totally deny that they were push polling), Calgarians apparently were able to see through the smoke, recognize a good thing when they saw it, and vote for sanity. Barely... but we did it.

Now Albertans just need to do the same thing when out NDP government are up for reelection in a year or two... and running against a newly-reunified provincial Conservative Party that will be running on exactly the same ridiculous policies that had basically run this province into the ground over forty years... and that Bill Smith was running on during his mayoral race, this year.