Civic election - downtown changes

Map 1:
Number of registered voters:
RED - 0-10% loss
GREY - even
PERI - 0-10% gain
ROYAL - 10-20% gain
NAVY - 20-30% gain

Map 2 (with dots) is the mayoral race from 2005; Map 3 is from 2008.

Three things changed downtown from last civic election:

1) A general influx of people (which won't surprise anyone). Registered voters is up from 57,871 to 61,727, for a net gain of 3895.

2) Parts of the West End lost registered voters. While there was only a slight overall loss (around 300) overall, the furthermost western polls (1, 2, 4, 5 and 6) either stayed the same or lost voters. Who's been moving out? Doesn't seem to matter: Vision won these polls by significant margins in 2008 (see vote ratio) and 2005.

3) The NPA lost polls 3, 9, 13 and 15 to Vision; voter turn-out dropped substantially in all of these polls. They held onto poll 17, where voter turn-out dropped enormously. Jim Green did better than Gregor in poll 17, and Peter Ladner managed to pull in as many votes as Sam did in 2005 while voting rates dropped significantly. So did some Vision/Jim Green supporters just not vote in Yaletown? I can't even begin to guess what happened there.

It's interesting to note that voter turn-out dropped in every single poll on the downtown peninsula, and it wasn't high to begin with, resulting in some shockingly low numbers (13.6 - 27%). Poll 15 actually increased by 94 votes but the number of registered voters increased by 1112*, so we see a drop in voter turn-out as a percentage.


* Only two other polls increased so much: poll 17 by 932 and poll 68 (Joyce and Kingsway) by 1008. No other polls were even close.