Early Election Results

A couple of interesting races are emerging (as of 9:25):

Ward 1:

Jennifer Banks is giving incumbent Dale Hodges a real run for his money:

(4364 - Hodges, 3109 - Banks)

Ward 3:

Larocque is trailing both of her opponents, but the difference is minimal, and only a handful of polls are in yet.

Ward 6:

Craig Burrows has a smaller than expected lead on challenger Joe Connelly. (150 to 103 votes). If one adds it all up, Burrows has barely got a plurality of the votes total in the ward - 51%.

Ward 8:

Although she started with an early lead, Madeleine King is having her lead eroded steadily by Steve Chapman as the evening progresses.

Ward 9:

Al Koenig has gained considerably on Joe Ceci, bringing in a much higher percentage of the vote than I had expected. (55% for Ceci, 41% for Koenig)

Ward 11:

This one's all over the map. The two strongest candidates appear to be Pincott and Whelan.

It's early going yet, and if I'm still awake, I may update this entry as the evening progresses.

[10:00PM Update]
Ward 1: The margin between Banks and Hodges appears to have stabilized at about 10% in favour of Hodges. This is good news for a long-time member of city council - and one of the generally sane voices there.

Ward 3: It would appear that Ms. Larocque is history.

Ward 6: Burrows is now trailing Connelly.

Ward 8: Could go any which way - Chapman, Mar and King are all within fairly close margin of each other. Mar is currently slightly ahead of King.

Ward 9: As with Ward 1, this appears to be settling in with a little over a 10% weighting favoring the incumbent, Joe Ceci. I've always liked Joe, and I appreciate his "treat the problem not the symptoms" approach to social issues. It's the harder path to tread, but in the long run it works better than the simplistic approach of treating the symptoms ... like say trying to run the prostitutes out of town.

Ward 11: Pincott's edging ahead on what I suspect is name recognition vote. He's run in a fair number of elections in the area and the name is fairly recognizable. If elected, he will have a tough job ahead of himself to establish himself as an effective representative for a ward that is quite economically diverse.

Ward 4: Since I spent some time discussing Mr. Evans' candidacy, I'm pleased to note that at this point he's scraped up 20% of the vote - compared to Hawkesworth's 72% take.

I'm somewhat relieved to note that Alnoor Kassam has reeled in only 17% of the mayoral vote. While I don't necessarily like Bronconnier, I remain unconvinced that I could trust Alnoor - there's just too many question marks.
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