Election results
Ken Sim defeats Kennedy Stewart.
I always enjoy Election Day. It’s awe-inspiring to see so many people working together to run the election, to encourage people to vote, and to choose their government. A key advantage of democracy is that it allows power to change hands without requiring a civil war or revolution - counting heads instead of breaking heads.
Congratulations to Ken Sim, who decisively defeated Kennedy Stewart in the mayoral race, and to the ten candidates chosen for city council. Six incumbents were re-elected (Sarah Kirby-Yung, Lisa Dominato, and Rebecca Bligh for ABC, Adriane Carr and Pete Fry for the Greens, Christine Boyle for OneCity), and four new ABC councillors (Brian Montague, Mike Klassen, Peter Meiszner, Lenny Zhou) were elected. Jean Swanson (COPE), Michael Wiebe (Green), and Melissa De Genova (NPA) lost their seats. Colleen Hardwick’s bid for mayor failed.
In 2018, Kennedy Stewart got 49,705 votes and Ken Sim got 48,748. (Adriane Carr, the highest-scoring council candidate, got 69,739 votes.) This time it was 49,593 for Kennedy Stewart, but 85,732 for Ken Sim, well ahead of any council candidate.
Obviously I wanted Kennedy Stewart to get re-elected with a majority, but if Ken Sim was going to win, I think it's good that he got a solid majority. The last four years show that it's pretty hard to govern without a stable majority. So now Ken Sim and ABC have four years to tackle the challenges of housing and public safety.
My plan is to try to convince Ken Sim and ABC to support more housing whenever there's a decision on housing that comes to council. The fact that Colleen Hardwick ran a campaign which appealed to those who fear and oppose new housing, and was decisively defeated, should help. Opponents of new housing simply aren’t a large constituency. I came in 22nd, not even close to being elected to council, and I still received more votes (22,107) than Colleen Hardwick (16,769).
I’m really grateful to everyone for their support - family, friends, the campaign staff who worked hard to get me elected, the people I met while campaigning, the people on Reddit who liked what I had to say. And of course the people who decided to vote for me.
One of my goals in this election campaign was to try to persuade as many people as possible that Vancouver needs more housing. Now that the election is over, this hasn’t changed!
The Tyee: Suddenly, Vancouver Is Sim City. Describes each party’s response to the election results.