Edmonton Election 2010: Nomination Day Statistics

Yesterday was nomination day, the day that all candidates in the upcoming municipal election needed to file their paperwork and pay their fees. Dave was at City Hall and has a nice overview of how things went.

Now that we know who’s running (though some may still drop out) let’s look at some stats. In total, there are 113 candidates vying for the role of mayor, councillor, public school trustee, or catholic school trustee. Here’s a breakdown of the various candidates:

I wondered about gender, since that is often a hot issue in politics. Here’s the gender breakdown for the candidates:

The web is going to play a very important role in this election. It’s the first place people turn to when they want to know more – they search. How many of the candidates could be found online as of last night? And which details did they make available?

As you can see, candidates have some work to do.

Quite a few people, myself included, followed along yesterday on Twitter. Kudos to Dave and John for live-tweeting and posting lots of photos! Here’s what yesterday’s #yegvote activity looked like:

Candidates could file their paperwork between 9am and noon, which explains the big spike in the morning.

I hope Edmontonians take the time to learn about their candidates, and to voice their concerns and thoughts on the issues facing our city. I have updated ShareEdmonton to (hopefully) help make that easier. Here’s what’s new at the Election 2010 site:

• You can see a list of upcoming election-related events. You can subscribe to the iCal so you don’t miss anything.
• You can see recent election-related tweets.
• You can browse all candidates, or just those running for Mayor, Councillor, Public School Trustee, or Catholic School Trustee (you can see them all by ward too).
• For each candidate, you can see their photo, the position they’re running for, and any details I have been able to find so far, like website, Twitter, Facebook, etc. For example, here’s Brendan Van Alstine, candidate for Councillor in Ward 7.
• You can type in your address to find out what wards you’re in and who your candidates are!

I’d love your feedback on how I can improve the Election 2010 site at ShareEdmonton. And if you find additional candidate information that I’m missing, let me know. I’ve got a few planned improvements on the way, so stay tuned!