Edmonton Election 2013: Nomination Day Recap

Yesterday was nomination day at City Hall, the day that all candidates running in the municipal election needed to file their paperwork and pay their fees. As many of them remarked after making it through the line, “now it’s real!” It was exciting to be there to see the dozens of Edmontonians that were willing to put their names forward, not to mention all of their supporters. Of course, there was real business to be done.

Returning Office Alayne Sinclair speaks to the media on Nomination Day

Dave Cournoyer and I were at City Hall for all the action, and last night along with Ryan Hastman we held a special edition of our EdmontonPolitics.com hangout to discuss nomination day. Here’s the archive:

Let’s take a look at the nomination day statistics (here are the 2010 stats). There are 119 candidates total, an increase of six from 2010. Here are the numbers broken down by race:

And here’s a closer look at the Council races in particular:

I wanted to include that chart to show just how different some of the races will be. Ward 6 has a crazy number of candidates at 16, whereas both Wards 4 and 9 have just one other candidate aside from the incumbent. The big surprise was Ward 8, which basically went from 1 candidate to 5 in a day.

Here’s a look at the candidate breakdown by gender:

Roughly 32.7% of the field is female, which is actually the same percentage as 2010. While there were no female candidates for mayor in 2010, there are two this year (including one viable candidate). The number of female candidates for Council has decreased slightly from 22.6% in 2010 to 21.7% in this election.

Here’s a look at how many candidates had contact details available on nomination day:

I was a little surprised to see email above phones, actually. And to see Twitter above Facebook. Of course, there could be more candidates with Twitter and Facebook accounts, but they hadn’t been discovered by myself or on Dave’s list by today at noon.

Speaking of email, here’s a look at which email domains candidates are using:

I am pleasantly surprised by the number of candidates that are using vanity domains! The reality is that not everyone is going to spend the $10 or so to get a vanity domain, but at least they outrank Gmail.

No candidates had withdrawn their candidacy by the deadline today, so those 119 names will all appear on ballots come October 21!

If you’re looking to browse through the candidates, ShareEdmonton has you covered:

• All Candidates
• Mayoral Candidates
• City Council Candidates
• Public School Board Candidates
• Catholic School Board Candidates

You’ll find contact details for each candidate, related tweets, and more. Stay tuned as ShareEdmonton aggregates everything you need to know about the election races.

For more photos from nomination day, check out my photoset and Dave’s photoset.

UPDATE: The original version of this post incorrectly stated that the number of female candidates was slightly higher in 2013 than in 2010, when in fact the percentage is the same.