Tim Bousquet

Late Saturday night, well, Sunday morning, actually, at around 3:30am, the HRM Elections Office announced on its website that the victor in the District 3: Dartmouth South- Eastern Passage district election was Jackie Barkhouse, besting Bill Karsten by just six votes. Everyone expected that Karsten would ask for a recount, as well he should’ve, with […]

Now that the HRM election is over, and the results are in, what does it all mean? There are three important general take-aways, as follows. Horrendously low voter participation Before we talk about who won mayor, or what the new council will look like, let’s acknowledge the biggest statement made is this election: an utter […]

The elections office hasn’t released official voting turnouts yet, but I was able to cobble together district-by-district turnouts using previously released numbers of eligible voters per district, and matching that with numbers of votes per candidate as released on the city’s web site. The percentages below won’t be exact, because they don’t include spoiled ballots, […]

Early voting closed at 7pm tonight. Click here for details.

The stereotype of the suburbs as a monoculture is immensely unfair. Some suburban areas in HRM, like Clayton Park, are probably more racially diverse than the urban areas, and there are exciting subcultures everywhere you look. Additionally, as I’ve explained before, demonizing the suburbs doesn’t serve any useful purpose, and probably is counter-productive in terms […]

Here’s a quick analysis of the three council races most geographically congruent with The Coast’s distribution area: Peninsula North: Sloane and Watts, head to head With the reduction of the number of councillors from 23 to 16, three of the new districts find veteran councillors running against each other. Interestingly, the political leanings of those […]

Election day isn’t until Saturday, but results from the first 12 days of electronic and phone voting suggest that this election may have the lowest turnout in Halifax history. As of Wednesday at 10:30am, 47,476 people have cast votes, representing just 16 percent of eligible voters. Elections officer Cathy Mellet wouldn’t make any predictions about […]

There are still two more days of early voting, and election day itself is Saturday, but results from the first 11 days of electronic and phone voting suggest that this election may have the lowest turnout in Halifax history. As of today at 10:45am, 40,126 people have cast votes, representing just 13.5 percent of eligible […]