For those who have not read the introductory article about the information being provided in the following post, please click here.

Below we will be comparing three measures. The first will show the personal and corporate donations of each candidate. Afterwards, we will compare all three candidates’ donation totals together. The third and final measure will be to evaluate the percentage of donations that each candidate received per industry sector. For colour representation, Ric McIver will be blue, Naheed Nenshi will be purple, and Barb Higgins will be green. Sorry, Barb.

Before we start, once again, this only included donations over $1000. Thus, here are the donation totals we have over $1000:

McIver: $524,494

Higgins: $180,250

Nenshi: $97,750

What we can tell instantly from these numbers is that Higgins has received a higher average dollar per donor, where as Nenshi has capitalized on the smaller range donations ($1000 and under). In actual campaign figures, McIver’s dollar figure ranges at around $700,000 while Higgins and Nenshi are fairly closely matched over the $200,000 mark.

Measure One: Corporate/Personal Donations by Candidate

The first and most telling [...]Read More

On September 20th, mayoral candidate Naheed Nenshi released his donor list on his accountability sub-section of his website.  Following suit with the challenge, Ric McIver released his list on September 25th.  Reluctantly, Barb Higgins’ camp joined in on the 26th.  Much has been said about the big names listed on the candidates’ donor lists.  Somewhere, someone went through the lists, saw a couple known names and wrote an article about it, and every news source thereafter followed.  For me, that’s not good enough.

I replicated the donor list of all of the Big Three, line by line.  This was crucial in reading McIver’s donor list, as many of the donors contributed on multiple occasions.  Once this process was complete, the data was compiled of all donors who donated at least $1,000. Then, the research began.  After spending the past few days focusing on this project, we have something to present to you.  And if you care about who is giving to your favourite candidates like I do, you’ll be fascinated too.

For the information that will be presented, there were seven donation sectors and two categories.  The two categories were “Personal” and “Corporate”.  The sectors break down as follows:

Auto: [...]Read More

Nation, the following is the work of the newest member of our CalgaryPolitics.com “Dream Team” of local political analysts, Mr. Daniel Bimke.  Daniel has come to us with the desire to act as “Fact Checker” for the claims coming from campaigns.  Because when “Truthiness” is the language of the day, it helps to have someone who can cut through the B.S. with cold, hard facts.

Daniel’s text begins…  now.

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Politics is a game. It has always been a game, and will never aspire to be anything more. Year after year, campaign after campaign, we listen to aspiring political hopefuls tell us what they are going to do for us. Year after year, those promises are broken. The mere thought of knowing that no matter who you vote for, someone is lying to you, is a tough pill to swallow. You start to ask yourself, what am I voting for? What am I trying to change? It becomes a tired task. In Calgary, we’ve grown accustomed to complacency because there is never anyone who seems like they can make a difference. In the 2001 municipal election, our voter turnout was only 38%. If that sounds bad, consider than in 2004, [...]Read More