Quick guide to where the St. John’s election candidates stand

Candidates who support more investment in public transit also tend to support more investment in sidewalk snow clearing (questions ‘d’ and ‘j’).  The underlying issue seems to be helping people get around the city without a car. The higher the score, the more support the candidate has expressed for investing in these services (e.g. Fred Winsor supports more investment in these areas, while Bruce Tilley has indicated that large new investments are not a good use of taxpayers’ money).

Support for more spending on Public Transit and Sidewalk Snow Clearing

Support for Density and Mixed Development

Heritage and Parks

Candidates who show strong support for heritage protection also tend to favour increased spending on parks (questions ‘h’ and ‘n’). The common issue is creating attractive public spaces that people want to spend time in. Lionel West seems to place a lot of importance on these issues; Geoff Chaulk not so much.

Support for Heritage Protection and Increased Spending on Parks

Amalgamation

Another polarizing issue is amalgamation with neighbouring communities (question ‘p’). For example, Bruce Tilley and Andrew Harvey strongly support pursuing amalgamation, while Ron Ellsworth and Sherwin Flight strongly oppose the idea.

Support for Amalgamation

Disclaimer: these scores do not fully capture the views of the candidates. For example, some candidates have ideas for improving services without spending more money on them, and this is not really captured above. Furthermore, the analysis is necessarily limited to candidates who completed the survey. Despite these limitations, I think these metrics provide a rough idea of where the candidates stand on some important issues. To read the candidates’ views in their own words, take a look at the survey answers linked at the bottom of the article Who will lead St. John’s?.

Explanation of the metrics

The metrics were devised by first applying a numerical score to each answer: 1 = Strongly Agree,  2 = Somewhat Agree, 3 = Neither Agree nor Disagree, 4 = Somewhat Disagree, 5 = Strongly Disagree. Then I looked for questions on which there was large variation in the answers (i.e. large standard deviation), and for pairs of questions where there was significant correlation which could reasonably be lumped together. The numerical scores for the issues above are simply the sum of the number scores for the answers. In some cases I switched the scoring so that 5 = Strongly Agree, 4 = Somewhat Agree, …., 1 = Strongly Disagree, for the sake of consistency, so that a large number means support for a policy rather than opposition to a policy.

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