I biked all of New West and counted every local election sign I could find

"Yo this is turning out to maybe be kind of ambitious lmao."

I sent that message to New West Anchor editor Ria Renouf over Slack about three hours into this commitment. And I'd been in the easy, hill-less Queensborough neighbourhood up until then—I had yet to face the hills.

When I suggested to Ria that I could bike every street of New Westminster and count every sign I saw, I figured it wouldn’t take more than a regular eight-hour day.

After 24 hours of cycling well over 100km (over several days) and counting nearly 1,400 signs at hundreds of properties, I realize the lesson I never learn is that I have no concept of time or space. If I think something will take a day, I’d better give myself five. Or more.

Of course, after comparing my notes with Google Maps, I’ve realized I didn’t quite get every street—but only a few evaded me.

The thing I’m most interested in will come after Oct. 15, when I’ll have a chance to compare actual election results with the number of election signs on display.

But for now, we’ve got some takeaways from my five days of biking and counting.

The first thing that stood out to me was that, while Community First and Progressives had on display nearly identical numbers of signs (617 and 632 respectively), the latter slate dominated in the number of houses reached.

While Community First signs adorned 347 properties, by my count, there were 506 properties displaying signs for the Progressives.

(Note: I did not count signs on businesses unless there was a clear residence attached to the business.)

And that was the case in all but a few neighbourhoods, as you’ll see in this map. (If you click on the various neighbourhoods behind the bubbles, I've included some data from the city's neighbourhood profiles, which compiles data from the 2016 census.)

Only in Brow of the Hill and Sapperton were there more houses displaying Community First signs.

But before we get too deep into neighbourhood statistics, I should acknowledge that there are some limitations to this exercise.

First, it’s worth noting the timing—I started this project on Thursday, Sept. 29 and covered different neighbourhoods on different days.

It is probably best to assume all neighbourhoods have more signs by now. I also don’t know when canvassing happened in any given neighbourhood by any slate or candidate, so neighbourhood breakdowns should be taken with a grain of salt.

Here’s the breakdown:

Thursday, Sept. 29: Queensborough, Connaught HeightsSaturday, Oct. 1: West End and Kelvin between Sixth and 10th avenuesSunday, Oct. 2: Brow of the Hill, Uptown, Glenbrooke North, Massey Victory HeightsMonday, Oct. 3: Queens ParkTuesday, Oct. 4: Glenbrooke South, Sapperton, Downtown

My definition of Massey Victory Heights is a bit different from the city’s official boundaries—in my case, I counted everything east of McBride between Eighth and 10th avenues, all the way to East Columbia Street. According to the city, that east end is part of Sapperton, and the neighbourhood actually dips into what I counted as Glenbrooke South.

Further, in my survey, everything west of 12th Street and south of Sixth Avenue was included in the West End, where the city counts that as Brow of the Hill.

Finally, I folded Uptown and Downtown into Brow of the Hill and Queens Park, respectively, due to a general lack of signage in the former two neighbourhoods.

With all that out of the way, let’s have a look at the mayoral race.

While the Progressives dominated the house count, its mayoral candidate has been less prominent. With 97 properties displaying his signs, Ken Armstrong fell behind both Community First’s Patrick Johnstone and independent Chuck Puchmayr—by quite a margin.

You can see a nice visual comparing the three candidates here.

While Armstrong had a strong showing in Queensborough, accounting for over half of all of the signs for mayoral candidates in that neighbourhood, his share of the signage only barely cracked a quarter in one other neighbourhood—Massey Victory Heights.

Puchmayr, meanwhile, looks to be posing a serious threat in this race. He had signs out on 130 New West properties, accounting for just over a third of all mayoral candidates’ signs, being particularly dominant in Queens Park-Downtown and Kelvin-Brow of the Hill.

But it was Johnstone who dominated the sign game, with 150 properties displaying his signs. His strongest showing was in the West End and Sapperton, with three-fifths of the mayoral candidates’ signs in those neighbourhoods.

Signage may or may not be a bellwether for the election itself—we’ll find that out come election day—but it does speak to the amount of energy being spent on getting parties’ and candidates’ faces out in the community.

And it’s a measure of the willingness of people to so publicly endorse a party or candidate.

And if signs are endorsements, Progressives council candidate Daniel Fontaine has plenty of support. In fact, with 119 signs bearing his name and face, he’s got more than any other council candidate, and more than his own party’s mayoral candidate.

You can find more on all candidates from the two slates, plus two independents here.

Among Community First council candidates, it was Chinu Das who had the strongest showing, with 84 signs on display—second only to Fontaine among council candidates.

Kathleen Carlsen, also with the Progressives, led the school board candidates, with 58 throughout the city, while Community First candidate Cheryl Sluis followed with 52.

And if you want the neighbourhood breakdown for all candidates, you can go here.

Finally, I'll leave you with Ria's conversations with the three mayoral candidates. You can find Chuck Puchmayr's article here, Ken Armstrong's here, and Patrick Johnstone's here.