punditry.ca — uncovering DSU elections

More posts and comments will trickle in over the coming days, but with the results announced and no appeals that we know of, our coverage is wrapping up.

In punditry.ca tradition, our congratulations to the new executive – Saulnier, LeForte, Dahn, Kurin, and the as-yet unnamed VP FO, as well as to the three new senators.  I hope that you have a successful year, and that you hire a full-time staffer to do your spell checking.

I think we had an embarrassment of riches in candidates this year; yes, each has their flaws, and we may focus on those sometimes, but we all have flaws.  The DSU would have been in good hands with any of them, I feel.  I was particularly excited by the unprecedented availability of information online.  Perhaps those of you who were not elected will consider running for other positions, like the Board of Operations, which the DSU is advertising now.

A shout-out to the hard-working elections committee and the CRO, those unfortunate souls tasked with refereeing bickering candidates, trying to encourage students to vote, organizing the whole bloody thing, and being blamed for everything.  (Do the cool kids still do shout-outs?)

Thank you of course to the pundits and commenters and tipsters who are the reason this site still exists.

punditry.ca saw 50 posts from pundits (42,000 words) and around 800 comments (67,000 words).  We served over 55,000 pages to 1,500 absolute unique visitors in just over 2 weeks.  If they were all Dal students, which they definitely aren’t, that would be 10% of the student body and 62% of those who voted.

Because of my continuing fetish for word clouds, I generated one for both the posts and the comments.  I didn’t pay attention to plurals, but I did remove HTML tags and “dsu”.  These each have 150 words, so click them to see the full-size version.  Analysis is left as an exercise for the reader.

Pundit Posts Wordcloud (click for full-size)

Word Cloud of punditry.ca comments (click for full version)

punditry.ca will be back next year, because someone’s gotta do it.  Speak to any current pundit if you want to be involved next year; recruitment will start in 9 months or so.  This will be my last post of the year, so I thank you for reading and bid you a slightly awkward but nevertheless polite farewell.

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Mike Smit Uncategorized

Voting closes in about 10 minutes; results will be announced in the Grawood tonight, and I am hoping some of our intrepid pundits keep you posted here.

Also at the Grawood tonight: Dalhousie’s Got Talent Finals.  If voting in the DSU Elections isn’t enough for you, vote online for your favorite after the show.

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Mike Smit Uncategorized

1. Every candidate had a website outside of Facebook, and for the most part these were good websites.

2. I didn’t hear a single Kings student bitch about not getting to vote in the DSU Elections.

3. The Elections Committee eased a decade-old restriction on online campaigning: websites can remain up during polling.  [Candidates: any idea if new people visited this week?]

4. Eric Snow wasn’t running in this election.  (He’s run in almost as many elections as Debogorski!  Speaking of…)

5. Debogorski.  After 3 years I thought I’d seen it all, but I was very impressed with his campaign this year.

6. Calibre of candidates in general.  I might speak more on this later, but the quality and variety of candidates pleased me greatly.  Judging (as always) purely from online content including punditry.ca posts, the Union will be well-served by almost any combination of candidates.  I hope, as I always do, that those who don’t end up with an executive seat stick around in some capacity.

7. NSPIRG didn’t come up at all.  It doesn’t usually, actually, but after its dominance last year I thought we’d never again hold an election without hearing “enn-ess-purg” 100 times a day.

8. Three candidates from Sexton?!? Happy surprise!

9. There are people who don’t like Henry Whitfield.  Seriously, I’ve never met him but I have heard about him, and I didn’t imagine anyone would be harboring the level of resentment I’ve seen in our comments section.

10. In a platform plank a supporter complained we were neglecting and suggested we look at : 5 spelling mistakes, in 1 sentence, including the same word spelled two different ways, both incorrect.  Awesome.  I won’t name names, but man was that ever kurInkredible.  (No?  kaylAmazing?  fan-kurin-tastic?)

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Mike Smit Uncategorized

After 10 days of observing some subset of [websites, classroom talks, debates, personal pitches, coverage, profiles, interviews, videos, *], I suspect most people have some expectation of who will come out on top.  Enter this post.  I’ll make my predictions, and please add your own predictions in the comments.  I’ll try to collect some aggregate numbers based on the comments.

I have written down my reasons for these choices but I won’t share them yet lest I taint your own predictions.  I do have a reason for all of them, and look forward to discussing them over the coming days.  I will say that these are NOT based on who I want to win, or who did the best at whatever, or who would do the best job if elected, or any of that.  It’s based on who I expect to vote, and what information I expect will be available to them, and how I expect they will decide based on that.

As is my new custom, I offer betting odds* to let you know my certainty.  As always, spoiled and blank ballots are excluded.

Candidates who I am predicting will not win should take great comfort in the fact that I am often wrong, though typically better than just randomly picking names.

To see the actual predictions, click the Read More link below.

Read more…

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Mike Smit Uncategorized

Debogorski’s platform is up on his website.  Using the same methodology as for the other candidates, I created a word cloud.  Like with Saulnier, I did not take the platform summary, I took only the platform.

His is the shortest of the three (1,055 words, just about twice as long as the summary).  The same threat to accuracy applies here.

Gregory Debogorski

• “Union” is the most common word, followed by “dalhousie”, with “dsu” making a strong appearance
• A love of the number “three”
• Lots of action words: “collect”, “promise”, “create”, “run”, “work”, “development”, “increase”
• Several words related to student input: “issues”, “referendum”, “preferences”, “questions”, possibly “information”
• Words related to being the CEO of the DSU: possibly “government”, “council”, possibly “run”, possibly “decision”.
• “prd” is his acronym for a “polling, referendum, and debate” system to solicit student input, and is clearly a notable portion of the platform

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Mike Smit Uncategorized

Methodology is the same as the VP Internal word clouds, with no words deleted but with folding some words into one.

The input text was copy-pasted from their websites on March 18.  If someone knows where to find Debogorski’s platform, please let me know as I was unsuccessful.  The total words including even common stop words is Bailey: 1159; Saulnier: 3971.  A word of caution – Bailey offers about 70% less text content than Saulnier, and word clouds are better with MORE text, so there may be impaired accuracy.

Neil Bailey

Chris Saulnier

As usual, some thoughts on these word clouds only unless otherwise specified.

• The obvious: Bailey’s cloud is dominated by “sustainability” and “community“.   It is also a major word for Saulnier, though in a more balanced fashion.
• Saulnier was the only candidate to have both Sexton and Carleton appear in his word cloud, though he spelled Carleton incorrectly.  IDE seen that before but couldn’t remember where.
• Bailey’s name appears twice in his word cloud as both Neil’s and Neil, which would indicate his platform is at least partially written in third person, which is unusual.  A reincarnation of Bob Dole, perhaps?
• I was amused to see website make an appearance consistently, unlike the VP Internal clouds.
• The president is the Chief Executive Officer of the Union.  Can you tell that from the word clouds?  Saulnier has words related to that concept: “executive”, “leadership”, “staff”, “council”, and possibly “meetings”, “office” (though those are boring).  Bailey had fewer – perhaps “policy” and “vision”, arguably “community”.
• I was surprised to see vague words in Bailey’s word cloud: “many”, “much”. I teach classes on how to write precisely and be specific, and these words will earn you big red marks on your paper.
• Looking at the action words,
  • Bailey: need, change, make, develop.  Together with words like “issue” and “problem”, this indicates a high level of dissatisfaction with the DSU and a desire to implement change.
  • Saulnier: “new”, “create” indicate innovation, tempered by the word “ensure” which tends to indicate the continuation or execution of an existing idea, though “better” could indicate the desire to improve on the status quo.  ”work” and “provide” are also present.
• I like the presence of “goal” in Saulnier’s word cloud, but was surprised by “order“.  It turns out that is due to his inordinate love of the phrase “in order to”.
• I was puzzled to see “decline” and “growth” both in Bailey’s word cloud, with roughly the same weight.

Any other observations?  Weigh in below.

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Mike Smit Uncategorized

Word Clouds are quick-look visualizations of the most common words in hunks of text.  They can be used for context-free analysis of text themes (though of course, context-free is not always a good thing).  Like last year, I’m using them to look at platforms, starting with VP Internal.  It won’t find you good ideas on issues mentioned only once, but it is a look at what seems to carry the most weight in the platform.

Methodology.  I used the same back-end tools as Wordle, removed all stop words (common words like the, and, a…), asked for words to be mostly-horizontal, allowed layout to be stochastic, replaced the plural with the singular for common words (like grant/grants), and from time-to-time dropped “-ing” (e.g. work/working).  The input text was a copy-paste of the platforms on March 17.

The shorter the text, the less reliable the word cloud.  INcluding stop words, total platform words for each candidate are Hiltz: 688; Kurin: 1,072; Whitfield: 1,362; Blake: 1591.  Society/Societies was the #1 word for all 4 candidates, followed by Student/Students, so I removed all four of these words.

Glenn Blake

Tim Hiltz

Kayla Kurin

Henry Whitfield

• Some thoughts; note that these comments are ONLY on word clouds unless otherwise specified.
• I begin my analysis by showing the dangers of relying on word clouds.  One might look at Blake’s word cloud and see the dominant word “events”.  The natural conclusion is he is stepping all over the portfolio of VP Student Life.  And he is, a bit, but he knows it – he specifically wants to involve the VP SL in making more events to show-case Dal’s diversity.  Mostly the word is used in the context of supporting or enabling society events.
• The VP I is the communications officer of the DSU.  I was surprised to see that so few words related to the idea of communicating.  Blake has “listserv”, possibly “community” and “show” and “available”.  Hiltz has “handbook” and possibly “meetings” and “available”.  Kurin has “calendar”, “networking”, “information”, “website”, “updated”, and maybe “list” and “regular”.  Whitfield actually has “communication”, as well as “website”, and possibly “residence”  and heavy weight on “available”.  I am surprised to see “website” in only two word clouds.
• “Grants” makes an appearance in every word cloud, and is especially prominent for Blake.  ”ratification“, on the other hand, comes up for Hiltz and Whitfield only.
• Looking at the major unique themes,
  • Kurin has a big focus on the services the DSU provides to students.  ”Accessibility” and “accessible” when taken together would be another major theme.
  • Blake is interested in food and DSU/society events.  (Which overlap heavily with VP FO and VP SL, respectively).  Diversity is also important to his platform.
  • Hiltz is interesting because the major words don’t really map to new ideas; rather they relate to his job description.  Taken together – plan, improve, process, handbook, ratification, committee, grants – it sounds like his promise is to do the job, but to do it better and improve the processes of the DSU.  Fair enough.
  • Whitfield is pushing how he’ll be available. It also sounds like he agrees with Hiltz on taking issue with the current status, talking about  system and process.
• Looking at the major action words,
  • Whitfield’s is pitching that he’ll work hard and put in the time:  “work”, “working”, perhaps “hours”.  ”New” could indicate innovation.
  • Hiltz is talking about a desire to “improve” and “shorten”.
  • Blake wants to “get” things, “give” things, “show” things, and make things “run” and “go”.  Surprisingly all short words.  He also “know”s things.
  • Kurin’s big word is “create” and also uses “new“, which could speak to innovation.  She also uses ”ensure“, which tends to mean seeing to existing programs/duties, but also talks about “new”.  ”work” appears in her cloud; returning to the platform, always in the form “work with”, which speaks to collaboration.
• Whitfield’s is the only one where “residence” makes an appearance, which should not surprise anyone.
• Hiltz’s is the only one where both “Sexton” and “Carleton” appear.

See anything else interesting?  The comments section awaits.

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Mike Smit Uncategorized