After two days of one of the most hotly contended UTSU elections in recent memory, I bring you some preliminary results – that are COMPLETELY UNSCIENTIFIC AND INFORMAL OF COURSE !!! (thanks, CRO) – but interesting nonetheless. The Sexual Education Centre has received permission from the CRO to conduct a poll of voters by inviting them to choose coloured condoms representative of the slate of candidates they support. One of the organizers of the COMPLETELY UNSCIENTIFIC AND INFORMAL poll offered to share them with yours truly after the post written yesterday and my speculation that with more data I might have a future writing for the OkCupid blog. (SEC had decided that everyone would have access to their collected data, regardless of their election affiliation.)

The numbers are in and to heighten the suspense I’m going to post them after the jump!

Once more the caveats:
- the poll is COMPLETELY UNSCIENTIFIC AND INFORMAL
- SEC has not endorsed any slate
- volunteers stationed by the condoms are not allowed to campaign
- CRO approval has been obtained
- the methodology involves the distribution of green and orange condoms. voters receive a green condom if they’ve voted for Stronger Together; an orange condom if they’ve voted for Change; one green condom and one orange condom if they’ve voted for a mixed slate.
- the poll is COMPLETELY UNSCIENTIFIC AND INFORMAL

drumroll please

DAY 1 – March 16, 2010
————————————–
Location: Bahen
Number of Orange Condoms Given out: 91
Number of Green Condoms Given out: 92

DAY 2 – March 17, 2010
—————————————
Location: Sid Smith
Number of Orange Condoms Given out: 99
Number of Green Condoms Given out: 81

DAY 3 – March 18, 2010
—————————————
Location: Sid Smith
Number of Orange Condoms Given out: 79
Number of Green Condoms Given out: 44

Unfortunately, I am too pooped from campaigning all day to give any animated analysis (there goes my gig at the OkCupid blog…) so I’m going to instead copy/paste some observations from the volunteer who emailed me the numbers.

(snip snip)
[T]here are a lot of variables to consider (probably more than what’ I’ve listed here):

Some people have been surprised by the ST strength at this Bahen [poll] but that could be a reflection of
- the Change rally [on Tuesday] drawing people away from Bahen who normally would be there
- is Engineering actually the Change stronghold people think it’s going to be? (and/or do engineers vote at Bahen and/or is this result a reflection of what classes occur at Bahen on Tuesdays?)
- St Patrick’s day effect
- whether one side is more or less likely to take condoms from us, etc
- whether one side has encouraged the students they converse with to take exit condoms
(snip snip)

As you can see, the numbers are very very close and my humble prediction at this point is that it’s anybody’s game. There have been a lot of talk of college council volunteers coming out in full force on Thursday, as well as the unpredictable effects of post-St Patty’s day hangovers. I know I’ve received a stern warning from my fellow volunteers not to do any drinking lest our collective irresponsibility jeopardize the outcome of the election.

So! Vote early, vote once (What? Did you think I was going to make an untoward joke about ballot box stuffing and risk the wrath of the CRO?), and vote with conviction! I will be hopefully posting again immediately after polls close tomorrow with the updated ‘exit poll’ data. But until them, once more with feeling, VOTE!

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 18th, 2010 at 1:09 am and is filed under Events, On Campus, Politics, We've Got Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.