Pizzas and blogs get it wrong: But New West burger poll is right on

By Dan Hilborn and Alfie Lau
Published Jan 25, 2006


Pizza polls and blogs proved to be unreliable indicators of which way the federal election was going to end up in Burnaby his year.

Final results of Romana Pizza poll for the Burnaby-Douglas riding gave Liberal candidate Bill Cunningham a 303-to-302 vote victory over Conservative George Drazenovic, while the actual winner, NDP candidate Bill Siksay, trailed with 265 votes. The Greens earned 111 votes in the pizza poll.

But the poll did result in a victory for the Burnaby Christmas Bureau, which will receive a donation of about $175 - or $1 for every pizza sold in the restaurant during the campaign.

"We really wanted our community to get involved in this election," said restaurant spokesperson Jenny Siormanolakis in a press release announcing the results. "It's fair to say that we created a win-win-win. A win for our community, for the democratic process and for a local charity."

Meanwhile, the Burnaby politics blog that was operated by someone with the pseudonym of Robert Burnaby got it half right when it predicted Siksay to win in Burnaby-Douglas and Marc Dalton to take the Burnaby-New Westminster riding. The blog also erroneously predicted Drazenovic would finish ahead of Cunningham.

The blog, which has been offering commentary on the most recent provincial, civic and federal elections, can be found at the website http://burnabypolitics.blogspot.com/

Another local blog, www.tdhstrategies.com, is predicting that prime minister-elect Stephen Harper will soon announce that the much-lauded Liberal budget surplus is non-existent and the country is facing a $3-billion deficit.

But the election burger poll in neighbouring New Westminster was a much better bet.

With NDP candidates Peter Julian and Dawn Black winning in the two New Westminster ridings, the Burger Heaven Bun-official election poll nailed the local election results with uncanny accuracy.

The Jack Layton burger, with 578 burgers sold, or 47.1 per cent of the ballots eaten, was the clear winner amongst hungry Royal City eaters. Coming in second was the Paul Martin burger, with 537 burgers, or 43.8 per cent of the popular vote. The two burgers had entered the final five days of the campaign in a dead heat but Layton pulled out to an almost insurmountable lead Friday afternoon, perhaps due to the appearance of Layton and his aides at the popular New Westminster eatery.

"New Westminster is always been very strong supporters of the NDP," said longtime Burger Heaven staffer Joyce Griffin.

Coming in a very poor third was the Stephen Harper burger, with 104 burgers, or only 8.5 per cent of the vote. The Gilles Duceppe burger had only 7.5 burgers, or 0.6 per cent of the vote.

"I have no idea why there's a half-burger there," said Griffin. "Maybe somebody's being cheeky."

The polls closed Sunday night at the close of business because of federal election laws.