Vancouver Residents, Pundits Offer Diverse Views on Mayor-Elect Ken Sim’s Landslide Victory

A person's belongings are placed on the street to be moved to storage after his tent was cleared from the sidewalk at a sprawling homeless encampment on East Hastings Street in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, on Aug. 9, 2022. The Canadian Press/Darryl Dyck

When Ken Sim competed with Kennedy Stewart in Vancouver’s municipal elections in 2018, he lost to Stewart by fewer than 1,000 votes. When the two vied for the same position of Vancouver mayor on Oct. 15, voters sent Sim and his ABC Vancouver party to a landslide victory, a development some are seeing as a rejection of recent progressive policies.

Sim beat Stewart by more than 35,000 votes, and still would have won if all other mayoral candidate votes were combined. His party also won every city councillor and school trustee seat its candidates ran for.