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It's damn difficult to win and retain power at Vancouver City Hall.

There are always new parties emerging with new approaches.

The longer a party is in power, the more negatives it accumulates in the minds of voters.

And social media has become a vicious tool to destroy incumbents.

But the challengers often make the same mistake again and again by running too many candidates on their slates.

It dilutes their support. That's because while most people have a tendency to favour one party, they often still vote for others not on their preferred slate.

When you can cast a ballot for 10 council candidates, it's easy to spread the love around.

In the 2011 election, Vision Vancouver ran seven council candidates. They were all elected.

The NPA ran 10 candidates and only two were elected even though the party attracted a lot of votes. The support was spread among too many people.

COPE ran three candidates who all lost, including one by just 90 votes.

Had COPE run two candidates and the NPA run six or seven candidates, each party would have likely had more success. That's because their votes would have been more concentrated.

In 2014, the NPA ran eight candidates for council and elected three. Vision Vancouver ran eight candidates for council and elected six.

This showed that when the NPA shortened its council slate, it obtained better results. When Vision added an eighth council candidate, it fared worse.

The Greens ran three candidates in 2014 for council. Only one, Adriane Carr, was elected. Had the Greens run only two council candidates, perhaps they could have elected a second one.

COPE ran eight candidates in 2014, which guaranteed that nobody would get elected.

It takes a disciplined party board to run a short slate to ensure greater success. It's not easy when so many people within the party are clamouring to get elected.

Party boards sometimes assume that if they have more candidates from more communities--be they religious, geographic, racial, or based on gender identification or sexual orientation--they'll cobble together a broad spectrum of support.

While diversity can help the overall ticket, a problem emerges if there are just too many candidates on the council slate. Voters will cherry-pick names on the ballot, often based on party affiliation or if they know who the person is, and they'll reject other candidates from the same party.

Name recognition is a big thing in any at-large voting system where candidates are elected on a citywide basis.

With this in mind, I've decided to give letter grades to the various civic parties on the length of their council slates this year.

Brandon Yan and Christine Boyle are running for council with OneCity Vancouver.

OneCity Vancouver: A

OneCity has just two candidates, both millennials, in a city with a majority of millennials.

Christine Boyle, 33, is a trusted left winger and United Church minister who will be popular with the large number of socially progressive Christians in Vancouver. It's an often under-appreciated community.

Brandon Yan, 31, is with Out in Schools and he has a real knack for boosting his name recognition. He's spoken to many thousands of students over the years.

It's an uphill battle winning a first election and there's no guarantee that OneCity candidates will make it across the finish line in the Top 10.

But the slate is intelligently crafted to appeal to younger voters who've felt dealt out by Vision Vancouver. Had the OneCity board added a third candidate, it likely would have doomed its chances.

ProVancouver mayoral candidate David Chen heads a ticket with two city council candidates.

ProVancouver: A-

Few people in Vancouver have heard of the anti-establishment ProVancouver and its mayoral candidate, David Chen. But you can't fault the party board for starting small.

It's running two candidates for council: tradesperson Breton Crellin and tech entrepreneur Rohana Rezel.

That's the way to launch a party. However, it would be in better shape if one of its candidates had more name recognition across the city.

Yes Vancouver has only one candidate, apart from mayoral nominee Hector Bremner, who's ever sought public office before in Vancouver. Yes Vancouver

Yes Vancouver: B

Mayoral candidate Hector Bremner has to make a credible pitch to be seeking to hold power, so his new party is running five candidates.

They've been selected to attract votes in areas in the West End, which has been a Vision Vancouver stronghold, and the Kingsway corridor and Southeast Vancouver, home to many new Canadians.

Yes Vancouver could achieve a breakthrough if the NPA vote collapses in South Vancouver. That's a real possibility, given that the NPA has no council candidates who can speak fluent Mandarin or Cantonese.

Realistically, a new party like Yes Vancouver would be in a better position to elect council candidates with a shorter slate, say three rather than five.

However, running five candidates will increase Bremner's chances of pulling votes from across the city. And isn't that what this new party is really all about?

Vision Vancouver's slate is diverse in terms of age, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, but there might be too many council candidates for all of them to be elected. Catherine Evans

Vision Vancouver: C+

The city's ruling party is running five candidates for council, including popular incumbent Heather Deal. But Vision Vancouver has been in power for 10 years, and voters may be in a mood to punish it for past sins.

The party has included a park commissioner, Catherine Evans, on the slate. That's smart because she will have much higher name recognition than most candidates in the race.

Broadcaster and federal NDP constituency worker Wei Qiao Zhang has a high profile in the Chinese community, Tanya Paz is a credible candidate based on her long-time advocacy for sustainable transportation, and Diego Cardona is firing up his young left-wing supporters with his fervent calls for social justice. Cardona has fairly high name recognition, too.

But in this election, Vision Vancouver would have been wiser to just run four candidates to lessen the likelihood of total annihilation. That's a real possibility if voters are in a particularly punitive mood, come October. Progressive voters have lots of choices with solid COPE, OneCity, and Green candidates running. Hubris can come with a price.

The Greens are hoping to become a civic powerhouse (renewable, of course) after the October 20 election. David H.T. Wong

Vancouver Greens: C

The Green board of directors hasn't learned from its grand mistake of 2014. It should have run three candidates, who all would have likely been elected this year. Earlier this year, it appeared they were going to be Carr, former candidate Pete Fry, and park commissioner Michael Wiebe.

But the party panicked, thinking it needed a candidate of Chinese ancestry, so it also nominated David Wong. Wong has a long record of community service and positive relations with Indigenous nations, but having four names on the ballot risks diluting the Greens' support. The odd man out (again) could turn out to be Fry.

If there's a tremendous upswing in support for the Greens, perhaps all four can get elected. But given the current standing of the B.C. Greens in provincial opinion polls, that doesn't seem likely at the moment.

COPE candidate Jean Swanson is running with two left-wing stalwarts, former councillor Anne Roberts and tenant and peace activist Derrick O'Keefe. COPE

COPE: C-

COPE has gotten smarter since 2014 and is only running three candidates this time. But that's still one too many for a party that hasn't elected a councillor since the 2008 election.

All three candidates (Derrick O'Keefe, Anne Roberts, and Jean Swanson) are well-known left wingers who can call on significant support. But sometimes in municipal politics, two is often greater than three, and I suspect that this might be one of those instances. Swanson might get elected, but COPE will have to be vigilant to ensure that Roberts and O'Keefe don't split other COPE votes, preventing either from winning.

Southwest Vancouver businessman David Grewal is one of several first-time candidates on the NPA council slate.

NPA: D-

In 2018, it's a serious blunder for the NPA to run nine candidates for council, considering that it only secured 27 percent of the votes in the October 2017 by-election.

It doesn't appear enjoy the depth of support that it had in its heyday in the late 1980s and 1990s. Several of the council candidates are barely known to voters, notwithstanding their accomplishments in life. Some of these newcomers also have virtually no following on Twitter and have never run for public office before.

The last political newcomer to be elected as an NPA councillor was George Affleck in 2011. He had more than 8,000 Twitter followers at the time.

The only way the NPA's electoral strategy will work this year is if there's an enormous appetite for a right-wing turn in Vancouver politics. An NPA landslide hasn't occurred in the city since 1999, so don't bet on it.