Despite some people’s predictions to the contrary, Victorians voted yesterday to allow the city to borrow the money to replace the Johnson St. Bridge. It was a pretty decisive win too, 60 to 40. The interesting question is why?
Why didn’t the No side (johnsonstreetbridge.org/) win? After all, they collected all those signatures. I suspect because those that signed the petition break down into three major groups
- Those that actually wanted to save the old Blue Bridge
- Those that wanted a vote on the issue
- Those that were offended at the amount of money being spent
Note that only group 1 is actually a lock for a No vote. The 2nd and 3rd groups can be convinced to vote yes, which given that 9872 people signed the petition and only 6,522 voted No, may have just been what happened. After all, take a peak at one of the johnsonstbridge.org posters:
That poster will get all three groups to sign the petition, without revealing that the people behind the petition actually want to save the bridge. So all in all, a slightly surprising result, but from my perspective, a good one. If you want to get another perspective, Bernard von Shulman, a No voter, has run followup pieces at his Victoria Vision blog: 2010 Election and Wow I was wrong… Both are good reads. Now let’s see what the latest controversy regarding the bridge the johnsonstbridge.org people can stir up…