{
  "schema_version": "1.0",
  "metric": "social_reach_2026",
  "quality": "very_low",
  "office": "Mayor",
  "manually_verified_at": "2026-09-06T00:00:00-07:00",
  "collection_method": "Follower counts read directly from each candidate's own Facebook, Instagram and X page via an interactive, logged-in browser session. This is NOT part of the automated daily pipeline (run_daily.py / GitHub Actions) because Facebook and Instagram do not expose follower counts to unauthenticated or programmatic requests; a human must periodically re-verify these numbers in a browser for this file to stay current. Treat manually_verified_at, not fetched_at, as this file's freshness signal.",
  "explicitly_not_used_for": "This signal is never combined with or converted into projected_votes_2026 or any vote-share estimate. See method_notes for why.",
  "weighting_method": {
    "description": "Illustrative ordinal weights (Facebook 1.0, Instagram 0.5, X 0.25), not a precise empirical coefficient. Directionally justified by three cited, real sources rather than assumed: (1) Richmond's own voters skew older and higher-turnout than its residents generally, consistent with every Canadian election on record; (2) Facebook has the broadest reach among older Canadian adults of the three platforms; (3) X is both the smallest platform in Canada by weekly use and shrinking.",
    "sources": [
      {"title": "Elections Canada: Estimation of voter turnout by age group, 45th general election (2025)", "url": "https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=res&dir=rec%2Feval%2Fpes2025%2Fevt&document=p4&lang=e", "finding": "Turnout rose from 55.9% at ages 18-24 to 77.6% at ages 65-74 in the 2025 federal election, a pattern consistent since 2004. No BC municipal-specific breakdown at this granularity is publicly available; this is used only to establish the direction (older voters turn out at meaningfully higher rates), not an exact Richmond municipal figure."},
      {"title": "Environics Research: 2025 Social Media Trends in Canada", "url": "https://environics.ca/insights/articles/2025-social-media-trends-in-canada/", "finding": "Facebook remains Canada's most-used platform (67% weekly) with broad reach across older adults; Instagram (41%) is heavily concentrated among 18-24 year-olds (91% usage); X (17% weekly) is both the smallest of the three and declining (account ownership fell from 40% to 37% since 2022)."}
    ],
    "unweighted_gap": "No reliable estimate of WeChat usage among Richmond's Chinese-Canadian population could be sourced. Richmond is 54.3% Chinese visible minority and 44.5% Chinese mother tongue (2021 Census, StatCan) - the highest of any Canadian municipality - and WeChat is documented as the dominant platform for Chinese-diaspora communities generally, but no Canada-specific usage percentage was found to weight it. This is left as a disclosed gap, not estimated, consistent with this project's rule that missing data is never converted to a number."
  },
  "candidates": [
    {"formal_name": "Dickens Cheung", "facebook_followers": 904, "facebook_url": "https://www.facebook.com/ServantDickens", "instagram_followers": 312, "instagram_url": "https://www.instagram.com/dickens.cheung", "x_followers": null, "x_url": null, "weighted_score": 1060.0},
    {"formal_name": "Rob Howard", "facebook_followers": 358, "facebook_url": "https://www.facebook.com/robhowardformayor", "instagram_followers": 23, "instagram_url": "https://www.instagram.com/robhowardrichmondforward", "x_followers": 759, "x_url": "https://x.com/robhoward55", "x_account_note": "Account created November 2010, long before this campaign; its follower count reflects over a decade of prior political activity, not 2026 campaign momentum.", "weighted_score": 559.25},
    {"formal_name": "Kash Heed", "facebook_followers": 436, "facebook_url": "https://www.facebook.com/KashHeed2026", "instagram_followers": 169, "instagram_url": "https://www.instagram.com/kashheed2026", "x_followers": 15, "x_url": "https://x.com/KashHeed2026", "weighted_score": 524.25},
    {"formal_name": "Alexa Loo", "facebook_followers": 168, "facebook_url": "https://www.facebook.com/RichmondStrongCanada", "instagram_followers": 150, "instagram_url": "https://www.instagram.com/richmondstrongcanada", "x_followers": 3, "x_url": "https://x.com/strong88360", "weighted_score": 243.75},
    {"formal_name": "Mei Kang", "facebook_followers": null, "facebook_url": null, "facebook_note": "Official system's Facebook link is broken/private; could not verify. Total is understated by a missing data point, not necessarily lower real reach.", "instagram_followers": 39, "instagram_url": "https://www.instagram.com/meikang2026", "x_followers": null, "x_url": null, "weighted_score": 19.5}
  ],
  "method_notes": [
    "Absolute follower counts are 3-figure numbers for a race deciding an estimated 42,000-61,000 ballots (see turnout_2026 in latest.json). At this scale they are noise, not a usable sample of the electorate.",
    "The resulting ranking (by either raw combined reach or this turnout-weighted version) puts Dickens Cheung first and Kash Heed third, while the external prediction market ranks Kash Heed first by a wide margin (44.0%) and Dickens Cheung last (0.1%). This project treats that divergence as evidence the signal is unreliable for this race, not as evidence the market is wrong.",
    "No follower authenticity check (bot/purchased-follower detection) was performed; none of these accounts' quality has been independently verified."
  ]
}