Nicole Szymanowka is on Tinder—to win an election.
The fourth-year commerce student at the University of Alberta (U of A) is one of 32 candidates vying for a position on Edmonton city council left vacant due to a past councillor’s move to federal politics.
Szymanowka said she first decided to use Tinder based on its potential as a free marketing source, as well as its ability to reach out to a younger generation of voters.
“One of the reasons I’m also running is just maybe to inspire people to take more interest in municipal politics, and I’d like to see more young people voting,” she said.
Additionally, because of the way Tinder works, Szymanowka said she was able to specifically target people living within Ward 12, a suburban area of Edmonton.
On her profile Szymanowka posted photos from her campaign website, as well as a biography that lets views know about the election and encouraged them to check out her campaign.
Despite her profile only being up for three days before being reported as spam, Szymanowka admitted she was not prepared for the amount of attention it would receive.
“I mean it was like a 48 hour project so I’m shocked about the amount of attention it got. I haven’t really been campaigning on there but it did bring a lot of attention and it got a lot of media outlets to contact me which was beneficial,” she said.
Szymanowka is not the only candidate to ever ask potential voters to swipe right. In the 2014 municipal election in Ottawa, Somerset ward candidate Conor Meade also used Tinder to promote his campaign.
At the time, Meade told the Ottawa Citizen, “If you want to reach out to young voters, if you want to increase youth engagement in the democratic process, then you have to use the platforms that young people are on.”
Szymanowka said she wanted to run because it would be “nice to see a younger representative on city council.”
“Especially as a university student, you’re surrounded by a lot of brilliant young people who have great ideas about how to fix problems in the city, what’s going on in the city, but I feel like those ideas are never put to concrete action,” Szymanowka said. “I kind of wanted to run to maybe be the person to facilitate some of that idea sharing, and get some of these ideas moving forward into a phase that’s implementable before city council.”
In particular, Szymanowka said she is focusing on supporting various transit expansion projects within Edmonton, expanding arterial roadways into existing suburbs, and is looking to keep the ride-sharing service Uber in Edmonton.
For her part, Szymanowka said she doesn’t think using Tinder was damaging to her campaign.
“I think just the fact that people are even talking about it is a win for me because I did want to raise awareness,” Szymanowka said. “The fact that people are talking about it just brings more awareness to the issue and to the election and what I’m hoping is that that extra buzz around it will translate into more voters that are actually coming out to the polls and voting.”
