An executive consultant with Probe Research Inc. says he's not surprised Mayor Brian Bowman won a second term. 

Curtis Brown says Bowman played it safe and went with a strategy that didn't push many of his voters away. 

"An incumbent mayor hasn't been defeated in Winnipeg in 60 years, so if you get elected once you'll probably get at least one more crack at it in four years," Brown said. "There wasn't a burning issue that Brian Bowman was tagged with too much." 

Brown says something that could have tanked Bowman at the polls was the opening of Portage and Main, which went to a plebiscite this year. Bowman said in 2014 he wanted to open the intersection but decided in favour of putting it to a vote in 2018. 

Brown believes this was a calculated move on Bowman's part, and given 65 per cent of voters opted to keep Portage and Main closed, it may have been a smart move as well. 

"I think that ended up being very helpful to him and it gave him a bit of political cover because even though he was a proponent of opening Portage and Main he could say 'we don't like the decision, but that's what people decided and we're going to respect that,'" Brown said. "It didn't become as much of a wedge issue as it could have been because the plebiscite took over that aspect of it." 

Brown said he wasn't surprised by the plebiscite results or the stark contrast between people voting mainly "Yes" in inner city neighbourhoods and mainly "No" in the suburbs. He also says that conversation is far from over, and he expects it to continue coming up in years to come. 

With the election wrapped up, Brown says he'll now be turning his attention to how cozy this council will be towards the mayor. Brown says Bowman had a council that mostly agreed with him his first time around and says whether or not that will continue will likely be up to the five new councillors. 

"It's going to be very interesting to see who Brian Bowman puts on his Executive Policy Committee and what the dynamic will be with the different councillors," Brown said. "You basically have five councillors on EPC who generally tend to agree with the mayor, six if you include Speaker Devi Sharma, and then you have an opposition group and most of them were re-elected as well." 

"The question now is the five new councillors and where they fall," he continued. "As we saw last time, just because someone starts out as an ally of the mayor it doesn't mean they'll finish there. If you recall, Janice Lukes and Jeff Browaty were on EPC and voted with the mayor on some things but as soon as they didn't things became a lot more divided at city hall along those lines." 

Bowman earned a relatively convincing victory in the election, taking home 53 per cent of the vote. His closest challenger was Jenny Motkaluk, who earned 36 per cent.