Redistribution of Federal Electoral Districts 2012

[adma]

For my money, the most egrigious misnaming is the proposed "Oak Ridges"--yes, it encompasses a lot of the Oak Ridges Moraine; however, IMO any riding with that name has to include the community which lent its name to said moraine.  That is, a better name for Aurora-Richmond Hill would be Aurora-Oak Ridges; and this present "Oak Ridges" should be named King-Maple, or King-Maple-Vellore, or something...

[adma]

For my money, the most egrigious misnaming is the proposed "Oak Ridges"--yes, it encompasses a lot of the Oak Ridges Moraine; however, IMO any riding with that name has to include the community which lent its name to said moraine.  That is, a better name for Aurora-Richmond Hill would be Aurora-Oak Ridges; and this present "Oak Ridges" should be named King-Maple, or King-Maple-Vellore, or something...

I'm sorry, but nothing tops the Nepean-Carleton and the Simcoe-Grey ridings for wrong names. Oak Ridges refers to not just the community, but the morraine. While Nepean only refers to the former city which is not in the proposed riding and Grey refers to just the county which the riding will not contain any part of.

Good point; sounds like they just grandfathered in the old riding names without thinking there (and I can see that being fixed pronto).  Still: properly speaking, Oak Ridges *should* contain Oak Ridges proper to make sense.

[adma]

I'm also wondering about the Liberal prognosis of Mt Pleasant--well, at least I can picture the Conservatives super-targeting it now that their vote isn't suppressed by the "unwinnable riding" psychological factor.  (And even more so in the event that the border is pushed further back from Church + Wellesley.)

[adma]

Well then, Carolyn Bennett is likely toast it seems. But maybe there are people in Trinity-Spadina that like her enough to vote for her even though they voted for Chow. But, with the NDP polling better, it's going to be tough for Bennett to win.

Then again, keep in mind a certain "Annex cultural class" vote that opted for the Green Shift Liberals over NDP in '08, i.e. they might be quite amenable to someone with Bennett's clout...

[adma]

Oh, and said good NDP candidate was Fort Erie's ex-mayor, Wayne Redekop.  So definitely a "profile candidate" parallel to Fife in K-W...

[adma]

Oh, and said good NDP candidate was Fort Erie's ex-mayor, Wayne Redekop.  So definitely a "profile candidate" parallel to Fife in K-W...

...and by way of addendum, just as K-W was considered "highly unlikely", Redekop's candidacy marked a 180 from the ONDP bombing big time in Niagara Falls in 2007 (parachute candidate under 10% and behind even the Greens)

[adma]

NDP has no net gain or loss, even holds the Welland--Erie riding.

Well, why not, considering that they had a bigger Welland margin provincially than federally, and that Fort Erie was (thanks to the candidate) their strong spot in Niagara Falls...

[adma]

Niagara Centre looks to be back in the NDP column as well with Thorold and parts of St. Catharines added back in and Fort Erie and Wainfleet removed.

Notionally, yes.  But as we know, the legacy of the Kormos machine can swing virtually anything in its path...

[adma]

Which is part of what I mean by "Kormos machine"; Mel Swart started it, but it didn't really begin to pollinate federally until the Kormos era...

[adma]

On ground level, one can also tell when the area has bilingual street signage, etc (definitely the case in the appropriate parts of Essex, Penetang, Welland)

[adma]

*Belleville was oddly split in half, for a city its size seems odd, but looks like most of the urban city is in Bay of Quinte, the rest is in Hastings.

Hastings—Lennox and Addington would have been 84,218 residents (20.7% under quotient), without adding the rural portion of Belleville (the former Township of Thurlow, now Thurlow Ward) which has 8,310 residents.

Exactly; so it isn't really a "splitting in half", since the "split" part was the mega-amalgamated rural portion that didn't really have business being part of Belleville in the first place...

[adma]

When it comes to the whole "community of interest" thing re Rosedale vs Regent Park/St James Town: it isn't like Thorncliffe + Flemingdon have jibed w/the rest of Don Valley West...

[adma]

Remember, too, that what redistribution can't do in and of itself, incumbency can--that is, if in a split Oshawa, the NDP's facing Colin Carrie *and* Erin O'Toole in the respective seats, it makes the job so much more difficult.

Oh, and here's an observation: were Ontario like Saskatchewan, the Oshawa split seems like something Dick Proctor might have proposed in the 90s in the hopes of getting 2 NDP seats for the price of one--but, uh-oh, oopsie...

[adma]

In some of the other ridings, there's been a trend to lump in the names of independent cities (not under county administration). But calling the riding Leeds-Grenville-Brockville-Gananoque-Prescott would be only slightly more terrible.

It's funny with the "independent cities" thing--I find in discussions that younger municipal geeks have a more insistently "Virginia-esque" perception of Ontario's political geography; yet for old-timers (and as affirmed in common resources like official provincial maps and municipal directories and census stats), even so-called "independent" cities and towns are understood to be geographic components of counties.  Whatever the governance, the commonly assumed and commonly communicated geography of Ontario was county/region-based, i.e. you *didn't* have "independent cities" depicted as such on the map as in Virginia.

Then again, in an era when municipal directories have gone on-line and GPS has displaced paper maps and atlases, that whole county/district/region-based "common geography" has fallen by the wayside--that is, compared to, say, 30/40/50 years ago, county boundaries as a common geographic definer have become as meaningful as tourist-region boundaries, and the only one who care anymore are, well, the kinds of municipal geeks overly obsessed with governance-based definitions but who really couldn't care less whether official Ontario road maps depicted counties or regions anymore...

[adma]

I am of the mindset that "independent cities" are still part of their geographic counties and therefore its redundant to have their names in the riding name.

Well, not necessarily redundant; just that riding names don't have to be so stiffly "county-geared".  But to be honest, I don't even think that "independent cities" even figure into this--it all has to do with bragging rights more than governmental/municipal status, anyway.  Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound is named that way because Owen Sound wants a bit of the action, not because it's "independent".

And besides, StatsCan--which provides the basis for riding draws, after all--includes these so-called "independent" municipalities within geographic counties.  That's the commonly accepted standard.

And ditto Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Census_divisions_of_Ontario

Otherwise, it'd look like the Virginia map.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_counties_in_Virginia