Canadian federal polling division files

[Linus Van Pelt]

Thanks, I like where this thread is going a lot. I'm going to be away for a while, but in August I'll maybe try my hand at all this fancy GIS software (if you haven't got all 308 up here by then ).

If you've been around Edmonton at all, Strathcona is unsurprising - the area around the university feels like your typical inner city fashionable/artsy neighbourhood, and residential neighbourhoods elsewhere feel like generic Alberta suburbia. Not at all like other western NDP-Tory swing seats.

Kingsway is less clear to me, aside from the west end of the riding which is wealthy and more like the Quadra riding. I sort of assume that when it comes to East Vancouver NDP=white people, but this is mostly based on stereotype so maybe things are more complicated.

[Linus Van Pelt]

Thanks, Shilly, this is great. Of course the folks who are actually taking the time to make these should get to decide how much and what to do, but if we're taking requests, I'd be interested in Bruce-Grey-Owen-Sound, and well as any of the urban/rural ridings in SK, which would show us what the NDP situation actually is these days in Regina and Saskatoon. These may be a bit of a pain in the neck to display since they have in-town small polls with large rural ones. Due to my home area I'd also be kind of interested in Parkdale-High Park, Davenport and Trinity-Spadina.

(Also, Earl, not to get into a silly argument over an easy misunderstanding , but I know there are a lot of Chinese in Vancouver East riding - what I meant was, I think that within the east side of the city in general white people are more NDP with Chinese not so much. But as I say, the real story may be more complicated when you actually look at the neighbourhoods, for all I know).

[Linus Van Pelt]

Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound 2008


No coastlines, unfortunately.

Wow - Nayaashiinigmiing/Saugeen 29 voted Green! (Assuming the northernmost green one is Cape Croker, it's a little hard to tell with no shore). I would have expected islands of deep red there, but obviously the Chippewas got the memo about strategic voting.

[Linus Van Pelt]

Why is Bowen Island so liberal? Makes little sense from what the wiki has to say about how it is now - you can guess from the article that it is latte liberal, but are left wondering why.

Probably the same reason the Gulf Islands area.

Which are what, Conservatives don't use ferries to commute?

Neither the Gulf Islands nor Bowen Island is really a commuter area, so much as generally hippieish and upper-middle-class environmental. (I don't necessarily mean literally that people don't commute to Vancouver from Bowen, but the ferry's a pain in the neck so you really have to want the lifestyle to move there). Both are Liberal pretty much only because they're in ridings where that's how you beat the Conservatives.

Re eastern Vancouver Island, it's interesting that if you look at the last census the whole strip from Victoria up to Comox is pretty much the only area of the country with very high growth that is not in the suburbs of somewhere. The stereotype is that there are a lot of Albertans moving in, though I have no hard data on this (I don't even know if the census measures this).

Also no data here, but I would imagine there's a serious ethnic component to the polarization in Newton-North Delta.

[Linus Van Pelt]

That northern Brampton riding seems to have an odd population distribution... what's that about (I don't know anything about the area).

The unpopulated area in the south of the riding is Pearson International Airport (i.e. the main Toronto airport). Malton is the separate town on the non-Brampton side of the airport; it now has a large South Asian population.

I'm trying to figure out QuantumGIS, though there may be no point with others able to make maps so quickly and so well. I can look at a whole poll-by-poll map of the whole country, but no poll numbers or riding boundaries. Any tips?

[Linus Van Pelt]

Two biggies in Toronto

Nice work. The Jewish/Italian distinction in Eglinton-Lawrence is clear, but what's interesting is the well-off WASPy Liberal pocket in the east-central part of the riding.

As someone (sorry, it was way down in the thread somewhere) mentioned before, the Tories are really disadvantaged by this map. Eglinton-Lawrence basically makes sense by non-political criteria of urban geography, but Don Valley West is quite weird - the multi-ethnic tower areas in the southeast really have little to do with North Toronto, and are separated by an unpopulated industrial stretch.

[Linus Van Pelt]

I guess Jews live in apartments, mostly.

Not really, but old people do.

Indeed, someone who knows the polling district system better than I do can correct me on this, but my understanding was that your typical high-rise tower doesn't get its own 400-series poll (how else could there be regular block polls in some areas of downtown Toronto, for instance), but only those where there's a specific reason to have people vote in their buildings, such as old folks' homes where people aren't mobile. (But as I say, not sure about this).

[Linus Van Pelt]

Three (or perhaps rather four, two of them quite close to each other?) urban areas, each of them with an east-west split. Quite an interesting map.

EDIT: Seems that Thorold merges pretty seamlessly into St Catherines, and the NDP area at the far north of the map is in central St Catherines someplace. I suppose we need a combined Welland - St Catherines map now.

Yeah, I've always found it surprising how weak the NDP is in St. Catharines, considering its significant auto worker presence, and seeing the orange St. Catharines polls in Welland whets my curiosity further. It makes you think the NDP could do a lot better in St. Cats if they got organized.

[Linus Van Pelt]

All right, my first effort (sorry about the excess of white space around): Egmont, the first Tory win in PEI for a while. The blow-up on the right is Summerside.



I only made a colour scheme up to 70+, but the one Liberal 70+ poll is actually 90+, that little roundish one in the northeast part of the rural part enclosed by two Liberal 50+ polls. It's a Micmac reserve. Also there was one "void" poll at the south end of Summerside.

[Linus Van Pelt]

I've been working on a Hamilton map - but does anyone know how to tell the numbers of polls that have been split? When, say, 156 has been split into 156 and 156-1, the GIS "Identify" function just gives both of them as "156".

If I can't figure this out I'll just guess - it's only a small handful of polls, mainly at the south end of Hamilton Mountain, and you can kind of see what order the polls are numbered in. Plus the split poll often votes the same way as the old poll.

[Linus Van Pelt]

The second number is written in the field ''PD_NBR_SFX''.

Great, thanks very much. Got it now.

[Linus Van Pelt]

Hamilton. All grey ties are Conservative/NDP except that sort of fat "L" shaped one in Ancaster-Dundas-whatchamacallit, which is Liberal/NDP. Also, the way I drew the rectangle accidentally drew in a tiny sliver of Burlington at the north end, but I didn't bother downloading a whole other riding just for that, so it's just white.

edit: something's not working, though I uploaded it to the gallery. Stand by. Fixed - larger version in the gallery.

[Linus Van Pelt]

Stoney Creek votes Liberal, I see?

I guess the Liberals probably won it, though it's hard to say, since all three parties won a fair number of polls.

Note that the squiggly line that goes down to the corner-like bottom of the riding is an expressway within Hamilton proper, while if you go a little east of there, the Hamilton-Stoney Creek border is the vertical line between the first collection of very Liberal polls and some more blue and orange polls to the east - i.e. the line that goes southward to the suburban part of Niagara West-Glanbrook. Though at the top the border hooks eastward a bit too, so the few NDP polls immediately to the right of the sole Liberal poll on the harbour are also in Hamilton proper.

(This is all pre-amalgamation talk. Now various rural areas are even within the City of Hamilton).

[Linus Van Pelt]

Hello. I'm wondering how you guys made those maps? I'm a map maker myself and if someone can teach me how to do this I can continue with the project for everyone to enjoy.

See the first few posts of this thread of instructions.

To be a little more specific, what I've done is download the poll-by-poll results from Elections Canada in .csv format, then open these files in Excel, and then get the winning percentage for each poll immediately by a code, =(MAX(squares with the total for each candidate))/(total ballots - rejected ballots). The actual mapmaking I've been doing more manually - I zoom into the riding I want in QuantumGIS, take a picture of the screen, and then fill in the polls individually in Paintbrush (the open-source knockoff of Paint for Mac), using a colour palette I made, keeping the GIS file open while doing this so I can identify the poll numbers using the Identify function. I think this is basically what others are doing except for the506 who seems to have been able to do the colouring by some code as well.

I've been a bit busy for such procrastinatory projects recently, but next Wednesday I have a long trip on Amtrak, so I'm going to have a go at the Kitchener/Waterloo/Cambridge region if I can get a seat with an electrical outlet.

[Linus Van Pelt]

For those who may have ever lived in Toronto, do look at the riding of Toronto Centre where you will see a few green-coloured polls (including Toronto Island). These were polls won by Independent candidate John Sewell. He was considered a radical, anti-development alterman who was also mayor for one term. In 1999, he was a strong third and aside from the island, ran well in ultra wealthy Rosedale.

Ah yes, John Sewell. He was considered on the left during his career when the developers he opposed were corporate, but then he made a comeback in the last municipal election to oppose an NDP councillor because Sewell opposed the conversion of an old-style in-traffic streetcar line to a dedicated track, on the grounds that it would "divide the street". He also appears to have won a few polls in Yorkville here if I'm not mistaken (just west of Rosedale, west of Yonge St).

[Linus Van Pelt]

Waterloo/Kitchener/Cambridge, 2008. Somehow the Liberals managed to win themselves zero of these seats. A few notes and comments at the bottom. Larger version in the gallery.



1. My picture of the screen cut off the very top of Kitchener-Waterloo, but there are no polls missing - that top one just extends to the corner. So Kitchener-Conestoga is the riding both in the western end of the map and immediately NE of the urban region.
2. Similarly I got in a tiny bit of Guelph at the top right which I didn't bother to download and is just white; the whole city's in an earlier post in the thread.
3. Grey ties are Lib-Con except one Con-NDP adjacent to the NDP poll in SE Kitchener Centre and one Lib-NDP (sort of oval with two branches in west-central Kitchener Centre).
4. I made my colour scheme only down to 30, but there are a very few polls won with about 29 in the strip of central Kitchener that straddles the riding boundary; I didn't bother getting a new colour for these.
4. The Kitchener/Waterloo city limit is a couple of polls NW of and roughly parallel to the riding border between K. Centre and K.-W.

The City of Waterloo is the most white-collar part of the area, with a significant IT industry (RIM which makes the Blackberry smartphone is headquartered here), but also has the region's two universities and therefore a large student population. The U. Waterloo campus is in the geographically large Liberal polls in the NW, and I think the strong Liberal area to its south is quite studenty. Kitchener is more industrial, but has a reputation for small specialized manufacturers rather than the big unionized employers that dominate Hamilton or Windsor, and it doesn't really have a history of labour politics. It also has a significant German heritage. Cambridge is the merger of the city of Galt (in the SE) with the smaller towns of Preston and Hespeler (just north of Galt) and is still basically the city and two towns in terms of urban form and self-identification. It is home to a large non-union Toyota plant.

[Linus Van Pelt]

Niagara Falls:

The tie in NW Niagara Falls (city proper) is Con/Lib, while the one at the south end of the city and the middle poll of that three-poll village on Lake Erie are Con/NDP.

[Linus Van Pelt]

With these bigger ones we should co-ordinate so two people don't spend time on the same map. I can volunteer for London, unless someone's started it already.

Another interesting one would be B.C. Southern Interior.

[Linus Van Pelt]

London:


Ties are Lib/Con except the fat "L" almost at the very east end of London West which is Con/NDP.

[Linus Van Pelt]

I started working on the London North Centre by-election map a while ago, but never finished it. Looks like a lot of the Green support went to the Liberals. Nice to see the NDP do so well in LNC

The southeast of the riding is way out of whack with the rest of it - in many polls in the more red and blue areas the NDP is way back with the Greens competing for 3rd and 4th. It seems that Adelaide (the first long vertical street apparent on the map west of the North Centre/Fanshawe boundary) may be a more natural demographic divide than Highbury (the actual boundary).

The combination of working-class east, academic/middle-class-liberal north, and more wealthy conservative west is sort of oddly reminiscent of the original London. (Obviously a huge simplification in the case of the larger one).

[Linus Van Pelt]

The combination of working-class east, academic/middle-class-liberal north, and more wealthy conservative west is sort of oddly reminiscent of the original London. (Obviously a huge simplification in the case of the larger one).

Yes, I've noticed that before. Quite amusing really.

Southwestern Ontario was laid out to look like England by its original colonial administration. For it to work you have to flip it almost on its side so the Michigan border is the "south" and towards Toronto is the "north", with Lakes Erie and Ontario as the "east". Look at where London is on this orientation, and consider that it's on the Thames River in Middlesex County, that the next county downriver is Kent, whose main city is Chatham, and that on the other side, up the Thames River is Oxford County. Also observe where Norfolk County is. The Niagara region was originally Lincoln County, while Toronto was originally called York (preserved in the county name which was separated from the city itself in the 1950's). The river that empties into Lake Ontario in Etobicoke, which was then the countryside west ("south" on this orientation) of York is the Humber, and the county just past York is Durham, and then comes Northumberland...

[Linus Van Pelt]

Interesting stuff - how are you getting this info? Just looking through all the poll-by-poll files and adding up the polls?

Tories over 60%

Carleton County and Charlotte County (I believe these have large Evangelical populations, but someone who knows more about them could maybe explain why they are so Conservative)

The Saint John valley has a lot of Baptists. I'm not sure whether you'd call them "Evangelical" - theologically, they are, but they're more traditional in denominational organization.

[Linus Van Pelt]

Also, lets still work on getting the poll by poll done if we can.  If someone could show me how to work this, I might be able to e-mail one.

Some other interesting ones though

416 - by former municipality

Liberals over 50%

Scarborough

Liberals 40-50%

Toronto, East York, York, Etobicoke, North York

The interesting part here is more who came in second.  In Toronto, York, and East York, the NDP came in second whereas the Tories in North York, Scarborough, and Etobicoke, otherwise the NDP was strongest near the core of the city while the Tories did better away from it.  I also believe Scarborough is the most ethnically diverse of them, I think over 60% are visible minorities so that might explain why the Liberals do so well there.  Nonetheless the margins are nowhere near what the Tories get in Rural Alberta.

Do you have the actual numbers for these?

[Linus Van Pelt]

Awesome work, Trebor!

[Linus Van Pelt]

Just a small one for now - Stratford. Every other poll in Perth-Wellington is Conservative, in many cases by a lot. The city is best known now for its theatre festival and the downtown is artsy and well-touristed, though prior to the postwar period it was a manufacturing and railway centre with a fairly radical labour movement. I don't know the neighbourhoods too well, but the fact that the Liberals were in third in many polls in the southeast suggests that the NDP vote may be still coming more from blue-collar locals than I might have expected.