Canadian federal polling division files

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I love this thread. Keep 'em coming! I particularly like the compilation ones; it's fascinating to see the side-by-side comparisons between polling divisions in adjacent ridings.

Agreed! It's great to see the voting trends and the flows from one riding to the next.

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Riding boundaries really seem to mean a lot.

A local Member's personal vote, perhaps?

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Why is that stretch along the east coast (North from Nanaimo) so Conservative?
Also, wow at Nanaimo itself. Does it just naturally fall into a northside and a southside, or is there a lot of personal vote for incumbents involved in creating that impression?

I was looking at Nanaimo and wondering that myself - although I was wondering if it was a bit of a gerrymander, given that the riding that the northern half falls in seems to be predominantly Conservative, but with some strong NDP polls, whereas the riding in the southern half of the city seems to be a pretty strong NDP riding throughout - so I was wondering if the Tory end of the city had been deliberately put in a possibly marginal Tory riding to bolster the vote, whereas the NDP end had been left in a strong NDP riding?

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It's not as if splitting the town can be avoided, except maybe by drawing a district tightly around it and having another connecting coastal areas north and south of it, nominally connected through the comparatively empty west coast - now that would be a gerrymander (though it wouldn't look it).

Yeah - that's what I thought would be the (perhaps more natural) riding - the town and its surrounds? Probably more of a community of interest around the one town, rather than splitting it? Anyway, it may not be a problem, as you said, it might be more the personal vote of a popular incumbent, or it may be, as Earl suggested in a previous thread, strategic voting.

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This stuff is just awesome! It would be great if we could get some sort of dedicated website for it. I've got some reasonable maps for the Victorian state elections over here if you wanted to give it a more international flavour.

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Hey Dean, checked out your maps on Facebook there that you linked to - they looked fantastic! Welcome to the Forum!

To post an image from an external site, you put "[img ]" at the start (minus the space), followed by the link, followed by "[/img ]" (again, minus the space).

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It's also possible that since it's such safe Tory, left voters are more willing to vote Greens (at least in Banff) because they don't see it as wasting their vote. They'd probably unite behind the NDP or the Liberals if either party had a shot at the seat.

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Hey, The506 - just a quick query... sometimes there's a riding/city/region done already and I *know* it's already been done, and I want to go look for it (such as now, when I'm trying to find Vancouver...). Previously this wasn't much of an issue - there weren't many pages to look through, but now we're sitting at thirty-five pages of posts, it gets a bit "gluggy" trying to wade through them all. Since it's your thread, I was wondering if you'd mind editing your first post to include a list of ridings/cities/regions and the link to them? It's probably a bit of an effort, so if not, that's okay. In fact, I might try to start on it and put it at this end, so you can cut and paste it at the start to make it easier.

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An interesting map for Alberta might be one in which from each Riding, you deduct each party's average vote across Alberta, and then chart the results accordingly.

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I don't understand what is going on here

I looked at it for a while, too, but I think Blue is a poll in which the Bloc received at least one vote and Red is a poll in which the Bloc received no votes whatsoever.

An interesting map for Alberta might be one in which from each Riding, you deduct each party's average vote across Alberta, and then chart the results accordingly.

This sounds good for any areas really. Above and below the norm, with the party most above or below getting the colour

example:

province wide
CPC - 40%
Lib - 35%
NDP - 20%
Grn - 5%

Riding One
CPC - 38% (down two)
Lib - 34% (down one)
NDP - 21% (up one)
Grn - 7% (up two)
This riding would be coloured in Green

CPC - 35%
Lib - 36%
NDP - 25%
Grn - 4%
And Orange here etc

Yep - exactly what I mean. Ridings will basically go to whichever party most outperformed relative to the average you want to compare them to (Provincial or National - for Alberta, provincial is obviously the better suggestion, since the tories outperformed in most ridings relative to their national average). I actually completed this for the last Alberta Provincial election. My figures ended up with the following numbers in the Legislature:

PC: 29
Alberta Libs: 27
NDP: 9
WAP: 12
Green: 3
Indies: 3

So basically, if the Libs, NDP and Greens were willing to work together (or at least support the Libs in confidence votes), and likewise the PC and WAP were willing to work together (or at least support the PC, etc, etc), the three indies would hold the balance of power.

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I'd heard Peter Kent is Jewish, and that was from someone on his campaign team.

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Yeah, I was wrong, he's not Jewish. My friend was responsible for running the campaign to convince Jewish voters to support him, though.

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Kingston and the Islands:

Whereabouts is the prison?

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Oxford:

This guy is one of my favourite MPs!


In the Chatham and Kent map, which is Lambton-Kent-Middlesex? He's another of my favourites.

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Figured the thread should probably actually be bumped, in light of the present election campaign.