The Bilingual Belt

[minionofmidas]

It's Demography, not Politics, but still...
Out of Canada's 308 "ridings" (constituencies), 40 are over 10% French speaking and over 10% English speaking. They form something of a belt from Nova Scotia to Manitoba via Montréal and Ottawa cities.
(Note that the census asks for "mother tongue", prompting many immigrants and children of immigrants to mention the language from back home, even if they speak English these days. This seriously affects the number of over-10%-English speaking seats in Montréal.)

West Nova (In NSc)
Egmont (on Prince Edward Island)
Acadie-Bathurst
Madawaska-Restigouche
Beauséjour
Miramichi
Moncton-Riverview-Dieppe
Tobique-Mactaquac (all of them in NB. The first three are majority French speaking)
Gaspésie - Iles-de-la-Madeleine
Compton - Stanstead
Brôme - Missiqoui (rural Québec to the South of St Lawrence - English seems once to have been more widely spoken here, as viz. place names like Sherbrooke, Drummond, Richmond etc etc)
Outremont, Mount Royal, Notre-Dame-de-la-Grace - Lachine, Westmount - Ville-Marie, La Salle - Emard, Jeanne - Le Ber, St-Laurent - Cartierville, Pierrefonds - Dollard, Lac-St-Louis (all on Montréal Island, which includes a total of 18 ridings - Lac-St-Louis is almost 50% English speaking, but 7 out of these 9 are less than 50% French, and so are two more that are less than 10% English)
Brossard - La Praire
Châtauguay - Saint-Constant
Saint Lambert
Laval - Les Isles (all suburban Montréal)
Vaudreuil - Solanges where the Ottawa and St Lawrence rivers meet
Hull - Aylmer and Pontiac opposite Ottawa in Québec
Ottawa Centre, Ottawa South, Ottawa Vanier, Ottawa Orléans - ie all Ottawa City ridings safe one
Glengarry - Prescott - Russell and
Stormont - Dundas - South Glengarry to the South of Ottawa, to the east of Vaudreuil - Solanges. Glengarry etc is majority French speaking
pretty much all the Northeast Ontario ridings, with French percentages ranging into the forties:
Timmins - James Bay
Nipissing - Timiskaning
Nickel Belt
Algoma - Manitoulin - Kapuskasing
Sudbury
plus Provencher in rural SE Manitoba and St Boniface in Winnipeg.

[minionofmidas]

Jeanne - Le Ber did go to a recount, but that's already finished. Remains Liberal by seventy votes or so.
St Lambert went Bloc by about 10 points, I guess a gain.

[minionofmidas]

Interesting trend... with the exception of Acadie-Bathurst, the Bilingual ridings not in Quebec the Liberals win the Franco vote and lose the Anglo vote, while in Quebec it's the other way round.

Another example of that "minorities vote leftwing" thing we had elsewhere.
Or maybe the Liberals are just seen in Canada as the all-Canadian party.

[minionofmidas]

Interesting trend... with the exception of Acadie-Bathurst, the Bilingual ridings not in Quebec the Liberals win the Franco vote and lose the Anglo vote, while in Quebec it's the other way round.

Another example of that "minorities vote leftwing" thing we had elsewhere.
Or maybe the Liberals are just seen in Canada as the all-Canadian party.

I think a lot of it is for historical reasons... Franco Ontarians got a rough time of it from the Provincial PC's... the "Battle of Hastings" (a provincial by-election in the '30's where the Ontario Tories whipped up a load of anti-catholic/francophone sentiment) is a good example.
Another example would be the treatment the Acadians got from the Anglo-Scots establishment in the Maritimes... which returned ominously in the early '90's with the CoR. And would have this year in Tobique-Mactaquac (where the CPC ran an ex-CoR member) had the Grit incumbent not been a very, very good constituancy MP.
In Eastern Ontario and the Maritimes it clearly is a case of minorities voting leftward... not in Northern Ontario though.

"not in Northern Ontario" as there is a viable more leftwing option there, you mean?

[minionofmidas]

Everything is politics if it affects how you see the world, how you vote, or how you feel.  Anything to woo your vote can fall into the realm of politics, from language and nationality, to a smile and a handshake, to jobs and subsidies.

Yes.