2011 Canadian Provincial Elections - Wrap-up phase.

[Smid]

I've put together the results of the 2007 provincial election:



As always, bigger version in the gallery.

[Smid]

Remember they traded a locally popular Liberal for a locally popular Conservative.

I don't have any deep insight, but I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that the Tory candidate during the by-election (who subsequently held the seat in the GE and is the current MP) was a high-profile, strong candidate. It may be a case of when the riding jumps Tory, it may move in a big way, but until then, it may resist a swing.

[Smid]

There's nothing that's pouncing out at me as being particularly controversial.

I think I rate the NDP's chances in London - Fanshawe as being marginally better, not so much a tossup. The reason I say this is because I think strategic voting may support the Liberals in seats won by the Tories federally by a slim margin - seats like London North Centre or the Kitchener seats, however in seats which have demonstrated the potential to go NDP, I think voters will be less likely to vote strategically for the Liberals.

I probably am a little more optimistic for the Tories in Don Valley West, mainly from looking at those poll-by-poll maps, where a fairly significant portion of electorate voted for the Tories. Of course, it's a different election for a different level of government, with different leaders and different sets of baggage attached to different party machines, so I could be way off base (and being much closer to the action, you probably have a better idea about all of that).

I still think you're under-rating the NDP chances in Bramalea - Gore - Malton (I know that you tend to err on the side of pessimism with the NDP generally and in most elections, so I am not trying to nit-pick on this). My thought is that while things are again different leaders with different strengths, I am sure the work that the candidate did during the federal election may yet pay dividends. He has had his name out there for, well, must be at least since the start of the year, he has built up his networks within the community, and furthermore, with the federal Liberals finishing third, strategic voting may actually benefit the NDP.

I know I've mentioned strategic voting a couple of times now, and I know that it isn't as big an influence as many seem to assume, so I hope I'm not over-stressing that point, but in a very close result, it could potentially make a difference.

I'll have a closer look at your maps and tables in a little bit, those were just the seats that I've been thinking about recently, so they were the ones I looked at first.

[Smid]

On the table at the bottom I think you switched "including toss ups" and "excluding toss ups".

I initially thought that, but I think it means including or excluding toss-ups as a separate category.

[Smid]

The NDP is an additional threat in 4:
Conception Bay
St. John's North
St. John's South
and Virginia Waters, the Premier's own riding

By Conception Bay, do you mean Conception Bay East - Bell Island, Conception Bay South, or both? I assume not both, since that would be five seats, rather than four.

[Smid]

Conception Bay East - Bell Island:
Tory: 3,991 (71.79%)
Liberal: 999 (17.97%)
NDP: 569 (10.24%)

Conception Bay South:
Tory: 4,670 (79.38%)
Liberal: 953 (16.20%)
NDP: 260 (4.42%)

[Smid]

Not directly related, but Alison Redford won and is the new Premier-designate of Alberta.

Leading to an exodus of members to Wild Rose... Last week or the week before, Wild Rose received 300 membership applications in a single week.

[Smid]

I read an article last week about how all three candidates were from the moderate wing of the party. I think if she was from any province where the Liberal Party was competitive, she would not have joined the PC Party, although she's run for (and lost) federal endorsement, so I guess she thinks she could fit within Harper's caucus.

EDIT: Here's the article I read last week

[Smid]

For reference, here is the election result for PEI 2007:



It's in the gallery.

Great work on the Alberta leadership maps, Earl!

[Smid]

Great work on the Alberta leadership maps, Earl!

Those aren't mine!

Oh, sorry, I'd looked at them and thought they were pretty good and were yours. I should have realised you'd have also uploaded onto your site.

[Smid]

All polls in Souris-Elmira now reporting.

Also Belfast-Murray River... won with an 8 vote margin (unofficial results).

[Smid]

I know I put up the 2007 map last night, but I'm putting it again here for the sake of comparison.

IMPORTANT EDIT: I got ridings 5 and 7 around the wrong way. Edited to fix that.

Both maps use the same colour scale:

2011


2007

[Smid]

The 2011 map has the wrong riding

Cheers mate, fixed.

[Smid]

Some Swing Maps:

Liberal


PC


NDP


Greens


Island Party
Note - since the party did not field candidates last election, this map can double as a party-strength map. Strongest result was in Montague-Kilmuir, at 8.31% - this seat and the neighbouring Belfast-Murray River (Island Party polled 4.01%) were both pickups by the Liberals.


Independents
Note - in no seat did an independent stand in both elections. Helps explain the big swings in Morell-Mermaid (the independent last election polled 18.8%)

[Smid]

And finally Party Strength Maps:

Liberal


PC


NDP


Greens

[Smid]

Smid, you do one for the Island Party?

Great work on those poll maps! I'd started work ages back on some, but decided getting province-wide riding maps for the other provinces was a higher priority (presently working on Quebec), so I didn't finish them. That's fantastic work, though!

The Island Party's strength map is the same as its swing map (previous page) because it didn't run candidates last election.

[Smid]

Anybody know how this would have been coloured in the most recent federal election just for comparison.

The 506 has his excellent website

It doesn't show poll-by-poll for the whole island, I don't think, but you can look at it on a riding-by-riding basis (as in, look at a poll-by-poll map for each of the four ridings).

[Smid]

For tomorrow, here's the Manitoba Key Map I prepared, with each riding numbered and referenced. Unfortunately, due to the redistribution, I don't have a previous election results map.



There's obviously a bigger version in the gallery (along with a blank one with a colour key ready to use - both are in the "Blank Maps" section, not "Election Results - International").

[Smid]

I'm enjoying the map on the Elections Manitoba website. River East the Liberals are back ahead again - I'm sure there will be the potential for large-ish changes depending on which polls report in until a majority of them have been counted, then it should settle down a bit.

[Smid]

I'm surprised about Dawson Trail - it looked very Tory on paper, the NDP incumbent left the seat... I expected it to almost certainly be Tory but it's not even close.

[Smid]

High turnout (>75%) in River Heights... I guess the expected tight margin played a role in that.

[Smid]

Still waiting one final three polls from Flin Flon to report back, so that ridings may change shades slightly... I'll update the map once the results for that poll is in.

As always, larger versions in the Gallery.

2011 Manitoba Provincial Election Results



2011 Manitoba Provincial Election - Vote received by the NDP
Initially I had the lowest shade representing >10%, however the Steinbach result meant that I had to adjust it. With the exception of Steinbach, all ridings in the palest shade are >10%.




2011 Manitoba Provincial Election - Vote received by the PC Party
With the exception of the palest shade, the scale matches the NDP map




2011 Manitoba Provincial Election - Vote received by the Liberal Party




2011 Manitoba Provincial Election - Vote received by the Greens

[Smid]

Fell across this fabulous website: http://manitobaelection.ca/historic-maps

Excellent website! Should probably be added to the links thread (as should Earl's website, I think).

[Smid]

2011 Manitoba Provincial Election - Turnout
Includes all valid votes, and also rejected and declined ballots (not that there are many of those).




2011 Manitoba Provincial Election - Total Votes Received

[Smid]

What's very telling is that, for the most part, it's higher in seats where there was (at least the perception of) a competitive race.

That was the biggest thing I got out of it - I noted yesterday about River Heights having >75% turnout (as it turns out, heh heh, it's the highest turnout in the province). Brandon West vs Brandon East also appears to support this hypothesis.

Interestingly low in the conservative south, I thought higher turnouts there accounted for their higher share of the vote, but I guess it's just as bad there as it is in the north.

I guess one advantage of FPTP is it evens out the non voters.

Marginally (but only marginally) higher in the south - the real difference is that the Northern ridings can have fewer voters, so the combination of fewer voters and low turnout has a bit of an impact (not a heck of a lot, though - Flin Flon has the fewest voters, about 4,000 fewer than average). There is also lower turnout in those very safe NDP electorates in the inner-North of Winnipeg. I think the UK has a similar issue, where some of the very safe Labour seats have lower turnout than similarly safe Conservative seats? Al can probably correct me there. Over here, informal vote tends to be higher in some of the safe Labor seats, although some of that is accidental (there is a correlation between non-English speaking first language and informal voting, there is also a correlation between low levels of education and informal voting, but I haven't seen any study to say whether that informal voting is accidental or deliberate but perhaps people with lower levels of education are more likely to feel disengaged from the system and more likely to deliberately cast an informal "a pox on all your houses" vote, oh, also a correlation between a higher number of candidates and informal votes, but that's clearly accidental informal votes).

The reason I'm rambling on about informals here is because under our compulsory vote system, while there is a small degree of difference in turnout between electorates, it's tiny compared to the turnout figures here, and the people who may refuse to vote in a non-compulsory system are likely to be people who feel disengaged, or where they feel their vote is insignificant, and I think that this compares well to people who deliberately cast an informal ballot in a compulsory vote system. There have been some studies relating to accidental vs deliberate informal votes (eg at the 2006 Victorian State Election, about half were accidental and half deliberate, however at the 2010 Victorian State Election, the number of accidental informal ballots fell dramatically, while the number of deliberate informal ballots rose slightly, and so as a percentage, rose very dramatically, prompting the VEC to conclude that its voter education program had been successful). Obviously some of the remote ridings may have issues relating to difficulty in voting, but by and large, I think the comparison is acceptable.