Federal Election 2011 - A look at the results

[vid]

To get a broader perspective of the 2011 election results, I've mapped them

NATIONAL RESULTS

National-level maps of the 2011 election results.

The first map shows popular vote and seat totals by province, and seat totals by region. The second shows results by riding, and the percentage of the vote the winning MP received.




This map greys out any seats where the MP won with less than 50% of the vote. If we had a run-off voting system, these greyed out ridings would likely have had a run-off vote in mid June.



Lastly, this chart shows popular vote and seat totals in bar graph form, and the probable layout of parliament. (A speaker is not elected until Parliament resumes sitting.)



RESULTS BY PARTY, BY RIDING

These maps show the popular vote for each party, by riding. It allows us to identify where a party does well, and where it does poorly. Note that for the Green Party, the scale has been cut in half to improve legibility.







LIBERAL/NDP MERGER?

Suppose that in 2009, the Liberals and NDP merged, perhaps calling the new party the Liberal Democrats. Then assume that everyone who voted for either the Liberals or NDP in the real election, would have voted for this new party.

Under both of these assumptions, you can figure out what the vote would have looked like in this alternate reality scenario.

In reality, at least 25% of the Liberal vote would likely go to the Conservative Party. It is also possible that members of the NDP further to the left on the political scale would split off into another party. Had the Liberals and NDP merged two years ago, the election results would likely have been much closer.

I don't endorse the merger of the Liberals and NDP; this is simply an experiment to see what such a result might look like.

The first map shows popular vote and seat totals by province, and seat totals by region. The second shows results by riding, and the percentage of the vote the winning MP received.




This map greys out any seats where the MP won with less than 50% of the vote. If we had a run-off voting system, these greyed out ridings would likely have had a run-off vote in mid June. In most cases, a candidate winning without a majority of the vote is the result of a vote split due to the Green Party or Bloc Québécois.



This map shows popular vote for the Liberal Democrats, based on the previously mentioned assumptions about who would vote for the party. The popular vote for the Conservatives by riding would not have changed, but about 40 Conservative seats, primarily in urban areas, would change hands.



Lastly, this chart shows popular vote and seat totals in bar graph form, and the probable layout of parliament.



Shortly after the agreement between the Liberals, NDP and Bloc Québécois was signed in late 2008, and talk of a merger between the Liberals and NDP began, I made a similar map showing hypothetical results based on the 2006

election. You can view that map here. It would have results in a minority Liberal Democrat government with 154 seats. The Conservatives would form opposition with 111 seats, the Bloc Québécois would be the third party with 41 seats, and there would be two indepedents. The biggest difference between the two is the presence of the Bloc Québécois. The Bloc's four wins in this year's election were the result of vote splitting between the NDP and Liberals.

Discuss.

[Aylmer]

Vid! Wow! Did you make these?

[Bdog]

Vid, I hope somebody's paying you for this...

[SpikePhanta]

Very interesting map, thanks for sharing and you did a swell job.

[Andy6]

Vid, this is very good work. I hadn't seen the stat before that only two Liberals, both in Newfoundland, hit the 50% mark. Incredible.

In Montmagny-L'Islet-Kamouraska-Rivière du Loup, the NDP candidate is now ahead of the Conservative incumbent by 5 votes, giving them one more in Qc -- pending a recount.

[digitboy]

Hello Vid,

wow. Are these maps all your personnal creation? You did a great work. You should be paid for them as somebody suggested. I'm pretty sure that we will find them on other sites and maybe newspapers very soon...watch yourself and be sure that everybody respect your copyrights.

Thanks for sharing.

[jmt18325]

Just a correction Vid, I think the result is now 166 Conservative and 103 NDP. A seat in Quebec, last I heard, switched hands.

[BretttheRiderFan]

wow, incredible map vid!

I hate the thought of an NDP-Liberal merger though, we don't need a two pary system in this country

[kool maudit]

you should sell these to the media.

[Rumors]

Awesome job Vid.

[vid]

Originally Posted by Aylmer

Vid! Wow! Did you make these?

Yes.

Originally Posted by Bdog

Vid, I hope somebody's paying you for this...

It's a hobby. Not only did no one pay me but since I used Creative Commons maps from Wikipedia, I'm not sure they legally can. I used CBC's Canada Votes results application to compile the data. When I made the LDP map in 2009, I used Wikipedia, and it took a lot longer. All this took only about 10 hours of work on a weekend and I'm quite pleased with the end result. Much more fruitful than my Geofiction maps.

Originally Posted by Andy6

Vid, this is very good work. I hadn't seen the stat before that only two Liberals, both in Newfoundland, hit the 50% mark. Incredible.

There are a lot of interesting quirks about the Liberals in this election. For example, in Saskatchewan, of the 38,981 votes cast for the Liberals province-wide, 15,842 or 40.5%, were cast in the Wascana riding for Ralph Goodale. Someone in the main election thread said that he could have run for any party and won, and it looks like that is true. The Liberals got their lowest popular vote in Saskatchewan; 8.57 versus the 9.26 in Alberta.

Originally Posted by Andy6

In Montmagny-L'Islet-Kamouraska-Rivière du Loup, the NDP candidate is now ahead of the Conservative incumbent by 5 votes, giving them one more in Qc -- pending a recount.

Is there going to be a recount in Nipissing—Temiskaming? That was the closest race in the country as far as I noticed, though I was dealing more with percents than actual votes so I didn't look at them in-depth. Etobicoke Centre, Scarborough—Gildwood and Don Valley West are also very close.

The official numbers aren't released until May 23rd. I'll keep these in mind and update the maps when the results are finalized.

Originally Posted by digitboy

Hello Vid,

wow. Are these maps all your personnal creation? You did a great work. You should be paid for them as somebody suggested. I'm pretty sure that we will find them on other sites and maybe newspapers very soon...watch yourself and be sure that everybody respect your copyrights.

Thanks for sharing.

The maps are based on Creative Commons maps at Wikipedia, a license that doesn't give you copyright over the finished product, and I am not seeking any compensation (though I wouldn't mind a bit of payment for the labour. ); I was simply interested in what these maps would look like, and am sharing because I know I'm not the only one who wanted to see.

If a newspaper does publish them I would ask for a credit and maybe some sort of compensation (like a copy of the paper it is published in so I can show my friends).

These are the two maps I used as a base: Canada_fed_election_2011_results_by_riding.svg and Canada_2011_Federal_Election.svg. I updated the text (it was converted to paths in the Wikipedia version and I replaced it with text, giving me the ability to easily update text or translate the maps; if anyone wants to, provide me with French translations and I will create French versions) and reinserted the BC riding of Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission (which was erroneously left out in the original raster form of the riding map, and then overlooked when the SVG version was created several years later), but otherwise I just changed colours of objects and organized it in a slightly more aesthetic way.

Thanks for all the other comments.

Other interesting things I found while compiling the map:

The Greens came ahead of the NDP in Yukon with 18.91% of the vote, and did well in Calgary where the left wing vote was quite evenly split between the three left-wing parties. Their best showing outside of Saanich—Gulf Islands however was Duffering—Caledon, just outside the GTA, where they came in second place. Like Calgary, the three left wing parties basically tied for second place there and the Greens managed to edge out both by a few hundred votes. In Central Nova, where May ran last time, Green Party support basically evaporated to 3.7%, compared to 32% when May ran there in 2008.

The strongest seats that I can recall were:

St. John's East, represented by the NDP's Jack Harris, with 71.2% of the vote
Acadie—Bathurst, where the NDP's Yvon Godin got 69.66% of the vote

Alberta Conservatives got more than 75% of the vote in Peace River, Westlock—St. Paul, Vegreville—Wainwright, Mcloed, Yellowhead, Red Deer, Edmonton—Spruce Grove, Calgary Southeast, and of course Calgary Southwest. The got over 80% in Witaskiwin, but the largest victory was in Crowfoot, with 83.94% for the Conservatives and the second place NDP at 9.4%.

[thurmas]

Like you said though vid if they did merge roughly a quarter of right leaning liberals would vote tory meaning the combined 49% liberal ndp vote this past election would really be between 37-42% because the rest of the vote would go conservative meaning an even larger conservative victory possibly.the conservative vote total would go from 39% to between 45-50% because of the blue liberals not able to stomach voting for such a left wing party.a good example is the 2000 election results then the combined alliance and pc vote totals were 37% yet when the parties merged and ran as one in 2004 they only got 29% of the vote meaning they only kept 78% of their vote.

[vid]

I think it would be even closer than that, something like 46% for each party nationwide. While the Conservatives would win a few ridings where the combined Liberal/NDP support is nearly equal to their vote, they will still win a lot of ridings in Ontario and the Maritimes and, in this year's election, Québec.

Only about 5% of the Liberal vote seemed to shift to the Conservatives in Northern Ontario's ridings (though in Sault Ste. Marie, the Liberals actually became more popular and the NDP incumbent lost), while in Alberta I figure the blue grits are already voting for the Conservatives.

It will also be interesting to know how this will play out in the next election when seats are redistributed, especially if Alberta, BC and Ontario get those extra seats. That would mean more opportunities to win in the GTA, Vancouver and Alberta.

It will also be interesting to see, should the Liberal party disintegrate further under its interim leader, if any of its right-learning members (if there are any in the house) cross the floor, or join the NDP.

[big T]

Like everyone else said, this is outstanding work. Despite reading a bunch of news reports and articles in the aftermath of the election, I can safely say that your maps have so far given me the best insight into several aspects, e.g. the lib/ndp merger scenario and the majority ridings.

I hope these don't get stolen and republished ithout your knowledge... it certainly beats anything I've seen come out of established media outlets.

[vid]

Yeah, part of the reason I made them is because no one else offered the options to view this kind of data. I'd like someone to make an application that shows results from all 41 elections and lets you manipulate the data to analyze trends. Until then, I have to do all that work myself. It would be something interesting for Elections Canada to provide but I don't see them doing that any time soon.

The Atlas of Canada online has a few electoral results maps from the late 1800s and early 1900s, but they're hard to navigate since they're just scanned in images from old books.

[flar]

In this day and age, with our ultra-corporate bare-bones media, we have to rely on anonymous posters on obscure forums for in-depth analysis. Excellent work, vid.

[Andy6]

I'd say the more likely result is that the NDP will quickly lose credibility due to rookie mistakes and internal battles between the neophyte Quebec majority and the veteran ROC minority. It's a recipe for disaster. Although they've unfortunately lost a lot of their better MPs, the Liberals may be able to claim back quasi-Official Opposition status in English Canada with MPs that are more familiar, more popular with the media, and more reassuring to middle-class voters. They were lucky enough to keep at least one MP in every province but Alberta, so they won't drop out of sight completely anywhere (except Alberta).

It's also possible that the NDP will be successful. Not betting on it at this point, however.

[Andy6]

Originally Posted by flar

In this day and age, with our ultra-corporate bare-bones media, we have to rely on anonymous posters on obscure forums for in-depth analysis. Excellent work, vid.

Actually Maclean's is doing a terrific series on how the campaign went. I don't have the link handy but it's available online.

[habfanman]

Brillian work Vid, bravo!

[The Jabroni]

This is very cool, vid!!

I like how you chose the colour scheme of what could be the Liberal Democrats. Very similar colour scheme of the Liberal Democrats in the UK, if that was what you were going for.

These are by far more comprehensive than some of the other media outlets. I seriously hope you "covered your assets" on this.