Election results---and what could have been

[gluadys]

Well,we all know the official results now. At least until the recounts come in.

Anyone taking bets on how long before another election is called?

For me, what is most interesting is the difference between the actual first-past-the-post results, and what could have been the results if we had proportional representation in place.

I've just gone through all the provincial results and calculated what a proptional result would be if all ballots had been marked as they were yesterday.

Some very interesting differences, both nationally and provincially. Here is what we might have seen with proportional representation province by province.

BC 13 Conservative, 2 Green, 1 Independent, 10 Liberals, 10 NDP
(actual: 22 Conservative, 0 Green, 1 Independant, 8 Liberals 5 NDP


AB 17 Conservative, 2 Green, 6 Liberal, 3 NDP
(actual 26 Conservative, 0 Green, 2 Liberal, 0 NDP)

SK 6 Conservative, 1 Independant, 4 Liberals, 3 NDP
(actual 13 Conservative, O Independant, 1 Liberal, 0 NDP)

MB 6 Conservative, 5 Liberal, 3 NDP
(actual 7 Conservative, 3 Liberal, 4 NDP) Note the Liberals got more votes in Manitoba than the NDP, but fewer seats.

ON 1 Christian Heritage, 34 Conservative, 5 Green, 47 Liberal, 19 NDP
(actual 0 Christian Heritage, 24 Conservative, 0 Green, 75 Liberal, 7 NDP) Big over-reprsentation of the Liberals here at everyone else's expense.

PQ 37 Bloq Quebecois, 7 Conservative, 2 Green, 25 Liberal, 4 NDP
(actual 54 Bloq Quebcois, 0 Conservative, 0 Green, 21 Liberal, 0 NDP) Although the Bloq got the lion's share of the seats in Quebec, they didn't even get half of the votes.

NB 3 Conservative, 5 Liberal, 2 NDP
(actual 2 Conservative, 7 Liberal, 1 NDP)

NS 3 Conservative, 1 Green, 4 Liberal, 3 NDP
(actual: 3 Conservative, 0 Green, 6 Liberal, 2 NDP)

PEI 2 Conservative, 2 Liberal
(actual 0 Conservative, 4 Liberal)

NL 2 Conservative, 4 Liberal, 1 NDP
(actual 2 Conservative, 4 Liberal, 0 NDP)

The territories are a special case since they elect only one MP each, and you can't divvy up one person proportionally. But the Liberals got a clear majority in Nunavut and close enough to a majority in the Yukon that had a run-off ballot been used, they would have won there aswell. The real toss-up is the NWT where the Liberal and NDP got 39.4 and 39.1 per cent of the vote respectively. To whom would Green and Conservative supporters have given their second choice on a run-off ballot?

So if we guess Liberal in NWT our national results for all parties would be:

Bloq Quebecois 37
Christian Heritage 1
Conservative 93
Green 12
Independant 2
Liberal 115
NDP 48

as compared to the actual results of

Bloq Quebecois 54
Christian Heritage 0
Conservative 99
Green 0
Independant 1
Liberal 135
NDP 19



Under our current system, the Bloq, with just over 11% of the vote overall won 54 seats in Quebec. But the NDP with a higher popular vote (15%) received only 19 seats. Under PR, the NDP would have received 19 seats in Ontario alone.

Under our current system, the Greens got more than half of the votes of the Bloq Quebecois, but no seats compared to the BQ's 54. Under PR they would get 5 seats in Ontario alone and 12 across the country as a whole, with at least one member from 5 different provinces.

Our current result is a cliff-hanger. A Liberal-NDP alliance yields 135 + 19 = 154 seats, exactly half of the House of Commons.

Under PR the Liberals would have fewer seats, but the huge increase in NDP seats would more than compensate: 115 + 48 = 163 seats--enough to form a fairly stable minority government.

If anyone wants to know more about how these figures were calculated, send me a private message.

In the meantime, you can see why I support Fair Vote Canada (www.fairvotecanada.org) and the movement to bring proportional representation to Canada.

 

[klewlis]

Our current result is a cliff-hanger. A Liberal-NDP alliance yields 135 + 19 = 154 seats, exactly half of the House of Commons.

Which of course is not enough to pass anything unless they get votes from one of the other parties.

It's a frustrating result because it's just going to mean a lot of stalemates and an early next election.

Considering that Paul Martin has done exactly NOTHING so far anyway, I imagine it will be a very short stint now until the next election.

 

[AlmostBandwidth]

Proportional representation is indeed an interesting topic for discussion. I am rather amazed at the differences between the number of seats through the representative system and a proportional system. I am going to look at that website gluadys supports. Thanks for posting!

 

[AlmostBandwidth]

The Toronto Star has an article about this topic entitled "Putting a New Face on Voting". Sorry I cannot post a direct link as I am new to the forum

 

[gluadys]

The Toronto Star has an article about this topic entitled "Putting a New Face on Voting". Sorry I cannot post a direct link as I am new to the forum

The Toronto Star article is a little bit prejudiced, because they think this is an NDP issue and they are a Liberal paper.

But what PR is really about is not the results for this party or that, but about treating each voter fairly. A fellow member of Fair Vote Canada has come up with some more interesting (and disturbing) figures.

It took about 30 thousand votes to elect a Conservative MP in Alberta, but it took over 66 thousand votes to elect a Conservative MP in Ontario. So a Conservative vote in Ontario was less than half as effective as a Conservative vote in Alberta.

You can do the same with the Liberal vote of course. In Ontario it only took 30 thousand votes to elect a Liberal, but in Alberta it took 140 thousand---more than 4 times as many.

It took less than 30 thousand votes to elect an NDP member in Manitoba, 75,000 votes to elect an NDP member in New Brunswick or BC and 130,000 votes to elect an NDP member in Ontario.

One thing proportional representation is about is making everyone's vote of equal worth no matter where they live.

 

[PastorJer]

OK...

Just one thing about your election results - the reality is that less than 30% of the people that could have voted did. Your results would be vastly different if everyone that could have voted did actually get out and vote.

As for the government - I would say that they will give Paul Martin and his cronies 8 months to get to the bottom of the sponsorship scandle - at which point if he has stalled or has still not gotten the answers the Bloc, Conservatives and NDP + the other guy will hold Martin to task and make the sponsorship scandel the ISSUE in the next election.

I must admit that I was frustrated by the Conservatives not swinging the Child Porn stick stronger at Martin. The reality was that the liberal government did nothing to protect children in Canada from the abuse of pedophiles. When they could have invoked the not withstanding clause and made "the right to possess and make child porn" granted by the BC Supreme Court illegal.

I think that Martin should have been called to task for that, along with the rest of the liberal government.

Next time I hope that they swing hard and tell the truth without being ashamed. It is what canadians want and what Canadians deserve!

Those are my thoughts!

 

[gluadys]

OK...

Just one thing about your election results - the reality is that less than 30% of the people that could have voted did. Your results would be vastly different if everyone that could have voted did actually get out and vote.

I am not sure if that is true. Usually, those who don't vote split their preferences among parties in much the same way as those who do vote, so while more ballots are cast, the results are not that much different.

What I do know is that if all votes counted equally, more people would be likely to vote. It's easy not to vote if you know in advance which candidate is a shoo-in in your riding or which party is likely to win. And it doesn't matter whether you are for or agin' them.

The person who supports a candidate who regularly wins by several thousand votes can say---well, I don't really need to vote, since X will win anyway. Just as the voter who would prefer another candidate can say "What's the use? X will win anyway."

But if all the votes count equally, and every vote helps to elect someone you really want to see elected, the incentive to vote is stronger.

And the results are vastly different.

 

[Svt4Him]

I think this was the sickest campaign I've seen. I know more about what's wrong with each party and nothing of what each party stands for. What has Paul Martin promised? Well, health care which he cut, and... well...nothing.