The NDP is now nominated in Willowdale, bringing the total number of women candidates to 6 out of 13 (2 each for the Conservatives, NDP and Liberals, none as yet for the Greens).

Elections Canada has also announced the preliminary campaign spending limits for the by-elections, which have now been added to the Pundits' Guide profile for each riding.

For further information:

• by-election summary
• nomination details
• riding profiles for Toronto Centre, Willowdale, Desnethé – Missinippi – Churchill River, Vancouver Quadra, including links to their pages at Elections Canada, Statistics Canada, Wikipedia, the Library of Parliament, the CBC.ca 2004 and 2006 Election profiles and the CTV.ca 2006 Election profile (french versions of the profiles link to available french-language resources)

Labels: Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill, March 17 2008 By-elections, Toronto Centre, Vancouver Quadra, Willowdale

Yesterday the Prime Minister called by-elections in four vacant seats for March 17, 2008. And last week former Liberal cabinet minister Lucienne Robillard announced her resignation from the Montréal seat of Westmount-Ville Marie effective January 25, 2008, making that riding a likely addition to the writ in a month's time.

Meantime, the Liberal party has announced the decision of its green-light committee regarding incumbent M.P. Blair Wilson's ineligibility to carry the party banner in the coastal B.C. riding of
West Vancouver – Sunshine Coast – Sea to Sky Country in the forthcoming general election.

Thus his nomination has been deleted, and the nominees in the 4 by-election ridings have also been removed from the general election counts and re-classified as nominations for the by-elections.

To date, all parties are nominated in Vancouver Quadra and Toronto Centre, all but the NDP are nominated in Willowdale, and none but the Conservatives in Desnethé – Missinippi – Churchill River.

So far 5 of the 12 nominated candidates are women (2 Liberals, 2 Conservatives, 1 New Democrat, 0 Greens). The remaining nomination races promise to be quite newsworthy.

Labels: Conservatives, Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill, Greens, Liberals, March 17 2008 By-elections, NDP, Toronto Centre, Vancouver Quadra, Westmount-Ville Marie, Willowdale

The recent technical problems seem to have been solved for now. An unexpected upgrade of the database engine and a problematic migration of the guide's database by her web host unfortunately put this site out of commission during one of the busier political periods over the last month.

No matter. The guide's objective is to learn about these new technologies, and such events certainly offer her lots and lots of educational opportunities.

Things seem to have stabilized now. Don't give up on the site yet.

Some more updates from various sources (Elections Canada, party web-sites, etc.).

	1	1	1	36	28	14	14	106	75	10	11	4	7	308
Party	YT	NT	NU	BC	AB	SK	MB	ON	QC	NB	NS	PE	NL	Total	Pct	Wom	Pct
BQ									57					57	19%	18	31.6%
Cons	1			33	26	12	11	92	45	7	7	1	4	239	78%	36	15.1%
Grn				11	9		2	51	14	3	7			97	31%	25	25.8%
Lib	1		1	29	18	6	9	90	32	9	9	4	4	212	69%	74	34.9%
NDP		1		28	17	10	6	55	29	4	8	1	3	162	53%	61	37.7%
Rest				2	6			7	2		1			18		3

It's interesting to note that the Liberals seem to be on track to meet their goal of 33% female candidates so far, exceeded only by the NDP. Shortly I will attempt an analysis of how likely the parties are to nominate women in seats vacated by their own incumbents, seats they lost last time, and seats in which they came second last time ... since these are the seats they are more likely to win and where the nominations are most competitive.

Party	Seats	2nds	Less	Plus	Current Standings		Nom Inc	%	Nom 2nds	%	Nom Oth	%		TOT Nom	%
BQ	51	20	-4	2	49		49	96%	8	40%				57	19%
Cons	123	117	-2	3	125		119	96%	81	69%	39	58%		239	78%
Grn		1							1	100%	96	31%		97	31%
Lib	103	116	-9	2	96		99	96%	76	66%	37	42%		212	69%
NDP	29	53		1	30		28	97%	40	75%	94	42%		162	53%
Ind	1			3	4		1
VAC				4	4

Labels: 40th General Election Nominations, Bloc Québécois, Conservatives, Greens, Liberals, NDP, Women Candidates

I am aware that the "Party Pundit Queries" (Browse Parties page) are very slow today. Am working on the problem, and hope to rectify soon. Thanks for your patience.

UPDATE: This problem has now been remedied. [Tech-talk alert:] MySQL 5.0.x views do not support inline views or pseudo-columns, don't use table indexes very well, and hang the database altogether when joined to other views and then subjected to a group by clause. If you have an Oracle background and are a fan of Tom Kyte's philosophy ("if you can, do it in the database"), chances are you will be underwhelmed with the "new features" of MySQL 5.0 until they get some of those kinks out. Looks like I'm going to have to do a bit more work on the site's plumbing before I start adding more queries and data.

The Conservatives are apparently not the only party taking advantage of a holiday lull in election fever to review their slate of candidates. This update includes those recent announcements, along with data I've started to receive from some of the political parties.

	1	1	1	36	28	14	14	106	75	10	11	4	7	308
Party	YT	NT	NU	BC	AB	SK	MB	ON	QC	NB	NS	PE	NL	Total	Pct	Wom	Pct
BQ									57					57	19%	18	31.6%
Cons	1			33	26	12	11	92	43	7	7	1	4	237	77%	36	15.2%
Grn				11	9		2	50	13	3	7			95	31%	25	26.3%
Lib	1		1	29	18	6	9	89	32	9	9	4	4	211	69%	74	35.1%
NDP		1		28	17	10	6	55	29	4	8	1	3	162	53%	61	37.7%
Rest				2	6			7	2		1			18		3

The NDP has announced that Micheline Anne Montreuil will no longer represent the party in the riding of Québec city, and that 2006 candidate Francis Chartrand cannot run again in the Laurentides-Mirabel riding of Rivière-des-Mille-Îles.

My previous nominations update had also included the deletion of Maka Kotto as the Bloc Québecois candidate in Saint-Lambert, although I failed to highlight that fact in the blog post. Kotto will run for the PQ in the next Québec election in the Montréal riding of Bourget.

Party	Seats	2nds	Less	Plus	Current Standings		Nom Inc	%	Nom 2nds	%	Nom Oth	%		TOT Nom	%
BQ	51	20	-4	2	49		49	96%	8	40%				57	19%
Cons	123	117	-2	3	125		119	96%	80	68%	38	56%		237	77%
Grn		1							1	100%	94	31%		95	31%
Lib	103	116	-9	2	96		98	95%	76	66%	37	42%		211	69%
NDP	29	53		1	30		28	97%	40	75%	94	42%		162	53%
Ind	1			3	4		1
VAC				4	4

Labels: 40th General Election Nominations, Bloc Québécois, Conservatives, Greens, Liberals, NDP

Like most political junkies, I've spent most of the past month following the twists and turns leading up to and taking place at the hearings at the Commons Ethics Committee. Unlike other junkies however, I've been plugging away on the plumbing of my web database (tech-speak: normalizing the MySQL schema) at the same time, so that I could write to the political parties requesting more accurate nominations data, and then be able to update the web-site in relatively short order.

To see the nomination details for each party, click on the links in the table below. Each individual nomination is sourced with a hyperlink, either from Elections Canada (first choice), the party web-sites (second choice), Wikipedia and/or an online news source. As documented in earlier posts however, no public source is completely accurate and none is perfectly complete. Wikipedia in particular seems to be listing probable candidates rather than actual nominations, in part explaining the very high percent of incumbent seats each party is now apparently nominated in.

As I hear back from each of the parties with their confirmed nomination data, the listed nominations will be added to or deleted, and/or their sources updated.

	1	1	1	36	28	14	14	106	75	10	11	4	7	308
Party	YT	NT	NU	BC	AB	SK	MB	ON	QC	NB	NS	PE	NL	Total	Pct	Wom	Pct
BQ									57					57	19%	18	31.6%
Cons	1			33	26	12	11	92	43	7	7	1	4	237	77%	36	15.2%
Grn				11	9		2	50	13	3	7			95	31%	25	26.3%
Lib	1		1	29	18	6	9	89	32	9	9	4	4	211	69%	74	35.1%
NDP		1		27	17	10	5	46	31	5	7	1	2	152	49%	60	39.5%
Rest				2	6			7	2		1			18		3

Also since the last nominations update, Liberal MP John Godfrey (Don Valley West) has announced his resignation from the Commons effective July 1, 2008 to take a new job, while Conservative MP Wajid Khan (Mississauga – Streetsville), who was elected as a Liberal before crossing the floor, has left the Conservative Caucus to sit as an independent pending the resolution of charges relating to his campaign finances in the 2006 election. He remains the nominated Conservative candidate in that riding for the time being, however.

Party	Seats	2nds	Less	Plus	Current Standings		Nom Inc	%	Nom 2nds	%	Nom Oth	%		TOT Nom	%
BQ	51	20	-4	2	49		49	96%	8	40%				57	19%
Cons	123	117	-2	3	125		119	96%	80	68%	38	56%		237	77%
Grn		1							1	100%	94	31%		95	31%
Lib	103	116	-9	2	96		98	95%	76	66%	37	42%		211	69%
NDP	29	53		1	30		28	97%	40	75%	84	37%		152	49%
Ind	1			3	4		1
VAC				4	4

The four vacant seats are Toronto Centre, Willowdale, Vancouver Quadra, and Desnethé – Missinippi – Churchill River. By-elections are expected to be called for at least the first two within several months.

Labels: 40th General Election Nominations, Bloc Québécois, Conservatives, Greens, Liberals, NDP