Now that the by-elections are wrapped up, it seemed like a good time to catch up on all the nomination news. I've been working on a thorough review of all the public sources of data on nominations, starting with the Liberals and the Greens, and then will have a few other names to report as well.

Liberals:

• They have a full slate of nominated and/or publicly identified candidates in Newfoundland & Labrador and PEI, are off by 3 in Nova Scotia, and missing just 1 in New Brunswick.
• Across the west and the north, they have 2/3 candidates in place North of 60, 3/4's of their BC slate in place, all but 4 candidates in Alberta, half their slate in Saskatchewan, and 8 or 9 of 14 in Manitoba.
• Reflecting their strength in Ontario, some 93 of 106 candidates are lined up, with several more meetings scheduled in the next month.
• And then there's Québec. I have now documented 35 names of Liberal candidates in Québec from publicly available sources, including Elections Canada, Wikipedia, and Google News searches in both English and French (there are still no candidate names on the website of the Quebec section of the federal Liberal Party). My list is available here alongside the sources used for each name -- a methodology that is transparent and repeatable (by anyone willing to invest the time to do so). A little bird suggested this list might have been the one used by La Presse, but it could equally have been either of the candidate lists at Wikipedia, the list at NoDice.ca, or the reporter's own legwork. I guess we'll find out in our morning paper. [UPDATE: Nah, I didn't think it was my list anyway.]

Greens

• The Green Party's nomination process is the reverse of the other parties, inasmuch as the local riding nominates a candidate first, and then sends the name on to Ottawa for screening. As documented here previously, this has led to some delays in the publication of names on their website's Candidate List. I was contacted and assured that their numbers were much higher than this site was reporting. However, as with all other parties, I can't count 'em if I can't document 'em.
• Still, based on names I've assembled from Elections Canada, Wikipedia, the party's own web-site and Google searches, their slate is starting to fill out nicely in many parts of the country, although there are still some bare patches. Their best coverage is in Alberta and Ontario (co-incidentally sites of two recent provincial elections), while their thinnest showings to this point are in Saskatchewan and Québec. If their four by-elections candidates were indeed all running again, the numbers would be that much higher as well, however I couldn't tell if the listings I located were merely stale-dated.

The latest live counts of database nomination entries for each party, by province, are now located on the Guide's main page, and can also be found ... along with candidate counts by party rank in the last general election ... at the "Seach the Database" page (or click here).

Tomorrow night, the Conservatives, NDP and Bloc.

Labels: 40th General Election Nominations