Two items of news:

• Green Party nomination in Prince Edward – Hastings, ON: Former community newspaper editor Alan Coxwell was uncontested at a nomination meeting this past weekend in Belleville.
• Liberal Party nomination in St. John's South – Mount Pearl, NL: Their nomination meeting is scheduled for this coming Monday, and will now be contested.

Also, one new query table, Nomination counts by party and previous rank for the 40th General Election, has been added to the "Search Data" page. It answers the questions:

• In what percent of the seats they won at the last election, has a party nominated candidates now? Obviously, parties will focus on the seats they hold, followed by the seats in which they came second last time, and/or other seats they may be targetting. This shows how well they're doing at concentrating their efforts on those priorities.
• What percentage of women candidates has been nominated in the parties' best seats (i.e., its wins at last election, and second-place finishes), as compared with the "other" seats.

Labels: 2_How to Search the Database, 40th General Election Nominations, Greens, Liberals, Women Candidates

I hate to date myself, but growing up I loved listening to my transister radio and following the weekly top 40 from my local AM station. When one of the songs I liked moved up to #x with a bullet, it was always a thrill.

Fast forward to today's wired world and my new little project. One of the interesting aspects of everything I've been learning is what brings traffic to the site, what people are looking for, where they start off page-wise and where they leave.

It should have been self-evident, but I only realized it by actually seeing the stats ... the main thing folks are looking for is data about other folks. Hence the vast majority of hits that come to the Pundits' Guide are from Google searches on people's names.

I can usually tell when a story is hot, because a name will appear out of nowhere to top my charts. Case in point: Leo Housakos, who was featured in recent media stories about a legal dispute between a real estate developer and Public Works over the terms of a lease for a building housing public servants. I had never heard of this fellow before, but the morning the story appeared in the Globe & Mail, he zoomed to the top of my search keyphrases list. Turns out he ran for the Canadian Alliance in Laval West, QC in the 2000 General Election, and his candidate index page at the Pundits' Guide got ranked 4th in the french Google listings that day.

Most people who stumble upon my site arrive at the candidate index page (it's not very sexy yet, I admit), and a good many leave again directly from there. But in the case of Leo Housakos, anyone who clicked the on hyperlink for Laval West next to his name on that page, was rewarded with the tidbit of information that his Progressive Conservative opponent in that same riding back in 2000 was none other than the current Minister of Public Works, Michel Fortier.

It made me wonder whether the list of top 10 searches might be an indicator for anything at all, and so I've been monitoring it fairly closely. A couple of names of young political activists from opposite ends of the country (29-year old Liberal candidate Tyler Banham from Hamilton and 24-year old NDP candidate Rebecca Coad from Vancouver), have been battling it out for first place in recent weeks, so I thought why not let you in on who's hot at the Pundits' Guide, and let's see if it means anything or not.

Without further ado, here is the first of a weekly series I'll be posting ... the Weekly Top 10 Google Searches reaching the Pundits' Guide:

Search Keyphrases (Top 10)
1037 different keyphrases		Search	Percent
1.	rebecca coad	29	1.7 %	NDP candidate in the Van-Quadra by-election
2.	tyler banham	26	1.5 %	Liberal candidate in Hamilton Mountain
3.	maureen harquail	20	1.2 %	Cons candidate in the Willowdale by-election
4.	election	15	0.9 %
5.	devinder shory	12	0.7 %	Just-nominated Cons in Calgary Northeast
6.	kristen rudderham	11	0.6 %	Cons candidate in Sydney-Victoria, NS
7.	deborah meredith	11	0.6 %	Cons candidate in the Van-Quadra by-election
8.	bonnie crombie	10	0.6 %	Liberal candidate in Mississauga – Streetsville
9.	leo housakos	10	0.6 %	(see above; he was a lot higher last month)
10.	richard gabruch	9	0.5 %	Ran as a PC in Sask-Rosetown-Biggar 1997-99
	Other phrases	1489	90.6 %

Labels: Weekly Top 10

This morning's Hill Times writes about how the two main parties are targetting the ridings won by less than 5% of the vote last time (i.e., MargPct < 5%). This criterion also appears as one of "Election Pundit Queries found on the Browse Elections page in this database, allowing you to see quickly which ridings those are for all past elections, called "Closest contests (MargPct <= 0.05)".

At least one writer tonight, however, is questioning whether a close margin should be the only criteria for targetting ridings likely to change hands again.

Naturally, it makes sense to consider the 2006 results as a relevant factor in allocating resources. But any party which relies unduly on 2006 alone as its baseline figures to miss a significant portion of both the risks and the opportunities facing it next time out. -- Accidental Deliberations

So, I decided to do an analysis that compared seats previously won by margins of < 5% against Ridings that changed hands party-wise in an election (another Election Pundit Query), to see how well a narrow margin predicted later riding turnovers. Here are the results:

Distribution of seats by Hold vs. Change and Previous Percent Margin of Victory, 1997-2006

	Under 5% Hold	Under 5% Chng	Over 5% Chng	All Under 5%	All Chg
2004 -> 2006	33	25	30	58	55
2000 -> 2004	11	28 (24)*	39	39	63
1997 -> 2000	21	15 (11)*	22	36	55 33

* reflects adjustments between the 2000 General Election results on the 1996 Redistribution boundaries and the 2000 Transposition results on the 2003 Redistribution boundaries.

The statisticians out there can run the chi-squares on this, but my Coles Notes version is that, in each of the three cases here, more seats changed hands where the previous margin of victory had been over 5% than did under it.

[UPDATE: Fixed transposition error in the table.]

Labels: Close Margins, Data Analysis, Seats that changed hands

A few quick updates:

• Halifax, NS Liberal candidate, lawyer Martin MacKinnon, stepped down recently to take another job, reports the Chronicle-Herald's Ottawa correspondent in a great survey of the Nova Scotia pre-election political landscape this morning (catch it quickly, because they retire their content after 7 days or so at thechronicleherald.ca).
• As expected, former Gatineau, QC Liberal M.P. Françoise Boivin announced earlier today that she will seek the NDP nomination in her former riding. That meeting has yet to take place, however, so I'll hold off on entering its result as a fait accompli in the database.

Instead of including a table with my latest counts in this blog-post, you can now find the always-up-to-date totals by party and province here. Notice that each party's row title in that table is also a hyperlink to the party's nomination details page for the current election.

Labels: 40th General Election Nominations, Liberals, NDP

Nominations closed today in the four St. Paddy's Day by-elections. The Green Party has finally named its candidate for the northern Saskatchewan riding of Desnethé – Missinippi – Churchill River ... computer technician Robin Orr will be making his debut run for a federal seat.

Elections Canada also reports that Liz White of the Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party of Canada will be making her second run in the Ontario riding of Toronto Centre, joining Canadian Action Party candidate Doug Plumb. Vijay Sarma also of the Canadian Action Party may not have filed his nomination papers in time however, since although he is listed on the CAP website as their candidate in the other Ontario riding of Willowdale, his name does not appear on the list at Elections Canada as of late this afternoon. Vancouver Quadra still appears to have the same slate of five candidates, including CAP's Psam Frank.

Between now and Thursday February 28, the Returning Officers and Elections Canada officials will review the candidates' nomination papers to ensure they are in order, and that enough valid signatures have been collected, and then they release the official list Thursday.

For now it appears we have 19 or 20 candidates running in the four ridings, 8 of them women (3 Liberals, 2 Conservatives, 2 NDP, 0 Greens, and 1 other, i.e., Liz White).

[And, after a brief hiccup with FTP service, the chart finally reflects these numbers as well.]

Labels: Greens, March 17 2008 By-elections, Women Candidates

Today's update includes two nominations from Saturday, which just happen to highlight rather nicely the use of two new query tables I've been working on, over on the "Search Data" page.

To run them, click either the hyperlink or the arrow for the query you want, in order to issue the request to the database. Afterwards you can hide and show the results again by clicking in the same way.

(Ces resultats sont aussi disponible en français à "Rechercher les données", mais le texte n'est pas encore traduit car la page reste en construction. La redirection entre anglais et français sur cette page n'est pas encore construite non plus. J'espère que mes amis français continueront d'être patient avec moi.)

Today's new query tables are:

Nominations in seats with retiring incumbents (first query currently found on the page).

• These seats, especially when not in regions with an overwhelming history of majorities for one party, can often be the most volatile in an election, since no candidate enjoys the benefit of incumbency.
• By-elections are a special case of this general rule, but one in which the parties are able to focus resources on just a few seats rather than an entire national campaign, and they are in some cases ridings where a party may not have put on a full court press before.
• In the cases where a party *has* had an overwhelming history of majorities in the area (the Conservatives in Calgary are today's case in point), winning the party nomination in these ridings can be the hardest part of winning the seat.
• Hence, lawyer Devinder Shory's victory at yesterday's Conservative nomination meeting for the Calgary Northeast, AB seat vacated by retiring Conservative M.P. Art Hangar, came after a very competitive race.

Nominations in seats with first-time incumbents (second query currently found on the page).

• If winning a seat for the first time is hard, keeping it the next time out can be almost as difficult. Incumbency is worth more the more elections a candidate wins, but on your first time running as the incumbent, you're the target. Especially if the person you defeated last time opts for a rematch ... expect to see both sides very well-financed, very well-prepared, and probably a little bitter. Lots of drama here.
• For a really volatile race, though, you can't beat the seats where the first-time incumbent's party had never held the seat previously (or at least not for a long time). Clearly, the electorate there is shifting patterns: these are very interesting ridings to watch, and historically difficult to handicap.
• Today's second candidate announcement relates to just such a riding: Lévis – Bellechasse, QC was won in 2006 by Conservative Steve Blaney after a massive upwards swing in their vote; defeating the Bloc's Réal Lapierre, who himself won in 2004 by defeating the Liberal's Christian Jobin. Jobin had only just been elected in a by-election the previous year (2003), held to replace retiring Bloc M.P. Antoine Dubé in the pre-redistribution seat of Lévis-et-Chutes-de-la-Chaudière. The Liberal vote fell here from 39% to 8% between 2000 and 2006, while the Conservative vote rose from 18-19% in 2000-2004 to 46% in 2006, and the Bloc vote ranged from a high of 44% to a low of 29%.
• So, now we can throw into the mix yesterday's announcement by NDP Leader Jack Layton and his Québec lieutenant Tom Mulcair of a former provincial associate deputy minister of energy, Denis L'Homme, as their candidate in this riding. Like I said before, you need a programme to follow all these twists (maybe a Pundits' Guide ;-) ?!), but it will no doubt be a riding to watch.

In coming days, rather than manually create static result tables inside these blog posts, I will be creating permanent "live" (i.e., always up-to-date) versions of them over on the Search Data page. That page will also serve as an index to and overview of the so-called "pundit queries" which already accessible from the Browse Regions / Browse Elections / Browse Parties pages, and will be listed as one of the left-hand navigation tabs, rather than on the top-most navigation bar where it sits now.

To change the subject briefly, Monday is the close of nominations for the four by-election ridings. I am hearing that the Green Party will have a candidate in place for Desnethé – Missinippi – Churchill River by then (but not who it is yet). Ironically, here is a riding that fits both of the above categories: former Liberal M.P. Gary Merasty was a first-time incumbent in 2006, and has already since retired.

[If you're wondering why that riding appears twice in the second query, there's just a little tweaking to the query code I need to do eliminate the second blank entry. Basically I have separate entries for the by-elections and general elections, but only list candidates in the first one (long story). I'm working on it now.]

Labels: 2_How to Search the Database, 40th General Election Nominations, Conservatives, Greens, March 17 2008 By-elections, NDP

Fasten your seatbelt and get out your programme ... there's a lot to follow in the latest update of nomination news.

Retirements and candidate deletions:

• Tobique-Mactaquac, NB Liberal candidate, Stewart C. Paul recently announced that health concerns were forcing him to step down.
• Etobicoke North, ON M.P. Roy Cullen, first elected in a 1996 by-election, announced yesterday that he will not run in next election. This adds Etobicoke North to the list of seats with retiring incumbents, a query I am going to make a permanent fixture of the site this weekend (stay tuned).
• I earlier wrote that Kamloops – Thompson – Cariboo, BC Conservative M.P. Betty Hinton would also be retiring, however forgot to actually delete that entry from the database until now. Thus the Conservatives erroneously appear to have lost a candidate in the totals below; and this riding should be added to the list of seats with retiring incumbents as well.
• 2006 candidate Mike Robinson is wrongly listed as the Green Party's current candidate in the BC riding of Esquimalt – Juan de Fuca at the Wikipedia page, whereas several blog posts at the party's website name Brian Gordon as the nominated candidate there, so I have made that change to this database as well.

New candidate entries:

• Replacing Cullen as the Liberal standard-bearer in Etobicoke North, ON will be appointee Kirsty Duncan, a Health Studies professor from the University of Toronto and member of the Nobel prize winning panel of climate change scientists.
• The Greens have announced that a former provincial and federal NDP candidate, Len Sawatsky, will run for them in Winnipeg Centre against NDP M.P. Pat Martin. [Sawatsky was not in this database prior to that announcement, so must have run prior to 1997. Due to shortness of time, I will have to look up those details later.]
• The Bloc Québécois has also tapped a former NDP aide, composer Marius Tremblay, as their candidate against Conservative M.P. Lawrence Cannon in the Pontiac, QC.
• Meantime, the Nunavut NDP nominated Land Claims specialist Paul Irngaut this past week to run for them in another incumbent-less seat, being vacated by retiring Liberal M.P. Nancy Karetak-Lindell.
• Simcoe North, ON Liberals are expected to acclaim Orillia restauranteur Steve Clarke as their federal candidate to take on first-time Conservative M.P. Bruce Stanton, at a nomination meeting to be held March 2, 2008.

Nominations to watch for:

• Three candidates have so far announced their interest in winning the Conservative nomination for retiring Conservative M.P. Brian Pallister's riding of Portage – Lisgar, MB, at a meeting to be held sometime in April, 2008.
• Six candidates are now on the books for the Liberal nomination meeting to be held March 2, 2008 in retiring Liberal M.P. John Godfrey's riding of Don Valley East, ON [CORRECTION: Don Valley West, ON]. [UPDATE: This one will definitely be worth watching now. I seem to have missed this story earlier.]
• As many as three candidates could vy for the NDP nomination in retiring NDP M.P. Bill Blaikie's riding of Elmwood-Transcona, MB, at an upcoming meeting (date unknown).

Other announcements and nomination news:

• Former Gatineau, QC Liberal M.P. Françoise Boivin has all but confirmed she will join now represent the NDP in that riding in the forthcoming election in a rematch against the Bloc Québécois candidate and current M.P. Richard Nadeau.
• The NDP is promising some more surprising good news at the end of February in Beauport-Limoilou, QC, currently held by Conservative M.P. Sylvie Boucher.
• According to former Green Party leader Jim Harris, the current Leader Elizabeth May wants to keep her party's nomination in Ottawa Centre, ON open for her former leadership rival and past candidate there, David Chernushenko. The riding is now represented by the NDP's Paul Dewar.

In that same recent blog post, Jim Harris urges party activists to find candidates for the remaining 136 empty ridings, suggesting that the Green Party has identified 172 candidates (55%). I have been trying ... by scouring Elections Canada, their own website list, Wikipedia, and Google ... to identify who the (172 - 104 =) 68 or so Green candidates are that are not currently listed in the Pundits' Guide database. However, commenting on Harris' blog post, Green organizer Sharon Labchuk explains that candidates cannot be listed on the party website until their local nomination has been vetted by the party and cleared by the leader. Details on how the party's constitution and protocol handles this are explained further in the post.

Thus, these are my latest totals by party and province.

	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									58					58	19%	17	29.3%
Cons	1	1		31	26	11	10	94	54	7	7	2	4	248	81%	38	15.3%
Grn	1			10	9	1	3	55	15	3	7			104	34%	27	26.0%
Lib	1		1	27	22	7	9	89	32	8	9	4	6	215	70%	78	36.3%
NDP		1	1	27	17	10	6	56	30	4	8	1	3	164	53%	61	37.2%
Rest				2	11	1		21	3	1	2			50		3

Labels: 40th General Election Nominations, Beauport-Limoilou

There are 5 new "party pundit queries" that you can get to by going to the third tab on the "Browse Parties" page. They are:

• Ridings lost by a Party. This includes seats a "party" may have lost by virtue of one of its elected members crossing the floor to another party.
• Ridings in which the Party increased its Pct of the Vote
• Ridings in which the Party decreased its Pct of the Vote
• Ridings in which the Party increased its Raw Vote
• Ridings in which the Party decreased its Raw Vote

I've used a different party for each query example. The charts are working for the highest level (just the party), and hopefully I can get them working for provinces too, but the region and "local_region" ones will take a wee bit longer (long story).

Fairly soon, I will add summary data on these measures to the summary tables as well.

Labels: 2_How to Search the Database

I've been Google'ing and emailing for more nomination news, resulting in these new totals by party and province.

	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%	17	29.8%
Cons	1	1		32	26	11	10	94	54	7	7	2	4	249	81%	39	15.7%
Grn	1			10	9	1	2	55	15	3	7			103	33%	27	26.2%
Lib	1		1	27	22	7	9	88	32	9	9	4	6	215	70%	76	35.8%
NDP		1		27	17	10	6	56	30	4	8	1	3	163	53%	61	37.4%
Rest				2	11	1		21	3	1	2			50		3

Liberals:

• Cambridge, ON: Another vigourously contested Liberal race has ended in victory for technology executive Gord Zeilstra, who will be running against two-time Conservative incumbent Gary Goodyear.
• Thunder Bay – Superior North, ON: Liberals have decided to put their faith in businessman and former Schreiber mayor Don McArthur after a three-way race, in the seat currently held by former Liberal-turned Conservative, Joe Comuzzi. As previously written here, while the Conservatives had already nominated in this riding, Comuzzi has recently been musing that he may not retire after all.
• Blackstrap, SK: First-time candidate Deb Ehmann, a sub-committee co-chair for the Saskatchewan Action Committee on the Rural Economy, will be running here against incumbent Conservative M.P. Lynne Yelich.

NDP:

• Stormont – Dundas – South Glengarry, ON: Worker Health and Safety Officer, Darlene Jalbert, is getting her campaign up and running in the riding now held by two-time Conservative M.P. Guy Lauzon.
• Simcoe – Grey, ON: Katy Austin, who had stepped down as federal candidate to run in the recent provincial election, has now been renominated federally to run against twice-elected Conservative incumbent Helena Guergis.
• Lanark – Frontenac – Lennox and Addington, ON: Sandra Willard will carry the party's banner here after former candidate Arif Jinha stepped down. Conservative M.P. Scott Reid has also held the seat since 2004.

Greens:

• Lanark – Frontenac – Lennox and Addington, ON: Meantime, in the same riding, Chris Walker has had to step down from the Green candidacy.
• Sudbury, ON: Local businessman Gordon Harris was recently nominated to take on long-time Liberal incumbent, Diane Marleau.
• Kenora, ON: Homeopathic practitioner and recent provincial candidate Jo Jo Holiday will be running federally here as well, taking on two-time Liberal M.P. Roger Valley.
• Nipissing – Timiskaming, ON: Greens recently selected Craig Bridges to run against Liberal Caucus Chair and two-time M.P. Anthony Rota.

Conservatives:

• Kingston and the Islands, ON: Laywer Brian Abrams is a first-time candidate, running against the Commons Speaker and Liberal candidate Peter Milliken in possibly Milliken's last campaign.

I have been finding that, in many cases and across all parties, many candidates who were nominated early are now no longer available to run. Many stepped down to run in the various provincial elections, and some are now starting to be renominated federally. Hence the totals continue to be moving targets. As one organizer sighed, "the joys of a never-ending election window".

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

This morning's updates:

• The NDP has nominated Brian Morin, a Fire Protection Officer and the Deputy Mayor of Buffalo Narrows, and the son of a former Senator, as their candidate for the by-election in Desnethé – Missinippi – Churchill River. The Green Party is now the only major party not fully nominated for the by-elections, as they are missing a candidate in this same riding.
• Morin is Métis and speaks English, Cree, Dene, meaning that there may be perhaps for the first time in this constituency, an all-aboriginal slate of candidates; including Joan Beatty now running for the Liberals, and aboriginal RCMP officer Robert G. Clarke running for the Conservatives. Nominations close for all 4 by-elections at 2 PM on Monday, February 25, so we'll know by then whether this remains the case, and of course whether any other independent candidates step forward.
• By my count, today (or possibly tomorrow) is the last day on which the Prime Minister could also call a by-election for Westmount – Ville-Marie in order to have it fall on March 17 with the other 4 by-elections.

Meantime, I have also located a few more Green Party nominations for the general election (including former Canadian Action Party candidate Greg Chatterson now running in Regina – Qu'Appelle, who remains a big fan of "statesman" David Orchard and is inviting him to join the Greens as well). I am waiting on some further information from the political parties, and may have further updates later in the week.

Here are my latest nomination totals by party and province.

	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%	17	29.8%
Cons	1	1		32	26	11	10	93	54	7	7	2	4	248	81%	39	15.7%
Grn	1			10	9	1	2	55	15	3	7			103	33%	27	26.2%
Lib	1		1	27	22	6	9	87	32	9	9	4	4	213	69%	76	35.7%
NDP		1		27	17	10	6	54	31	4	8	1	3	162	53%	59	36.4%
Rest				2	11	1		21	3	1	2			50		3

Also, Jack Layton announced over the weekend that well-known Québec environmentalist Daniel Breton has agreed to run for the NDP in a seat to be named later (probably Jeanne-Le Ber). However, since Breton has not been nominated as yet, his name has not been added to the database as yet.

Finally, a big thanks to one of my favourite sites, National Newswatch, for linking to me. Paul's work in compiling news stories from across the country has been a big help to me in tracking the nominations data. I'm honoured to be on his list.

Labels: 40th General Election Nominations, Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill, Greens, March 17 2008 By-elections, NDP

Several short updates this morning:

• One of the original Reform MPs to be elected in 1993, Conservative Bob Mills announced his retirement from politics yesterday. A nomination meeting to replace him as the Conservative candidate in the Alberta riding of Red Deer will be held in about six weeks. This riding will also be added to my list of "Seats with Retiring Incumbents" next time I run that analysis.
• A user inquiry prompted me to ascertain that Diane Lafrance had stepped down as the NDP candidate in the Québec riding of Argenteuil – Papineau – Mirabel in order to take a new job. This was a name I had only sourced from Wikipedia before, underscoring again its hit-and-miss reliability for such data right now.
• Election fever is rampant in Ottawa at the moment. A story from yesterday's Ottawa Citizen reports on how many candidates the parties claim to have, some of which accord pretty closely with the Guide's counts and some of which are higher. Please note that nomination counts in the Pundits' Guide are based on actual entries in my database. If a party claims to have a different number of candidates, my number won't conform with theirs until I am able to determine who they are and where they're running.

Hence, I've followed up with the parties claiming to have more candidates than I can currently source with detailed listings, asking them for more information. A full review of nomination data and update of the site will be undertaken this weekend. Stay tuned.

AND A NOTE OF THANKS. This project is a new undertaking. Yesterday was the Guide's best ever day for number of visits. I've now been personally contacted and/or linked to by individuals from every major political party large and small and an independent candidate as well. It's gratifying to know that they consider the site an impartial and useful source of data.

Labels: 40th General Election Nominations

Campaign finance and spending data have now been added to all the 2003 Representation Order riding profile pages, for the 2004 General Election.

As before, if a candidate's return has not yet been reviewed by Elections Canada, his or her data "as submitted" is shown in italics. I've run a quick crosstab to see which party's returns are most affected by this backlog, and the answer is ... mainly the smaller parties. Here are the counts of not yet reviewed + not apparently submitted for the various electoral events entered into the Pundits' Guide so far:

# of Candidate Returns Not Submitted to, or Not Yet Reviewed by, Elections Canada, by Party and Electoral Event

Party	Party Name	2004 GE	2006 By	2006 GE
Oth	Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party of Canada			1
Oth	Canadian Action Party	17	2	9
Oth	Christian Heritage Party of Canada	8		5
Oth	Communist Party of Canada	5
Oth	Libertarian Party of Canada	1		5
Oth	Marijuana Party	69		18
Oth	Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada	44		62
Oth	Western Block Party			1
Ind	Independent	12	1	27
Ind	No Affiliation	4		1
BQ	Bloc Québécois	5		3
Lib	Liberal Party of Canada	36	2	65
NDP	New Democratic Party	51	2	38
PC	Progressive Canadian Party	1		6
Cons	Conservative Party of Canada	23	1	92
Grn	Green Party of Canada	105	1	73

----------

Unrelated update: According to this news release from Elections Canada late last week, and if I have my math right, Thursday February 7 is the first day on which the Prime Minister can call a by-election for the riding of Westmount – Ville-Marie. Again, if I didn't mess up the counting, Monday February 11 is the last day on which he could call it for March 17, 2008 to coincide with the other 4 by-elections.

Labels: 38th (2004) General Election, Election Expenses, Election Finance, Westmount-Ville Marie

Last week's Hill Times published a list of 24 M.P.'s who have announced they will not run for re-election, which accords more or less with a similar list found at the Wikipedia page for the 40th General Election, except that the Hill Times included Joe Comuzzi who is now thinking of running again after all, and Lucienne Robillard whose seat is already vacant.

Suppose we exclude Comuzzi, but include Robillard since no by-election has been called (yet), for a total of 23 seats. 12 of the seats are currently held by Liberal MPs (or were until last week), 8 are now held by Conservatives, 2 by Bloc members, and 1 by a New Democrat. 4 of the Conservative vacancies are in Alberta, 2 in Saskatchewan, and 1 each in Manitoba and Newfoundland & Labrador. The vacant NDP seat is in Manitoba, and the 2 vacant Bloc seats obviously are in Québec; leaving the remainder vacated by Liberals.

Ridings with no incumbents running can be highly volatile, and this makes them early targets for well organized political parties. The willingness of parties to nominate women candidates in such seats would also particularly demonstrate their commitment to electing a higher proportion of women to the House of Commons. Here is a table showing the parties' progress in nominating candidates for these ridings to watch.

			1		4	2	2	6	4	1		1	2	23
Party	YT	NT	NU	BC	AB	SK	MB	ON	QC	NB	NS	PE	NL	Total	Pct	Wom	Pct
BQ														0
Cons					3	1		6	3	1		1	1	16	70%	4	25.0%
Grn					2			2	1	1				6	26%	1	16.7%
Lib			1		3			5	2	1		1	1	14	61%	3	21.4%
NDP					2	2		4					1	9	39%	2	22.2%
Rest					1			1		1				3		3

The list of ridings is shown below.

On an unrelated note, the issues surrounding Mississauga – Streetsville M.P. Wajid Khan's candidate financial return have apparently been resolved with Elections Canada, and he has rejoined the Conservative caucus in Parliament.

Seats with Retiring Incumbents		Prev Contest
NL	Random – Burin – St. George's	Lib-Cons
NL	St. John's East	Cons-Lib
PE	Egmont	Lib-Cons
NB	Fredericton	Lib-Cons
QC	LaSalle – Émard	Lib-BQ
QC	Longueuil – Pierre-Boucher	BQ-Cons
QC	Saint-Lambert	BQ-Lib
QC	Westmount – Ville-Marie	Lib-Cons
ON	Don Valley West	Lib-Cons
ON	Guelph	Lib-Cons
ON	Huron – Bruce	Lib-Cons
ON	Newmarket – Aurora	Lib-Cons
ON	Nickel Belt	Lib-NDP
ON	Scarborough Southwest	Lib-Cons
MB	Elmwood – Transcona	NDP-Cons
MB	Portage – Lisgar	Cons-Lib
SK	Prince Albert	Cons-NDP
SK	Saskatoon – Rosetown – Biggar	Cons-NDP
AB	Calgary Northeast	Cons-Lib
AB	Edmonton – St. Albert	Cons-Lib
AB	Edmonton – Sherwood Park	Cons-Lib
AB	Wild Rose	Cons-Grn
NU	Nunavut	Lib-Cons

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