As previously reported here, candidates in the 2008 General had to submit their election campaign returns by midnight on Friday, February 13. It's taken me about a month to get around to getting that data into the Pundits' Guide database, and during that time Elections Canada has entered nearly 1,200 candidate returns ("as submitted") into their database.

Still outstanding are 440 / 1601 candidate returns, as described in the table below.

Some interesting trivia (although, remember, this is based only on preliminary data and is subject to change after the Elections Canada review):

• Of the top 30 "big spenders" (measured by who spent the greatest percent of the candidate spending limit in their riding), 25 were Conservatives, 2 were Liberals, 2 were Bloquistes, and 1 was NDP. Fewer than half of the big-spenders (14/30) were elected.
• Based on their returns entered so far, it appears that on average the Green Party's candidates more than doubled their riding spending from 2006 (7.0% vs. 2.6% of the spending limit, on average), while the Liberal Party's candidates spent on average a bit less (55.3% vs. 61% in 2006, down from 73% in 2004) as did Bloc candidates. Average spending by Conservative candidates was also up a bit (from 69.7% to 74.6%), while the average riding spending of New Democrat candidates stayed almost exactly the same (26.8% vs. 26.0%).
  
• If a candidate was duly nominated with Elections Canada, but then withdrew before the deadline and in sufficient time for another candidate from the same party to be nominated, it turns out that they BOTH have to file candidate campaign returns. For example in Toronto Centre, ON, former Conservative candidate Chris Reid and eventual Conservative candidate David Peter Gentili have BOTH filed candidate returns showing election expenses and transfers from party headquarters. Weird, huh!

Now, neither one spent the limit, and indeed their expenditures totalled together do not exceed the limit either. But what if they did? I don't know the answer to that question, but I'm guessing that since the limit applies to a candidate and not to a party's campaign in a certain riding, so long as both remained under the limit no provision of the Elections Act would be violated. Anyways I have a question in to Elections Canada on that one, and will report back on their response.

For a refresher on how to find that candidate financial data in the Pundits' Guide, see here.

I'll be writing and programming about financial data a bit more in coming weeks, so stay tuned.

# of Candidate Returns either Nil, or Not Submitted to, or Not Yet Reviewed by, Elections Canada; by Party, 2008 General Election

Party	Party Name	2008 GE
Oth	Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party	0 / 4
Oth	Canadian Action Party	9 / 20
Oth	Christian Heritage Party	8 / 59
Oth	Communist Party of Canada	0 / 24
Oth	First Peoples National Party	5 / 6
Oth	Libertarian Party of Canada	4 / 26
Oth	Marijuana Party	2 / 8
Oth	Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada	5 / 59
Oth	neorhino.ca	3 / 7
Oth	Newfoundland and Labrador First Party	2 / 3
Oth	People's Political Power Party	0 / 2
Oth	Progressive Canadian Party	1 / 10
Oth	Western Block Party	1 / 1
Oth	Work Less Party	0 / 1
Ind	Indep/No Affil	23 / 71
BQ	Bloc Québécois	13 / 75
Lib	Liberal Party of Canada	104 / 307
NDP	New Democratic Party	120 / 308
Cons	Conservative Party of Canada	70 / 307
Grn	Green Party of Canada	70 / 303

Labels: 40th General Election, Election Expenses, Election Finance