There's been a bit of interest in comments in the various political blogs awhile back, and again a couple times more recently, to the effect that if some parties have more contested nominations than others this is inherently better than if they don't. I'm not going to take a position one way or the other, but I am collecting data so you folks can debate it to your hearts' content.

One thing that's clear, though, is that contested nominations are the exception rather than the rule for most parties in most cases. Not one incumbent has been contested for the nomination to date in this election cycle, and the vast majority of non-incumbent nominations are also non-contested (in many cases, because the previous candidate or previous M.P. was renominated without being challenged, and so it might be an artefact of the curious situation we're in right now, with the possibility of an election so close to the last one).

At any rate, this is all preliminary data, but we'll keep looking at it from time to time throughout the pre-election period, if it's of continued interest.

Nom Type	Lib	NDP	Grn	BQ	Cons	Oth	All
INCUMBENTS
Acclaimed		19		21			40
Protected Incumbent	10				142		152
TOTAL INC.	10	19		21	142		192
NON-INCUMBENTS
Contested	24 (27.3%)	4 (12.9%)	3 (7.9%)	1 (16.7%)	7 (18.4%)		39 (19.1%)
Appointed	1 (1.1%)						1 (0.5%)
Acclaimed/Other	63 (71.6%)	27 (87.1%)	35 (92.1%)	5 (83.3%)	31 (81.6%)	3 (100%)	164 (80.4%)
TOTAL NON-INC.	88	31	38	6	38	3	204

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Acclamations versus Contested Nominations