“Mommy, They Split My Vote”
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Further to my earlier post looking exclusively at ridings in Greater Toronto and the 905 Area Code, and a subsequent analysis from leading thinkers of their respective parties, Conservative Ken Boessenkool and New Democrat Brian Topp, on the culpability of "vote splitting" in Liberal seat losses, I've been asked to take one more general look at the issue.
Allow me to make the following points:
- In the 2011 general election, the Liberals lost 17 seats to the NDP, general election over general election. Hence by definition no "vote-splitting" occurred. Outright vote-switching, more like.
- The Liberals also lost 27 seats to the Conservatives, general election over general election, last week. Of these:
- The Liberals came third in one of them (Bramalea-Gore-Malton, ON), hence, by definition, not vote-splitting.
- In a further 15 seats, the Conservatives gained more votes than the Liberals shed (a net difference of between 1,943 as in Richmond Hill, and 11,805 as in Vaughan, or 7,187 in Brampton West if you want the next best, non-byelection, example). So, the Liberals lost those seats outright. The presence or absence of "vote-splitting" by the NDP would have made no difference to the outcome. Moreover, there was no "vote-splitting" to the Green Party in any of these seats, as the Greens dropped everywhere as well. And furthermore Liberals didn't stay home either, as turnout increased in all cases here. So, Conservative growth came from out of Liberal switchers and previous non-voters in these 15 ridings. No examples of losses due to vote-splitting here.
- That leaves 11 seats where the Liberals lost more raw votes than the Conservatives gained (see below). Of those:
- The Liberals lost more votes than NDP gains alone could account for in 5 seats.
- In 5 other seats, the NDP gains were less than the combined losses of the Liberals and Greens, so Liberal losses can not be attributed exclusively to NDP gains, as there might also have been Green-to-NDP switching as well.
- This leaves one single Liberal riding going into the election – Moncton-Riverview-Dieppe, NB – in which the NDP gained more votes than both the Liberals and Greens lost, and where the Liberals lost more votes than the Conservatives gained.
- Note that turnout increased (i.e., the number of non-voters [NV] declined) in all 11 cases. So, overall, the Liberal vote did not "stay home" here, either.
Now, I find the concept of "vote-splitting" a little paternalistic at the best of times. It seems to imply that votes "belong" to one party or another, rather than to the electors themselves; and that a party should not need to earn the ballots cast for its candidates, but rather is entitled to them based on its (self-perception of its) position on the political spectrum, a position that other parties ought not to usurp by running at all.
But, if for argument's sake we adopt this definition of "vote-splitting" as the cause of seat changes, that is:
- the party gaining the seat does so by gaining fewer votes than the party losing the seat loses, and that
- some third party gains more votes than the losing party loses
… then I presume the Liberals would equally rue the seats they so unfortunately won in 1993 in precisely this way. Live by the splits, fall by the splits.
The fact is that these kinds of outcomes are perfectly within the normal range of outcomes in any first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system featuring more than two parties. This is a system that most Liberals (though not all) have long supported, and in fact they have often derided advocates of electoral reform as belonging to "loser" parties.
It is also entirely open for question as to whether all the Liberal votes moved in the direction the vote-splitting decriers believe they did, as we've discussed in an earlier post. There's good reason to believe that as many or more of them moved to the Conservatives as to the NDP, but it will be several months before sufficient evidence can be systematically gleaned from the poll-by-poll results and the academic Canadian Election Study.
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Note that "vote-splitting" in this discussion means something different than what politicos mean when they say a seat was won or lost "on the splits".
In that case, the party losing the seat would have held its vote, but given the strengthening and weakening of its two or more opponents relative to each other, that vote was no longer sufficient for the incumbent party to hold the seat.
Same goes with winning a seat based not on your own vote movements, but due to the relative movements of your opponents against each other.
There did not wind up being any actual examples of "losing on the splits" in this election (not when you look at raw votes, which you have to do in the case of changing turnout), but probably the cleanest example is Vancouver East, BC in 1997, where the Liberal vote held from 1993, but the NDP's Libby Davies gained 3500 votes while the two conservative parties lost around 2500 between them, as did the other smaller parties to the tune of another 3800 or so, which was sufficient for Davies to defeat Liberal M.P. Anna Terrana.
[If you calculate in percentage terms, using vote-share, you can miss the impact of turnout changes (i.e., the famous 800,000 Liberals who stayed home in 2008), and thus arrive at erroneous conclusions.]
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Back to the topic at hand, here are those 11 ridings:
Absolute Differences in Raw Vote, 2008 to 2011, in the 11 ridings lost by the Liberals to the Conservatives in 2011 where Liberal losses were greater than Conservative Party gains
| Riding | Lib v Cons |
Cons | Lib | NDP | Lib v NDP |
Grn | Rest | NV |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Madaw–Rest, NB | -1135 | +2822 | -3957 | +1201 | -2756 | -675 | +1290 | -2217 |
| Nip–Timisk, ON | -945 | +2074 | -3019 | +2205 | -814 | -288 | -204 | -723 |
| Pick–Scarb E, ON | -581 | +4280 | -4861 | +4057 | -804 | -1272 | -321 | -1065 |
| Yukon | -791 | +634 | -1425 | +1032 | -393 | +1156 | 0 | -1011 |
| Scarb Cntr, ON | -3489 | +2410 | -5899 | +5642 | -257 | -1013 | 0 | -3106 |
| Don Valley E, ON | -2067 | +2645 | -4712 | +4816 | +104 | -1504 | -20 | -3741 |
| Lond N-Cntr, ON | -1459 | +1756 | -3215 | +3609 | +394 | -3426 | +229 | -5022 |
| Etob Cntr, ON | -81 | +2821 | -2902 | +3575 | +673 | -1312 | +149 | -2502 |
| Etob–Lake, ON | -204 | +4204 | -4408 | +5096 | +688 | -1403 | +9 | -4367 |
| Wpg S-Cntr, MB | -251 | +1403 | -1654 | +2455 | +801 | -1477 | 321 | -3867 |
| Monc–Riv–Di, NB | -1439 | +1111 | -2550 | +6659 | +4109 | -1982 | 0 | -3320 |
What about this perspective on vote splitting- not using this election as your starting point? As I read your excellent analysis, it starts as though vote splitting wasn’t an issue prior, we are just looking at occurences this election, when the concept was enshrined prior. I get that’s your focus here, debunking the theory with this election, but on the wider, more historic point, I’m not sure “vote splitting” is addressed. Does that make sense?
well, i got stuck on your first example of a conservative win – in bramalea – cons 34% ndp 33 lib 28…. so no vote splitting? seems to me that the “progressive” vote was very much split – and handed a seat to the cons. yes, i am making a distinction between progressive voters and, well, conservative voters…
Great article – John Ibbitson wrote that the NDP vote splitting gave the win to Eve Adams in Mississauga-Brampton South, and I had to chastise him (I’m sure he is very hurt)for his poor reporting or researching. Bains only lost about 3000 votes from 2008, while Eve gained 9000 votes over the previous Tory candidate – not a case of losing due to vote splitting.
Your article here uses the same basic thinking I did – look at new voters and what the increase in votes did versus the “splitting!”
Steve V, you’re right that I was specifically addressing the accusation that Liberal seats had been lost to vote-splitting.
bbbb, the NDP would probably argue that it was vote-splitting by the Liberals that cost Bramalea-Gore-Malton. The strategic voting sites come into that particular case, so I’m going to defer a fuller answer until I deal with them in my next post.
But to both of you: you are both making an assumption that Liberal + NDP votes can be added together as the “progressive vote”. I think the evidence that many Liberal voters from 2008 switched to the Conservatives in 2011 is quite strong, and argues against your additivity assumption.
If one were to remove the Liberal Party from the equation in 2015 (I’m just arguing hypothetically), would it benefit the Conservatives or NDP more? Would 2011 Liberal voters be more likely to support the NDP in 2015 or the Conservatives? Or would they stay home?
These are all hypothetical questions, but no more so than the question of “vote-splitting” in 2011. Many NDP supporters would tell you that if their party were not on the ballot they would stay home, and indeed when their party has been weakened in traditional seats in the past, turnout has declined overall. Just look at the increase in turnout when Charlie Angus first ran in Timmins-James Bay for example. In other situations, where there’s been a popular NDP incumbent seeking reelection, Liberal vote has moved over to them, for example with Malcolm Allen in Welland this time.
But we saw, for example in Central Nova in 2008, when there was no Liberal on the ballot, that large numbers of Liberals switched over to the Conservatives. And with the Liberals obviously in third place there this time, those folks stayed with Peter MacKay in 2011.
So, we’ll have to wait for the academic studies and other opinion research to bear this out, but it’s not at all clear to me that it’s “vote-splitting” between two “progressive” parties that would keep the Conservatives in seats in Ontario. In fact, some wags might argue that it could be “vote-splitting” between the two establishment parties that could see the NDP win more seats there next time.
And, of course, we have to conclude this conversation by saying that, to the extent any of this conversation even applies at all to Ontario or the Atlantic provinces, it applies NOT AT ALL to any of the western provinces, where Liberal vote clearly and regularly collapses virtually exclusively to the Conservatives, except in core urban ridings like Edmonton Strathcona, Vancouver Kingsway, or Winnipeg North.
Rick, yes one has to look at the raw votes and changes in turnout before drawing any conclusions, particularly where turnout has changed.
Turnout increased by 8 points in Mississauga–Brampton South. The Conservatives gained 9,000 votes, while the Liberals lost fewer than 3,000 and the NDP gained just over 4,000. That was NOT a case of vote-splitting, no matter which way you slice it. The NDP grew its vote from out of previous non-voters, previous Green supporters, and probably some previous Liberals, but so did the Conservatives, and to a greater extent.
If those non-voters were coming back to the polls, they weren’t coming back for the Liberals. Had the NDP and the Conservatives not run such strong campaigns, they might not have come back at all. Note that the number of electors also increased, but only by 2,000.
Would this also apply in South Shore-St. Margaret’s, where the NDP’s Gordon Earle received the most-ever votes by an NDP candidate (15,058) up 1577 from 2008, but where the collapse of the Liberal vote (-2499) went exclusively to the Conservatives (+3560) along with the 513 votes the Christian Heritage Party candidate received in 2008?
Liberal ‘vote splitting’ resulting in another Conservative win?
Please clarify, Joyce Murray in Vancouver Quadra is not shown as winner,nor could I
find HARP#ER or FLAHERTY.
The reason isé
“In other situations, where there’s been a popular NDP incumbent seeking reelection, Liberal vote has moved over to them, for example with Malcolm Allen in Welland this time.”
Actually, the Liberal vote in Welland dropped by 7000, the NDP rose by over 5000, and the Conservatives rose by 4350. And factor in the Greens dropping by 1500, and the claim that the Liberal vote moved over to the NDP becomes rather ambiguous–sure, *some of it* may have, but it’s just as possible that at least as much if not more of it went Tory…
And, of course, 2008’s independent run by Welland’s former NDP candidate must also be accounted for–add that to the 2008 total, and the net margin of the “united NDP” over the Tories only expanded by 150 votes or so.
OK, I take your point, Adam. This happens to me every time I do something from memory. And I never seem to learn! (Smacks head) I could find another example, though, I’m sure.
@The Pundits Guide
Here is a stat for you.
Based on the validated numbers
The 308 winning candidates out of 1587 achieved 50.84% of the popular vote.
The majority of Canadians voted for winning candidates and endorsed the composition of our current Parliament.
That’s an interesting way of looking at things, VWAO. Thank you for taking the time to leave a comment.
You have an incorrect definition of “vote splitting” IMO. Your long comment above touches on that. The base of the idea for vote splitting is based in the alternative vote / preferential ballot.
If a Conservative wins a riding where a single “progressive” candidate would have won, then there is vote splitting. When you take into account that not only some Liberals, but some NDPers are more willing to vote Conservative than the other, and, when you take into account strategic voting (IE, the Liberals ‘toby centre already sucked up NDP voters) then it becomes very very difficult if not impossible to determine which ridings are actually impacted by split voting. The comparison of the 2011 left is nowhere near the comparison of the 1997 right.
amendum: this also could apply to any party, if a single establishment candidate, or a single populist candidate could have won etc etc etc.
@ David Young on South Shore-St. Margaret’s:
For whatever reason, the riding seems to hew closely to the BC non-metropolitan dynamic… where you can just about bank that any further collapse of the Liberal vote is going to end up with the Conservative, and some less predictable degree of non-voting.
I suspect this now our norm in Mainland NS outside of Metro, and will likely take hold when the 2 current Cape Breton Liberal incumbents step down.
Traditiaonaly, any party can ‘win on the splits’: going up the middle. But in Nova Scotia and BC hinterlands it is looking so far like the remaining Liberal vote is available to the Conservatives, but not the NDP.
There would be some exceptions to that, for example SW Nova, where the Liberal’s have been strong. But that strength is probably now finished…. and in places like SW Nova where the Liberal vote has declined but not yet collapsed, probably a lot bigger chunk of those Liberal voters are ‘organicaly inclined’ to shift to the NDP when they leave. But thats a case where the NDP is FAR behind in 3rd.
I’ll engage in a bit of drift. But maybe this will give people some ideas that ar more closely related to this blogpost topic.
Compared to the Conservatives, at least in Nova Scotia, the NDP does not do well at campaigning where it is not in the hunt for a victory.
Example. Scott Brison was very unlikely to be unseated. Yes, he got surprisingly close to it, but that was with a disastrous national campaign for the Liberals.
The demographics of the riding, and the provincial voting patterns, are very favourable to the NDP. But they had no chance to win, and the campaign was virtually non-existant.
The Conservatives chances of picking off the seat were if anything less than the NDP’s, but you wouldnt know it watching their campaign.
Both the NDP and the Conservatives had national campaigns that lifted all boats, and this was generally reflected in Nova Scotia.
It was the strong and resourced Conservative local campaign that rode the wave to come close to beating Brison. And they are now in position to win the next election: especially, but not only, in the likely event of Brison’s retirement.
There seems to be some subborn belief among english-speaking Liberals that if the NDP would just cease to exist, we would have a progressive national Liberal government. But this argument suffers from the unicorn falicy: just because many people talk about a progressive Liberal government doesn’t mean that such a thing has ever actually existed.
Further, how does this Liberal view of history work in Quebec where Liberals represent a dominating brand of federalism. No Quebec “progressive” would view the Libeals as anything but an establishment business party.
This view of Canadian politics and history has no future. And if the Liberal party wants to survive, it had better find a new narrative.
Tom P,
This may be a bit off topic, but how do you define “progressive”? What is the goal towards this “progress”? What are the milestones and deliverables and how do we know that we’re in the right direction?
@Chuck:
Maybe Tom P meant left wing. I don’t like the use of the word progressive; it is easily manipulated.
Maybe what he meant is the Libs simply aren’t left wing; that they run from the left and govern from the right. Personally, I have always felt Libs are simply Tories not in as much of a hurry and only slightly nicer, but that’s one man’s opinion.
Either way, the problem with this idea of vote splittig is that it is based on the idea that a vote “can be owned”, that people will always vote a certain way and if the pattern gets changed, it has to be due application of some illegitmate outside force, whatever that might be.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what partisans want or believe, people are ultimately the final arbiters of a election. And ultimately, that is all that really counts. This time it went Tory, next time, who knows?
Arthur Cramer, Winnipeg
Arthur,
I suggest we let Tom P tells us what his definition of “progressive” is. To me, progressive implies some type of progress and that the “progressive” knows where he or she is heading. Othewise, it’s like the random walk just to get away from the status quo. I’d like to know what the ultimate destination is for a “progressive”; all we know that he or she does not like the status quo and doesn’t want to go back to a previous situation, which would be seen as being “regressive.”
@Chuck:
I wasn’t trying to speak for Tom. I am still prepared to offer that I have noticed the word “progressive” appears to have been deliberatly co-opted by the LPC and its MPs. So, I offrered some comment.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Arthur Cramer, Winnipeg
Great post, Alice. Anyone who believes that the Liberals are a thorough-going “progressive” party clearly has never met the Liberal MPs who voted NO to gay marriage, voted FOR its repeal, voted NO to the trans-rights amendment. They existed (Alan Tonks being Exhibit A). It follows that many erstwhile Liberal voters are anything but progressive, given that these ‘blue Liberals’ were re-elected and reflected, at least to some extent, their constituents (at least until 2011). The argument that you can add the Liberal and NDP vote to make a total “progressive vote” is thus a fallacious argument.
Presumably the kind of people who do this are too hopped up on over-priced caffeine from their fancy coffee shop of choice.