Labels: 2_How to Search the Database

• Which ridings have the highest percentage of dwellings requiring major repair? (see here for the answer)
• ... the largest number of first generation Canadians? (answered here)
• ... the smallest number of home-owners? (answered here)
• ... the greatest proportion of Catholics? (answered here)
• ... the lowest percentage of total income coming from Government Transfers? (see here)
• ... the highest rates of child poverty after taxes? (view the answer here)
• ... the largest number of people employed in art, culture, recreation and sport (confirm your guesses here)

Labels: 2_How to Search the Database, Census Data

• Find your riding of interest, either by
• drilling down through the "Browse Regions" page, or
  
• doing a Quick Search from the left-hand column on any part of the riding name, or by
  
• doing a Quick Search for a candidate of interest on any part of the candidate's name, and then clicking on the relevant riding from the candidate index page.


• From the riding profile page (e.g., let's look at Vancouver Quadra, BC), click on the "Financial Metrics" tab

• If you want to bookmark the page with that tab's data showing, click on the link called "Permalink" at the top-right hand corner of the page (in our example, you'd wind up here)
• Don't forget that candidate financial data displayed in italics at the Pundits' Guide is still in the "as submitted" stage (in our example below, Green Party candidate Dan Grice's return still has not been reviewed by Elections Canada, and so appears in italics)
  
• Now, notice the small Elections Canada icon next to each candidate's name. If you hover your mouse pointer over the icon, it says "Link to Candidate Financial Return at Elections Canada"

• If you click on that icon, it opens the candidate's return details from the Elections Canada website in a new window.
• Unfortunately Elections Canada does not label that page with the candidate's name, but TRUST ME. Select a part of the return you're interested in (e.g., "Part 2a - Statement of Contributions Received"), and click on it. Now, you're away to the races. You can even select a different part of the return from the drop-down list they provide.

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

Labels: 2_How to Search the Database, Election Expenses, Election Finance, March 17 2008 By-elections, Nov 27 2006 By-elections, Sept 17 2007 By-elections

• Current Cabinet members and their ridings, for the 40th Parliament, and
• Current Caucus officers and their ridings, for the 40th Parliament

Labels: 2_How to Search the Database

Alberta gave the country Senate reform, spawned several historical political movements and helped women gain the right to vote.

But can the province with the lowest turnout in Canada rescue itself from a disturbing new trend -- where more than half of its population decides not to mark an X at the ballot box? This is the question confounding politicians, pundits and pollsters as the electorate grapples with the stark fact that six in 10 Albertans didn't vote in the March election. It's believed to be the worst showing ever in a provincial campaign.

Leaders from municipal councils to the House of Commons worry a troubling trend is emerging across the country as more people disengage from the democratic process.

"We Canadians sometimes take our democracy for granted, but we don't realize how unique we are," Prime Minister Stephen Harper told the Herald in an editorial column to be published Sunday.

• Nationally -- The summary chart at the top of the "Browse Elections" page shows us the three relevant numbers for all the general elections in the guide:
• (a) "Electors" - the number of people eligible to vote, by virtue of citizenship, residency and age,
• (b) "Voted" - the number of electors who voted, and
• (c) "% TO" - where TO stands for "Turnout"; it is calculated as (b) - Voted divided by (a) - Electors and then multipled by 100 (for further information, see the description on the Pundit Metrics page).
• Broken down by Electoral Event -- Still on the "Browse Elections" page, and looking down the left-hand column of the "Election Summary Data" tab, you will see the Percent Turnout (% TO) for every electoral event, including by-elections as well as general elections. For example, the electoral events with the lowest turnouts in recent history (that means with the lowest turnout in this database, i.e., since 1997) were:
• the June 16, 2003 By-elections (at just 25.7%) in the ridings of QC: Lévis-et-Chutes-de-la-Chaudière (23.5%), and QC: Témiscamingue (29.2%)
• the November 15, 1999 By-Elections (at 28.1% TO) in the ridings of ON: York West (27.4%), QC: Hull – Aylmer (25.4%), QC: Mount Royal (27.5%), and SK: Saskatoon – Rosetown – Biggar (33.7%), and
• the March 17, 2008 By-elections (28.0%), which have been covered extensively in this blog already.
• Broken down by Region, Province or lower -- Still on the "Browse Elections" page, notice the drop-downs and list-boxes to the left of the chart. Select a province from the drop-down list, and notice that all the calculations have been re-done for just that province (let's pick Prince Edward Island, for example). Turnout there jumped from 70.8% in the 2004 General Election to 73.2% in the 2006 General. Now let's select a different province (I guess we ought to look at Alberta then). Notice that turnout in federal elections in Alberta has varied between 58.5% and 61.9%. And in fact, the by-election that returned Stephen Harper to Ottawa as an M.P. showed only a 23% turnout in the lone Alberta riding voting that day, namely Harper's riding of AB: Calgary Southwest (although the Liberal party did not field a candidate in that race).
• Broken down by Riding -- The riding profile page for any riding shows the history of its voter turnout for each electoral event. For example, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC on the West Island of Montréal had the highest turnout in 1997, Cardigan, PE had the highest turnout in both the 2000 and 2004 General Elections, while Nepean – Carleton, ON, currently represented by Conservative M.P. Pierre Poilievre, had the highest voter turnout in the 2006 General Election.

Anyway, I can see that it would be nice to have a Turnout by Province by Electoral Event cross-tabulation table somewhere (likely the "Search Data" page), for comparisons' sake. There also needs to be a new Election Pundit Query about ridings with the highest and lowest turnouts. For now, have fun exploring the data on turnout currently available throughout the Pundits' Guide.

Labels: 2_How to Search the Database, Voter Turnout

Labels: 2_How to Search the Database, 39th (2006) General Election, Women Candidates

Labels: 2_How to Search the Database

• Strong 3rd-place finishes. A count of the cases where a party's candidate placed third in a riding defined as having had a "close 3-way race" (i.e., the Percent Margin between first-place and third-place was less than or equal to 15% points). As more political parties become competitive, this pool of seats should also be closely watched as potential targets of the 3rd place party as well as the first- and second-place finishers.
• Ridings where the Party's candidate was eligible for a Rebate of election expenses. A count of the number of seats in which a party's candidate achieved a high enough percent of the vote to qualify for a public rebate of their election and candidate expenses. In the old days, we used to call this "getting your deposit back" (as in "poor candidate X, he lost so badly he didn't even get his deposit back"), although the rules have changed a lot since then. When the practice was first instituted, parties had to get 15% of the vote or more in a riding (and this is still the case in many provinces) to "get their rebate". Federally the riding rebate threshold changed to 10% with the 2004 General Election. Parties themselves also now become eligible for rebates with separate thresholds involved, but I haven't included or analyzed that data here yet.

• the very large increase for the NDP between 2000 and 2004 that continued to grow in 2006
• the value of the new lower threshold to parties like the Greens (compare with the Bloc Québecois for whom it seemed to make little difference in the short term)
• as of 2006, the "conservative" parties are stronger together than they were apart in 2000
• the Liberals, who could previously count on a 10% or better showing in every seat but 2 or 3, fell short of that watermark in 25 seats during the last general election.

Labels: 2_How to Search the Database, Data Analysis, Election Finance

• Businessperson Siobhan Coady won the nomination in St. John's South – Mount Pearl, NL last night. This will be her third time running against Conservative M.P. Loyola Hearn.
• Meantime, the Liberals have lost another candidate to the extended election window, with their nominated Liberal candidate in Pitt Meadows – Maple Ridge – Mission, BC, Rani Bellwood, stepping down to keep up with her own new business (h/t to Steve Janke).

Thus, the latest party nomination totals, which can be found here on the "Search Data" page, remain unchanged.

At that same page, you can also now find quick links to the pundit queries otherwise buried in the third tab of each of the browse page ("party" pundit queries are not there yet, but will be soon). I've also fixed the sort order, and improved the execution speed on some of the queries.

Finally, I've added the "Search Data" page to the left-side navigation tabs, for easier access. This thing may actually be finished before the 39th Parliament ends after all!

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

• 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

• 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.

• 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.

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

• 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

Labels: 2_How to Search the Database, 40th General Election Nominations, Greens, Liberals, Westmount-Ville Marie

Labels: 2_How to Search the Database