If you haven't been doing so already, I'm recommending that readers who are or have been active participants in the electoral process check out the detailed coverage the Ottawa Citizen's Glen McGregor has been giving, on Twitter, of the Federal Court hearings into the so-called "in-and-out" accounting for advertising issue.

Poor Glen; he doesn't spend his days and nights pouring over minutiae in the Elections Act and the changing versions of the Candidate Manual the way many of us do. There's not exactly a mass audience for that kind of detailed coverage; but I'm guessing that if there's a niche audience, it probably overlaps with the readership of this blog quite a bit.

And for someone not steeped in all the background the way a practitioner might be, he's doing yeoman service covering the arguments being presented by each of the lawyers, the questioning by Judge Martineau, and filling in some of the background as required (although he's finding some of it a bit arcane, and jokes that he's willing to entertain sponsorships from suppliers of pain medication).

If you haven't explored Twitter before, just click on this link: http://twitter.com/CPCvsElxCan, and then scroll down to the bottom of the page, and click on the "More" button. Keep repeating until you get to his first post (or "tweet" as they're called), and then read upwards to get the detail in chronological order. The hearings have been on for two days already, and continue tomorrow morning. To follow them live, visit the same page, and reload it periodically.

This is the future of journalism, and if you've ever found yourself complaining about the lack of detail or substance in mainstream media coverage of a story you care about, then you'll be pleasantly surprised. Glen does a lot within the 140-character limit each "tweet" is confined to.

For some documentary background on the so-called "In-out-Out" accounting for advertising dispute between Elections Canada on the one hand, and the Conservative Party and official agents for 67 of its candidates in the 2006 general election on the other, please see my blogposts from the spring of 2008 where:

• I transcribed the list of affected Conservative candidates, along with links to the financial metrics page for each of their ridings (which then contains direct links to their financial returns at Elections Canada), followed by
• a listing of the candidates named in the affadavit of the organization director of the Conservative Party, as having met one of three criteria the CPC has argued were in wide use by other parties at the time (part I, part II, and part III of the so-called "Donald affadavit")

Thanks to Glen for providing this very interesting live and detailed coverage. I'm willing to chip in for his pain meds in return ... who else is in?

Labels: 39th (2006) General Election, Election Expenses, Election Finance

As indicated earlier this morning, I've been updating the candidate election finance and expense data for 2004 and 2006. Here is a count of the remaining returns still either missing, not yet reviewed, or possibly Nil returns but I can't tell because there's nothing in them and will have to wait until Elections Canada posts the complete set.

[UPDATE: I've just reviewed and updated the 2006 By-election returns now, and so the counts below have been adjusted accordingly.]

Please note that these updates will affect the accuracy of means, standard deviations and correlations earlier published here. I'll be updating that post soon. Also a reminder that any financial data appearing in italics (for example, the data shown here for Bloc Québécois M.P. Diane Bourgeois in Terrebonne – Blainville, QC) is still in the "as submitted" stage, meaning that the return has not yet been reviewed by Elections Canada (or that I haven't entered the reviewed data yet).

As a helpful bonus, I also finally got around to entering short abbreviations for the political party of all the "other" candidates in the riding profile pages and candidate index pages. Thus, Ron Gray now shows up as a Christian Heritage Party candidate (CHP), Marc-Boris St-Maurice shows up as a Marijuana Party (Marj) candidate, Miguel Figueroa shows up as a Communist Party of Canada candidate (CPC), and so on. (Conservatives are designated here by 'Cons'; not to be confused with the CPC, which after all had the acronym first!)

Don't forget that as a result of legislative changes to the Elections Act, there was a period of time during which some of the smaller parties fell below a specified threshold and were deregistered. You can see that some of their mainstay candidates ran as either "Independent" or "Not Affiliated" candidates during that period.

# of Candidate Returns either Nil, or 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	11		5
Oth	Christian Heritage Party of Canada	7		2
Oth	Communist Party of Canada	1
Oth	Libertarian Party of Canada	1		4
Oth	Marijuana Party	69		18
Oth	Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada	41		59
Oth	Western Block Party			1
Ind	Indep/No Affil	10	1	26
BQ	Bloc Québécois	3		1
Lib	Liberal Party of Canada	21	1	9
NDP	New Democratic Party	29		7
PC	Progressive Canadian Party	1		3
Cons	Conservative Party of Canada	11		39
Grn	Green Party of Canada	48		34

I still have a bit of tidy-up to do on the by-election expenses, and then I'll start in on entering the 2008 Candidate returns ("as submitted").

Labels: 38th (2004) General Election, 39th (2006) General Election, Election Expenses, Election Finance

A review of candidate election returns for the 2006 General Election has so far found four candidates - 2 Liberals and 2 Conservatives - who overspent their riding election expense limit, in apparent violation of s.443(1) of the Elections Act.

Instant update: At least one of the candidates entered into a compliance agreement with Elections Canada in the matter, for example here is Mr. Shipley's.

Contravention of this section by a candidate or official agent constitutes a summary offence [s.497(1)(s)], punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 or a prison term of up to 3 months or both [s.500(1)]. Moreover, "wilfully" exceeding the limit is an "illegal practice" [s.502(1)(c)], which if found to have been committed, means the candidate is not entitled to sit as a Member of the House of Commons for five years [s.502(3)(a)] or hold any office in the nomination of the Crown or the Governor in Council [s.502(3)(b)].

One assumes candidates and official agents do not set out to wilfully exceed the spending limits, but when examining the numbers, it does appear that four candidates have at least accidentally contravened s.443(1).

Riding	Candidate	Pct Spent
Lambton – Kent – Middlesex, ON	SHIPLEY, Bev	105.63%
Simcoe – Grey, ON	KIRLEY, Elizabeth	103.96%
Haldimand – Norfolk, ON	FINLEY, Diane	103.47%
Sudbury, ON	MARLEAU, Diane	102.86%

By way of background, just over a year ago I entered the most complete data available at that time (either "as reviewed" by Elections Canada, or if still unreviewed then "as submitted" by the candidate) for candidates in the 2004 and 2006 General Elections.

Over the past week or so, I've just made another pass through to update that data, moving another 133 candidates from "as submitted" to "as reviewed" in 2004 and another 203 candidates from "as submitted" to "as reviewed" in 2006. The process of reviewing candidate election returns by Elections Canada usually results in ensuring consistent reporting of financial data between candidates, making sure the numbers add up, and switching some items from one line item to another as required. Occasionally items reported as candidate expenses become election expenses, and vice versa as well. Overall, it does not significantly materially change the totals reported.

However, as I say, so far I have discovered the above four cases where candidates have, according to the Elections Canada review of their submitted returns, overspent the spending limit for their riding. In a subsequent post, I will summarize the current state of the "as submitted" vs. "as reviewed" status of the 2004 and 2006 candidate returns.

Remember, when reading candidate financial data from the "Financial Metrics" tab of any Riding Profile, if the data is in italics, it is still "as submitted" by the candidate, and has not yet been reviewed by Elections Canada.

Labels: 39th (2006) General Election, Election Expenses

Yesterday I did a little number-crunching in response to a question by the Halifax Chronicle-Herald's Ottawa correspondent, Steve Maher, for an analysis piece which ran in this morning's paper down east.

Maher was looking at the back-story to some of the week's events, for example the Liberal Atlantic Caucus meeting and the Conservatives' decision to advertise locally in West Nova, NS and Prince Edward Island, the Egmont, PE Liberal candidate's decision to withdraw, references to the age of the Conservative challenger in West Nova, etc., etc.

He asked what the breakdown of Rural vs Urban seats was by party in the last election. His thesis, I discovered this morning, was that evidence suggests the Conservatives are targetting rural Liberal seats in Atlantic Canada. Here is the relevant section of his "Letter from Ottawa" (since the Herald pulls its content after seven days):

For years the Liberal MPs in Atlantic Canada have been able to sit back and watch the Tories stumbling. Now the Conservatives have put some pressure on the Liberals and they are feeling it.
There is reason to believe that the Tories can win more seats in Atlantic Canada in the next election.
The themes that appeal to rural voters in the rest of the country — crime, taxes, the military — ought to resonate with rural Atlantic Canadians, who stuck with the Liberals after their cousins in points west switched to the Tories.
Since the merger of the Alliance and the Progressive Conservatives, which ended vote splitting on the right, the Liberals have lost a lot of rural ridings. According to an analysis by punditsguide.ca, the Conservatives have 77 rural ridings. The Liberals have just 28, and 14 of them are in Atlantic Canada.
The Tories would very much like to get some of them, and they think Mr. Dion’s Green Shift gives them the opportunity.

For those interested in the complete breakdown, I've included the table below. Although Statistics Canada describes each Census Block according to its urban or rural status (and there are many other categories in between) and you could aggregate that for each federal electoral district (if you could afford the data), I took a simpler methodological approach which was to calculate the "population density" for each riding (Total Population per the 2006 census divided by the Area in square kilometres). Then I sorted the ridings by province and "population density" and eyeballed them in order to categorize them as Urban vs Rural.

You can't really set an absolute national cut-off, by the way, because of the constitutional constraints on the allocation of seats to each province (meaning the Atlantic provinces have significantly smaller populations than Ontario ridings, for instance). Also, even though the riding names are misleading, there are actually no truly urban seats in Saskatchewan in the current redistribution, since Regina and Saskatoon are each divided into four and then added to large chunks of surrounding rural areas (some even claim this is the reason for the Conservatives' current dominance of that province, which when you compare it to Manitoba's provincial results and seat distribution is not completely unbelievable!).

Seat counts by 2006 winner, province and rural/urban status

Prty	U-R	YT	NT	NU	BC	AB	SK	MB	ON	QC	NB	NS	PE	NL	TOT
ALL	R	1	1	1	15	12	13	6	36	30	7	8	3	5	138
ALL	U				21	16	1	8	70	45	3	3	1	2	170
Lib	R	1		1	1		1	1	9		3	4	3	4	28
Lib	U				8		1	2	45	13	3	2	1		75
NDP	R		1		4				2		1	1			9
NDP	U				6			3	10			1			20
BQ	R									23					23
BQ	U									28					28
Cons	R				10	12	12	5	25	6	3	3		1	77
Cons	U				7	16		3	15	4				2	47
Ind	R									1					1

So, thanks to Steve Maher for an interesting question! When I get back to town, I'll be adding the population density and urban-rural status of each riding to its riding profile page.

Labels: 39th (2006) General Election, Conservatives, Liberals, Rural vs Urban Seats

Spring gardening: check. Spring cleaning: check. Paperwork, client work, sending bright young person off into the world for a first job in her new profession: check, check, check. Starting back into running along the Rideau Canal to lose some of the "pundit's girth" I've accumulated over this very intense, very sedentary first year of the project: well, I'm trying ... I'll go out again tomorrow ... promise ...

Meantime, a few things have drawn me back to the Pundits' Guide, not least of which were the very kind emails I've received from several readers asking would I return soon. Thank you everyone so much for writing (Sally Field moment).

Also with the scheduled adjournment of the House of Commons looming, nomination news is revving back up; the 2006 Census Federal Electoral District profiles are expected soon; and the party with the ammo may now finally have its finger on the trigger [UPDATE: but will probably not pull it on Monday after all] . So I have to get ready on a number of fronts.

One big item of news this week was the announced retirement of four-time Halifax, NS M.P. and former NDP Leader, Alexa McDonough. Since Ms. McDonough had already been nominated, the NDP count is now down by one, and of course the count of Retiring Incumbents (see the second "Nominations Progress" query on the Search Data page) is now up by one to 27 as well. At this point, only Green Ryan L. Watson is nominated in Halifax riding, former Liberal candidate Martin MacKinnon having stepped down to take another job in February. [UPDATE: Stephen Maher has a good run-down of the potential candidates in this morning's column, but read it quickly, as it's only up for 7 days.]

A sidebar: Alexa mentioned in several interviews this week that she had been the only woman M.P. elected from Atlantic Canada in the 2006 General Election. How would we use the Pundits' Guide to see these stats? Well, start by going to the "Browse Parties" page, then selecting "2006 General Election" from the Elections drop-down to the left of the chart, and "Atlantic Canada" from the Regions drop-down (or click here). The "Party Summary" tab appears by default, and shows that in the 32 ridings down east, the Conservatives nominated just one woman in the last election, the Liberals nominated two, the Green Party ran 11 women (34.4%), and the NDP ran 13 women (40.6%).

Now, to see who the candidates were: still on the same page, click on the "Party Details" tab (or click here), and notice that the winning candidates are highlighted in the left-hand column (only one has an "(F)" next to their name). Casting your eyes down the list, notice that each party's candidates are highlighted in turn in their own colum, so we see that the lone Conservative woman candidate was Cynthia Downey in Random – Burin – St. George's, NL, and the two Liberal women were Siobhan Coady in St. John's South – Mount Pearl, NL and Marcelle Mersereau in Acadie – Bathurst, NB.

In any event, I figured it's time to get back into the pundit groove. Now, where were we? Ah yes, I promised an update of nominations from the Green Party. Coming right up ...

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

This is the third part in the series ... Part I is found here and Part II is found here, while the list of Conservative candidates identified as participants in the in-out advertising plan ... which I have also just corrected today ... can be found here. Today's Hill Times has an article listing 11 of the 17 candidates who apparently received a rebate of election expenses prior to the commencement of the Elections Canada review/investigation. The Hill Times reports that all 11 of the elected MPs on the list were in that group, plus 6 other unsuccessful candidates (which it did not name).

[And with this blog-post, I'm going to conclude and set aside the listing of lists relating to election expenditures in the last elections, so I can get back to some more data gathering for the next election and some more analysis and search features for the Guide's users.]

The third main activity claimed to be a common practice of all political parties by Conservative Party's political operations officer Geoff Donald in his October 2007 affadavit, but for which he asserted only the Conservative Party was being criticized, is the claiming of local advertising expenses that were in some way "unidentified". The affadavit lists the names of 45 Liberal, Bloc and NDP candidates whose returns are said to include such expenses, but although exhibits were attached to the affadavit which probably indicated which election those expenses were incurred in, that piece of information was not included in the main affadavit. Thus, I have included the latest general election for each of the candidates below.

Curiously only one of the candidates named in this category has a last name starting with the letter 'N' or higher (you notice these kinds of things working with lists in the context of a database). We can guess that the review of candidate returns was perhaps terminated somewhere in the middle of this work. I haven't run an analysis of candidates by first letter of last name, but believe we're safe in assuming a pretty even distribution there.

List of 45 Liberal, NDP and BQ candidates named by the Conservatives as having unidentified local advertising expenses

(courtesy Stephen Taylor of the Blogging Tories, at stephentaylor.ca)

Riding		Elec: Candidate	Contest
QC	Gatineau	2006 GE: LEVESQUE, Anne (F)	BQ-Lib
QC	Trois-Rivières	2004 GE: GUINDON, Jean-Éric (M)	BQ-Lib
QC	Manicouagan	2006 GE: DUCASSE, Pierre (M)	BQ-Cons
QC	Hull – Aylmer	2006 GE: LALIBERTÉ, Pierre (M)	Lib-BQ
QC	Notre-Dame-de-Grâce – Lachine	2006 GE: DESLAURIERS, Peter (M)	Lib-BQ
QC	Saint-Laurent – Cartierville	2006 GE: DION, Stéphane (M)	Lib-BQ
NS	Sydney – Victoria	2006 GE: EDWARDS, John Hugh (M)	Lib-NDP
ON	Beaches – East York	2006 GE: CHURLEY, Marilyn (F)	Lib-NDP
ON	Hamilton Mountain	2004 GE: CHARLTON, Chris (F)	Lib-NDP
ON	Kenora	2004 GE: BARCLAY, Susan (F)	Lib-NDP
ON	Nickel Belt	2006 GE: GRAVELLE, Claude (M)	Lib-NDP
ON	Sudbury	2006 GE: MARLEAU, Diane (F)	Lib-NDP
ON	Trinity – Spadina	2004 GE: CHOW, Olivia (F)	Lib-NDP
NL	Humber – St. Barbe – Baie Verte	2006 GE: BYRNE, Gerry (M)	Lib-Cons
PE	Egmont	2006 GE: MCGUIRE, Joe (M)	Lib-Cons
PE	Malpeque	2006 GE: EASTER, Wayne (M)	Lib-Cons
NB	Beauséjour	2006 GE: LEBLANC, Dominic (M)	Lib-Cons
NB	Moncton – Riverview – Dieppe	2006 GE: MURPHY, Brian (M)	Lib-Cons
ON	Ajax – Pickering	2006 GE: HOLLAND, Mark (M)	Lib-Cons
ON	Huron – Bruce	2006 GE: ROBERTSON, Grant (M)	Lib-Cons
ON	Kenora	2006 GE: BARCLAY, Susan (F)	Lib-Cons
ON	Parry Sound – Muskoka	2004 GE: MITCHELL, Andy (M)	Lib-Cons
SK	Desnethé – Missinippi – Churchill River	2006 GE: JACKSON, Anita (F)	Lib-Cons
SK	Wascana	2006 GE: GOODALE, Ralph (M)	Lib-Cons
AB	Edmonton Centre	2004 GE: MCMASTER, Meghan (F)	Lib-Cons
NS	Halifax	2006 GE: MACKINNON, Martin (M)	NDP-Lib
ON	Hamilton Centre	2006 GE: CHRISTOPHERSON, David (M)	NDP-Lib
ON	Hamilton East – Stoney Creek	2006 GE: MARSTON, Wayne (M)	NDP-Lib
ON	Hamilton Mountain	2006 GE: CHARLTON, Chris (F)	NDP-Lib
ON	Toronto – Danforth	2006 GE: LAYTON, Jack (M)	NDP-Lib
ON	Trinity – Spadina	2006 GE: CHOW, Olivia (F)	NDP-Lib
BC	Burnaby – New Westminster	2006 GE: JULIAN, Peter (M)	NDP-Lib
BC	British Columbia Southern Interior	2006 GE: ATAMANENKO, Alex T. (M)	NDP-Lib
QC	Louis-Hébert	2006 GE: BLANCHETTE, Denis (M)	Cons-BQ
QC	Pontiac	2006 GE: BRAULT, Céline (F)	Cons-BQ
NL	St. John's East	2006 GE: ANTLE, Paul (M)	Cons-Lib
ON	Nepean – Carleton	2006 GE: GAFFNEY, Michael (M)	Cons-Lib
ON	Parry Sound – Muskoka	2006 GE: MITCHELL, Andy (M)	Cons-Lib
AB	Edmonton East	2006 GE: CHAPMAN, Arlene (F)	Cons-Lib
BC	Delta – Richmond East	2004 GE: LEONHARDT, Shelley (F)	Cons-Lib
BC	Kamloops – Thompson – Cariboo	2004 GE: CARROLL, Brian (M)	Cons-Lib
SK	Regina – Lumsden – Lake Centre	2006 GE: ANDERSON, Gary (M)	Cons-NDP
SK	Regina – Qu'Appelle	2006 GE: HERLE, Allyce (F)	Cons-NDP
BC	Kootenay – Columbia	2006 GE: BURWELL, Jhim (M)	Cons-NDP
BC	Prince George – Peace River	2006 GE: BAUDER, Nathan (M)	Cons-NDP

Labels: 38th (2004) General Election, 39th (2006) General Election, Election Expenses, Election Finance

Here is the list associated with the second activity described by Geoff Donald in his affadavit (see my earlier blog post here).

List of 28 Liberal, NDP and BQ candidates named by the Conservatives as participating in reciprocal transfers of funds between central and candidate campaigns

(courtesy Stephen Taylor of the Blogging Tories, at stephentaylor.ca)

Riding		Elec: Candidate	Contest
NB	Madawaska – Restigouche	2006 GE: MARTIN, Rodolphe (M)	Lib-Cons
PE	Malpeque	2006 GE: EASTER, Wayne (M)	Lib-Cons
NS	Sackville – Eastern Shore	2006 GE: STOFFER, Peter (M)	NDP-Lib
BC	British Columbia Southern Interior	2006 GE: ATAMANENKO, Alex T. (M)	NDP-Lib
BC	Vancouver East	2006 GE: DAVIES, Libby (F)	NDP-Lib
BC	Vancouver Island North	2006 GE: BELL, Catherine J. (F)	NDP-Cons
BC	Fleetwood – Port Kells	2006 GE: BELL, Barry (M)	Cons-Lib
QC	Mégantic – L'Érable	2006 GE: CORRIVEAU, Yvan (M)	Cons-BQ
BC	Pitt Meadows – Maple Ridge – Mission	2006 GE: BOCKING, Mike (M)	Cons-NDP
BC	Saanich – Gulf Islands	2006 GE: BURGIS, Jennifer (F)	Cons-NDP
NL	Random – Burin – St. George's	2004 GE: MCGRATH, Des (M)	Lib-NDP
NS	Dartmouth – Cole Harbour	2004 GE: MACALPINE-GILLIS, Susan (F)	Lib-NDP
ON	Hamilton Mountain	2004 GE: PHINNEY, Beth (F)	Lib-NDP
ON	Barrie	2004 GE: CARROLL, Aileen (F)	Lib-Cons
ON	Don Valley West	2004 GE: GODFREY, John (M)	Lib-Cons
ON	Glengarry – Prescott – Russell	2004 GE: CAUVIER, Martin (M)	Lib-Cons
ON	Oak Ridges – Markham	2004 GE: TEMELKOVSKI, Lui (M)	Lib-Cons
ON	Ottawa South	2004 GE: MAZIGH, Monia (F)	Lib-Cons
ON	Ottawa West – Nepean	2004 GE: CATTERALL, Marlene (F)	Lib-Cons
QC	Honoré-Mercier	2004 GE: RODRIGUEZ, Pablo (M)	Lib-BQ
QC	Notre-Dame-de-Grâce – Lachine	2004 GE: JENNINGS, Marlene (F)	Lib-BQ
QC	Pontiac	2004 GE: LEDUC, L. Hubert (M)	Lib-BQ
QC	Saint-Laurent – Cartierville	2004 GE: DION, Stéphane (M)	Lib-BQ
QC	Québec	2004 GE: GAGNON, Christiane (F)	BQ-Lib
ON	Hamilton Centre	2004 GE: CHRISTOPHERSON, David (M)	NDP-Lib
ON	Windsor – Tecumseh	2004 GE: LIMOGES, Rick (M)	NDP-Lib
ON	Simcoe – Grey	2004 GE: BONWICK, Paul (M)	Cons-Lib
AB	Calgary West	2004 GE: PATTERSON, Tim (M)	Cons-Lib

Labels: 38th (2004) General Election, 39th (2006) General Election, Election Expenses, Election Finance

From Stephen Taylor's blog, the "Donald Affadavit" is an affadavit sworn by Conservative political operations officer Geoff Donald in October 2007, as part of the civil proceedings between the Conservative Party and Elections Canada.

In it, Mr. Donald detailed cases he believed would illustrate that there are three different aspects of activities, claimed to be common practices of all political parties, but for which Elections Canada is targetting only the Conservative Party. The three activities are: (i) grouped ad buys with "national" content, arranged by national campaign staff, (ii) reciprocal transfers of funds between the central and local campaigns or electoral district associations (EDAs), and (iii) unidentified advertising and publicity line items in candidate election expense returns. The cases spanned both the 2004 and 2006 General Elections.

There are a lot of names and ridings in that affadavit, which are proving time-consuming to document here in one sitting. Thus, first I offer the "Ad Buys". Tomorrow, I'll round things out with the "Transfers" and "Unidentified advertising".

As with the Conservative list of yesterday, clicking on the riding name will take you to the riding profile page (financial metrics pane) for that riding.

List of 59 Liberal and NDP candidates named by the Conservatives as participating in group advertising purchases containing possible national content

(courtesy Stephen Taylor of the Blogging Tories, at stephentaylor.ca)

Riding		Elec: Candidate	Contest
NB	Beauséjour	2006 GE: LEBLANC, Dominic (M)	Lib-Cons
NB	Fredericton	2006 GE: SCOTT, Andy (M)	Lib-Cons
NB	Madawaska – Restigouche	2006 GE: D'AMOURS, Jean-Claude (J.C.) (M)	Lib-Cons
NB	Miramichi	2006 GE: HUBBARD, Charles Isaac (M)	Lib-Cons
NB	Moncton – Riverview – Dieppe	2006 GE: MURPHY, Brian (M)	Lib-Cons
NB	Saint John	2006 GE: ZED, Paul (M)	Lib-Cons
NB	Fundy Royal	2006 GE: HUNTER, Eldon (M)	Cons-Lib
NB	New Brunswick Southwest	2006 GE: SMITH, Stanley John (M)	Cons-Lib
NB	Tobique – Mactaquac	2006 GE: SAVOY, Andy (M)	Cons-Lib
NB	Acadie – Bathurst	2006 GE: MERSEREAU, Marcelle (F)	NDP-Lib
ON	Trinity – Spadina	2006 GE: CHOW, Olivia (F)	NDP-Lib
BC	Burnaby – Douglas	2006 GE: SIKSAY, Bill (M)	NDP-Lib
BC	Burnaby – New Westminster	2006 GE: JULIAN, Peter (M)	NDP-Lib
BC	British Columbia Southern Interior	2006 GE: ATAMANENKO, Alex T. (M)	NDP-Lib
BC	Vancouver East	2006 GE: DAVIES, Libby (F)	NDP-Lib
BC	Victoria	2006 GE: SAVOIE, Denise (F)	NDP-Lib
BC	Nanaimo – Cowichan	2006 GE: CROWDER, Jean A. (F)	NDP-Cons
BC	New Westminster – Coquitlam	2006 GE: BLACK, Dawn (F)	NDP-Cons
BC	Vancouver Island North	2006 GE: BELL, Catherine J. (F)	NDP-Cons
SK	Blackstrap	2006 GE: KOSSICK, Don (M)	Cons-NDP
SK	Palliser	2006 GE: DUSEL, Jo-Anne (F)	Cons-NDP
SK	Regina – Lumsden – Lake Centre	2006 GE: KOVATCH, Maurice (Moe) (M)	Cons-NDP
SK	Regina – Qu'Appelle	2006 GE: NYSTROM, Lorne Edmund (M)	Cons-NDP
SK	Saskatoon – Humboldt	2006 GE: MASON, Andrew (M)	Cons-NDP
SK	Saskatoon – Rosetown – Biggar	2006 GE: WIEBE, Nettie (F)	Cons-NDP
BC	Nanaimo – Alberni	2006 GE: UPPAL, Manjeet (M)	Cons-NDP
BC	Saanich – Gulf Islands	2006 GE: BURGIS, Jennifer (F)	Cons-NDP
SK	Saskatoon – Wanuskewin	2006 GE: MADDIN, Jim (M)	Cons-Lib
BC	Vancouver Centre	2006 GE: ROBINSON, Svend J. (M)	Lib-NDP
BC	Vancouver Kingsway	2006 GE: WADDELL, Ian (M)	Lib-NDP
SK	Wascana	2006 GE: YUM, Helen (F)	Lib-Cons
AB	Calgary East	2004 GE: MAXIM, James (M)	Cons-Lib
AB	Calgary Centre-North	2004 GE: MCCLUSKY, Cathy (F)	Cons-Lib
AB	Calgary Northeast	2004 GE: MUTI, Dale (M)	Cons-Lib
AB	Calgary – Nose Hill	2004 GE: HANEY, Ted (M)	Cons-Lib
AB	Calgary Centre	2004 GE: TURNBULL, Julia (F)	Cons-Lib
AB	Calgary Southeast	2004 GE: TANNER, Jim (M)	Cons-Lib
AB	Calgary Southwest	2004 GE: ROBERTS, Avalon (F)	Cons-Lib
AB	Calgary West	2004 GE: THOMPSON, Justin (M)	Cons-Lib
AB	Crowfoot	2004 GE: CAMPBELL, Adam (M)	Cons-Lib
AB	Fort McMurray – Athabasca	2004 GE: FAULKNER, Doug (M)	Cons-Lib
AB	Edmonton – Mill Woods – Beaumont	2004 GE: KILGOUR, David (M)	Lib-Cons
AB	Edmonton Centre	2004 GE: MCLELLAN, Anne (F)	Lib-Cons
AB	Edmonton East	2004 GE: BETHEL, John (M)	Cons-Lib
AB	Edmonton – Leduc	2004 GE: KING, Bruce (M)	Cons-Lib
AB	Edmonton – St. Albert	2004 GE: SAEED, Moe (M)	Cons-Lib
AB	Edmonton – Sherwood Park	2004 GE: TOWNS, Maureen (F)	Cons-Lib
AB	Edmonton – Spruce Grove	2004 GE: MATHER, Neil (M)	Cons-Lib
AB	Edmonton – Strathcona	2004 GE: CARLSON, Debby (F)	Cons-Lib
AB	Lethbridge	2004 GE: NICOL, Ken (M)	Cons-Lib
AB	Macleod	2004 GE: SHADE, Chris (M)	Cons-Lib
AB	Medicine Hat	2004 GE: COCKS, Bill (M)	Cons-Lib
AB	Peace River	2004 GE: CARLSTROM, Lyle (M)	Cons-Lib
AB	Red Deer	2004 GE: KURATA, Luke (M)	Cons-Lib
AB	Vegreville – Wainwright	2004 GE: STEWART, Duff (M)	Cons-Lib
AB	Westlock – St. Paul	2004 GE: DION, Joe (M)	Cons-Lib
AB	Wetaskiwin	2004 GE: BONNETT, Rick (M)	Cons-Lib
AB	Wild Rose	2004 GE: STEWART, Judy (F)	Cons-Lib
AB	Yellowhead	2004 GE: CROSSLEY, Peter (M)	Cons-Lib

Labels: 38th (2004) General Election, 39th (2006) General Election, Election Expenses, Election Finance

In a blog-post earlier today, Aaron Wherry of "The Commons" at Macleans.ca transcribed a list of 65 of the 2006 Conservative candidates identified by Liberal M.P. Dominic LeBlanc as being possible persons of interest in the legal dispute between Elections Canada and the Conservative Party.

To be helpful, I've further transposed that list here, added hyperlinks to the Riding Financial Metrics pages here at the Pundits' Guide, and re-organized them by the party contest in 2006.

If anyone knows who the other two candidates might be (I've been reading 67, but only count 65 here), drop me a line and I'll add them.

Also, for the sake of balance and comparison, I'll now be looking for the names of the examples the Conservative Party gave of transfers in other parties, but again if anyone can point me in the right direction on that score as well, they'll be posted here sooner.

[UPDATE: I believe, based on some reader correspondence, the print edition of the Globe & Mail and a CBC television story from last night that the other two are Liberato Martelli in Bourassa, and Patrick Robert in Gatineau. Those two names have been added below.]

[FURTHER UPDATE: I also notice that Stephen Taylor and Steve Janke have posted documents from the Conservatives about other cases of transfers, so I'll document any names I find there in a separate post tonight.]

[FINAL UPDATE: An alert reader has drawn my attention to this CP story from last week, which had the complete and correct list from the Elections Commissioner's warrant documents. In fact, Liberato Martelli in Bourassa was not the 67th name, Garreth McDonald from Winnipeg North was. The list below has been amended accordingly.]

List of Conservative candidates named by the Liberals as participating in election finance transfers

(courtesy Aaron Wherry, "The Commons" at macleans.ca)

Riding		Cons. candidate	Contest
QC	Beauce	BERNIER, Maxime (M)	Cons-BQ
QC	Beauport – Limoilou	BOUCHER, Sylvie (F)	Cons-BQ
QC	Charlesbourg – Haute-Saint-Charles	PETIT, Daniel (M)	Cons-BQ
QC	Lévis – Bellechasse	BLANEY, Steven (M)	Cons-BQ
QC	Lotbinière – Chutes-de-la-Chaudière	GOURDE, Jacques (M)	Cons-BQ
QC	Louis-Hébert	HARVEY, Luc (M)	Cons-BQ
QC	Louis-Saint-Laurent	VERNER, Josée (F)	Cons-BQ
QC	Mégantic – L'Érable	PARADIS, Christian (M)	Cons-BQ
QC	Pontiac	CANNON, Lawrence (M)	Cons-BQ
ON	Sarnia – Lambton	DAVIDSON, Patricia (Pat) A. (F)	Cons-Lib
BC	Cariboo – Prince George	HARRIS, Richard (Dick) (M)	Cons-Lib
BC	Kelowna – Lake Country	CANNAN, Ronald D.E. (M)	Cons-Lib
BC	Okanagan – Coquihalla	DAY, Stockwell B. (M)	Cons-Lib
SK	Cypress Hills – Grasslands	ANDERSON, David L. (Cons) (M)	Cons-NDP
BC	Kootenay – Columbia	ABBOTT, Jim (M)	Cons-NDP
BC	Okanagan – Shuswap	MAYES, Colin (M)	Cons-NDP
BC	Prince George – Peace River	HILL, Jay D. (M)	Cons-NDP
NL	Bonavista – Gander – Grand Falls – Windsor	HYNES, Aaron (M)	Lib-Cons
NL	Humber – St. Barbe – Baie Verte	PELLEY JR., Cyril (M)	Lib-Cons
NL	Labrador	GOUDIE, Joseph (M)	Lib-Cons
NL	Random – Burin – St. George's	DOWNEY, Cynthia (F)	Lib-Cons
PE	Malpeque	NOBLE, George (M)	Lib-Cons
NB	Beauséjour	LEGER, Omer (M)	Lib-Cons
NB	Moncton – Riverview – Dieppe	DOUCET, Charles (M)	Lib-Cons
QC	Lac-Saint-Louis	PAINE, Andrea (F)	Lib-Cons
QC	Mount Royal	DRABKIN, Neil Martin (M)	Lib-Cons
QC	Pierrefonds – Dollard	RAE, Don (M)	Lib-Cons
ON	Kitchener Centre	CAGE, Steven (M)	Lib-Cons
ON	Scarborough Centre	JAMES, Roxanne L. (F)	Lib-Cons
ON	Vaughan	MAJKOT, Richard (M)	Lib-Cons
SK	Desnethé – Missinippi – Churchill River	HARRISON, Jeremy E. (M)	Lib-Cons
NS	Dartmouth – Cole Harbour	CAMPBELL, Robert A. (M)	Lib-NDP
NS	Halifax West	KHOSLA, Rakesh (M)	Lib-NDP
ON	Algoma – Manitoulin – Kapuskasing	WEST, Ian (M)	Lib-NDP
ON	Davenport	RODRIGUES, Theresa (F)	Lib-NDP
ON	Thunder Bay – Rainy River	LESKOWSKI, David (M)	Lib-NDP
ON	York South – Weston	HALICKI, Stephen (M)	Lib-NDP
BC	Esquimalt – Juan de Fuca	DESOUZA, Troy (M)	Lib-NDP
BC	Vancouver Kingsway	WONG, Kanman (M)	Lib-NDP
QC	Bourassa	MARTELLI, Liberato (M)	Lib-BQ
QC	Hull – Aylmer	POIRIER, Gilles (M)	Lib-BQ
QC	Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Lachine	MACKENZIE, Allen F. (M)	Lib-BQ
QC	Saint-Laurent – Cartierville	ALAM, Ishrat (F)	Lib-BQ
BC	Burnaby – Douglas	DRAZENOVIC, George (M)	NDP-Lib
BC	Burnaby – New Westminster	DALTON, Marc (M)	NDP-Lib
BC	Vancouver East	PAGTAKHAN, Elizabeth M. (F)	NDP-Lib
MB	Winnipeg Centre	STERZER, Helen (F)	NDP-Lib
MB	Winnipeg North	MCDONALD, Garreth (M)	NDP-Lib
ON	London – Fanshawe	MAILER, Dan (M)	NDP-Lib
ON	Parkdale – High Park	KLUFAS, Jurij (M)	NDP-Lib
ON	Timmins – James Bay	GRAHAM, Ken (M)	NDP-Lib
ON	Toronto – Danforth	CLAUSEN, Kren (M)	NDP-Lib
ON	Trinity – Spadina	GOLDSTEIN, Sam (M)	NDP-Lib
ON	Windsor West	TESHUBA, Alfonso (M)	NDP-Lib
NS	Halifax	HOUSE, Andrew (M)	NDP-Lib
BC	Nanaimo – Cowichan	SOWDEN, Norm (M)	NDP-Cons
QC	Argenteuil – Papineau – Mirabel	COURVILLE, Suzanne (F)	BQ-Cons
QC	Bas-Richelieu – Nicolet – Bécancour	HÉLIE-LAMBERT, Marie-Ève (F)	BQ-Cons
QC	Compton – Stanstead	CALDWELL, Gary (M)	BQ-Cons
QC	Drummond	PINEAULT, Jean-Marie (M)	BQ-Cons
QC	Laurentides – Labelle	BEAUREGARD, Jean-Serge (M)	BQ-Cons
QC	Montmorency – Charlevoix – Haute-Côte-Nord	LABERGE, Yves (M)	BQ-Cons
QC	Québec	BOISVERT, Frédérik (M)	BQ-Cons
QC	Richmond – Arthabaska	LANDRY, Jean (M)	BQ-Cons
QC	Shefford	LAMBERT, Jean (M)	BQ-Cons
QC	Sherbrooke	NADEAU, Marc (M)	BQ-Cons
QC	Gatineau	ROBERT, Patrick (M)	BQ-Lib
QC	Portneuf – Jacques-Cartier	BRUCE, Howard M. (M)	Ind-BQ

Labels: 39th (2006) General Election, Election Expenses, Election Finance

Another of the questions frequently raised in discussions about the recent by-election results was the issue of which party was "taking votes away" from which other parties, and whether it was different in different parts of the country. Several steps are required in order to rigourously quantify the answer to that question.

As a start, I've added two new measures to the summary tables found on both the Browse Regions and Browse Elections pages, namely (i) the number of ridings in which a party's percent of the vote held or went up since the last election, and (ii) the number of ridings where it went down. The last election is determined for each riding for each election, thus the last election for Lethbridge, AB in 2006 was the 2004 general election, but for Labrador, NL it was the 2005 by-election instead.

For example, click here to see the results for just the 2006 General Election. Not too surprisingly, the Liberals went down in more ridings than they went up (278 vs. 30), while the Conservatives showed the opposite trend (down in 25, up in 283). The NDP increased its percentage of the vote in 233 seats, while the Greens showed an increase in 186, and the Bloc dropped in 73/75 Québec ridings (exactly reversing their pattern from the 2004 election, where they gained in 73/75).

That's the first step. But next, we might want to drill down to see things in, say, Montréal West Island, or the Golden Horseshoe, or Northern Ontario, or Edmonton, or Vancouver Island.

Or the entire province of Manitoba, or everywhere North of 60.

After that, we will want to see the numbers of seats in which one party went up while another party went down, and also be able to measure the amount of the average gain and loss. That's the functionality I will be coding this weekend, so users can test out their own theories about the Greens vs. the NDP and/or the Liberals, in different parts of the country, and then chart it, pour over the numbers, and see exactly which ridings were involved. Hours of fun for political junkies!

Meantime, here's a teaser ... I've compiled counts of the numbers of seats nationally in which each party went up and down together and in opposite directions as against each other party during the last General Election (shown below). Pundits may believe that things have changed since then, and no doubt they have, however during the last election, the NDP vote and Green vote moved up or down together more often that it diverged, and where it did, the NDP vote increased at the expense of the Greens more often (85 ridings) than the converse case (37 ridings).

On the other hand, the Green Party gained in 176 ridings where the Liberals lost ground, while Liberals gained at the expense of the Greens in just 21 ridings. The NDP gained ground in 224 ridings where the Liberals fell back, with only 21 ridings following the opposite pattern.

Also, note that the Bloc lost ground to the Conservatives, NDP and even the Greens ... here is a case where I really need to add an indication of the magnitude so we can quantify that, as well as drilling down to the area of interest to see local differences.



Please see the relevant entries on the Pundit Metrics page for further methodological details, and some qualifications to the interpretation of the data in earlier electoral events.

---------------------

The Guide was cited and used by Don Newman on Wednesday's CBC Politics broadcast, which my mother saw and pointed out to me. This just means I'm going to have to redouble my efforts to stay ahead of all the nominations news (stay tuned for a big update this weekend), and otherwise provide counterintuitive but interesting fodder for pundits everywhere to mull over. Thank you to everyone who has written to offer positive feedback and thoughtful suggestions. It's truly appreciated.

Labels: 39th (2006) General Election, Data Analysis

Here's what I've really been waiting to see for a long time, and I hope you have too.

I've been able to scrape, clean and normalize the Candidates' Returns from the 2006 General Election, and make them available from the profile page of any given riding (let's pick South Shore – St. Margaret's in Nova Scotia).

Notice there is a new tabstrip on the riding profile page that allows a user to select either "Riding Results" or "Financial Metrics", and which works just like the tabstrips on the pages for Browsing Regions, Elections or Parties.

As before the "Riding Results", now on the first tab, show us that the riding is currently held by Conservative M.P. Gerald Keddy, but switched (just barely) from a Conservative-Liberal contest in 2004 to a Conservative-NDP contest in 2006. All 4 major english party candidates have been nominated there for the forthcoming election, including former Halifax West M.P. Gordon Earle for the third time in this new redistributed riding for him.

Now, let's click on the second tab called "Financial Metrics" to see what's new. You can see that all 5 candidates from 2006 have submitted Candidate Returns to Elections Canada. However the returns for Keddy, the former Green candidate Katy Morris Boudreau, and the Christian Heritage candidate Jim Hnatiuk, have not yet been reviewed by Elections Canada, which is why they are shown in italics (tech speak: or at least I used the '<em>' tag, in case your browser doesn't show "ems" in italics).

The new Metrics are quickly described on the Pundit Metrics page, although I plan to expand those explanations as time permits. Notice that you can click on any metric title in the table to take you directly to its definition.

So, what can we tell from the financial metrics? The first thing that jumps out here is the fact that Keddy's return shows him over the spending limit. Liberal candidate Darian Huskilson and NDP candidate Gordon Earle both raised and spent almost the same amount of money (52% of the limit), although Earle's campaign was supported 3 1/2 times more by his national party's campaign than his Liberal competitor's was.

The cost per vote is a metric that should be compared across campaigns, however the earlier data is not yet added to my database (soon though; stay tuned). It can also be compared to the amount of public financing now extended to registered parties for each vote they receive (the figure of $1.75 per vote is what parties are now getting, based on the 2006 election results).

In the near future, I will be adding the campaign financials for recent by-elections, and then start working backwards through the previous general elections and by-elections. Also, I plan to show more details from the financial data in additional tabs on the riding profile pages, and add similar tabs to the candidate index pages.

Next, I will add some aggregates of this data to the Summary grids in the Browse Regions, Browse Elections, and Browse Parties pages. Finally, I will assemble the Browse Candidates page, including some new "Pundit Candidate Queries" that I hope readers will find interesting (e.g., candidates receiving the biggest transfers from their parties, having raised the most money, having the greatest number of individual contributors, having transferred the greatest amount from their local riding association, etc., etc.). Then eventually I'll include the political parties' campaign fund-raising and spending to round out the picture.

Please let me know if this format is useful, and/or if there are other details or metrics you would like to see. I hope to add a link directly to each candidate's return online, but that will take a bit of time to compile.

Labels: 39th (2006) General Election, Election Expenses, Election Finance