The latest judicial recount, whose results were announced late this afternoon, has changed the rankings of the Closest Contests in the recent general election. The new "Closest Contest" (and most narrow upset, for that matter) in the 2008 General Election is now (drum roll):

• Kitchener – Waterloo, ON, where Conservative candidate Peter Braid was confirmed to have defeated Liberal incumbent Andrew Telegdi by just 17 votes.
• Anecdotally the next narrowest is Vancouver South, BC, where incumbent Liberal M.P. Ujjal Dosanjh was reported earlier this week to be ahead of Conservative candidate Wai Young by just 22 votes after a partial recount (down from 33 in the validated results), although the presiding judge agreed to reexamine the count today, and no final result has been officially announced as yet. [UPDATE: ... because they hadn't finished yet, according to the Vancouver Sun Saturday morning. They'll go back at it on Monday.]

For the record, 17 votes represents a margin of less than 0.0% of the valid ballots cast (17/60534 = 0.02808339115207982290943932335547% of the vote, to be precise).

It also represents less than 1 vote per poll (in fact, 17/265 = 0.064150943396226415094339622641509 votes per poll if you want it to that many decimal places).

Voter turnout in Kitchener – Waterloo also declined from 70.4% in 2006 to 64.5% in 2008.

If anyone needed any additional evidence to prove just how much difference a single vote can make ... in, let's be honest, a riding that not one national pundit had seriously suggested was in play ... let this one be a lesson to us all.

Labels: 40th General Election, Close Margins, Recounts

This morning's Hill Times writes about how the two main parties are targetting the ridings won by less than 5% of the vote last time (i.e., MargPct < 5%). This criterion also appears as one of "Election Pundit Queries found on the Browse Elections page in this database, allowing you to see quickly which ridings those are for all past elections, called "Closest contests (MargPct <= 0.05)".

At least one writer tonight, however, is questioning whether a close margin should be the only criteria for targetting ridings likely to change hands again.

Naturally, it makes sense to consider the 2006 results as a relevant factor in allocating resources. But any party which relies unduly on 2006 alone as its baseline figures to miss a significant portion of both the risks and the opportunities facing it next time out. -- Accidental Deliberations

So, I decided to do an analysis that compared seats previously won by margins of < 5% against Ridings that changed hands party-wise in an election (another Election Pundit Query), to see how well a narrow margin predicted later riding turnovers. Here are the results:

Distribution of seats by Hold vs. Change and Previous Percent Margin of Victory, 1997-2006

	Under 5% Hold	Under 5% Chng	Over 5% Chng	All Under 5%	All Chg
2004 -> 2006	33	25	30	58	55
2000 -> 2004	11	28 (24)*	39	39	63
1997 -> 2000	21	15 (11)*	22	36	55 33

* reflects adjustments between the 2000 General Election results on the 1996 Redistribution boundaries and the 2000 Transposition results on the 2003 Redistribution boundaries.

The statisticians out there can run the chi-squares on this, but my Coles Notes version is that, in each of the three cases here, more seats changed hands where the previous margin of victory had been over 5% than did under it.

[UPDATE: Fixed transposition error in the table.]

Labels: Close Margins, Data Analysis, Seats that changed hands