Candidate election campaign return data has now been entered and/or updated for the 2006 By-elections, the 2007 By-elections, and the 2008 By-elections.

Moreover I also found the time to add in the information required to link to every candidate's original return details at the Elections Canada website (except for 1997 General Election candidates, since that election's data is nearly impossible to link to directly; sorry).

If you're new to the Pundits' Guide, here's how to find candidate financial 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.

Nearly all of the by-election returns are in "as reviewed" state for the 2006 and 2007 by-elections, but there are quite a few still in the "as submitted" stage for the 2008 by-elections candidates, as you can see from the table below.

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

Party	Party Name	2006 By	2007 By	2008 By
Oth	Canadian Action Party			1
Oth	neorhino.ca			1
Ind	Indep/No Affil	1
Lib	Liberal Party of Canada	1		2
NDP	New Democratic Party		1	2
Cons	Conservative Party of Canada			1
Grn	Green Party of Canada		1	3

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

It must be that time of year, because new candidates are stepping up and others are stepping aside ... enough to keep me writing all week.

Stepping aside is:

• Biologist Pierre Béland, previously set to run for the Liberals in Rimouski-Neigette – Témiscouata – Les Basques, QC is stepping down as candidate in order to resume his scientific career. The riding association does not currently have a replacement on the horizon, its vice president told Le Soleil. Béland's decision follows a similar decision by his nominated Conservative opponent, lawyer Daniel Langlais. The riding is currently represented by Independent (and former Bloc Québécois) M.P. Louise Thibault, who has also signalled that she will be running again.

Stepping up is:

• In St. Paul's, ON, the NDP has chosen Nancy Patchell to run against four-term Liberal M.P. Carolyn Bennett. That's all I know for now. [UPDATE: ] She is an IT professional and youth justice activist.
• Langara College Political Science prof and Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives research associate, Peter Prontzos, will be acclaimed tonight as his party's candidate in South Surrey – White Rock – Cloverdale, BC, facing two-term Conservative M.P. Russ Hiebert.

The Prime Minister was also stepping it up in Saint-Lambert at the Fête Nationale festivities yesterday with his two prospective by-election candidates, a clear signal the by-election call is coming soon.

Meantime, Elections Canada released the Official Voting Results (including the poll-by-poll results) for the March 17 by-elections yesterday. They contain a small number of changes to the numbers of electors and the number of polling stations, as well as the candidates' occupations and residences. I have updated the database with that data: see the ridings linked to here.

Labels: 40th General Election Nominations, Conservatives, Fall 2008 By-elections, Liberals, March 17 2008 By-elections, NDP

As previously mentioned, the by-election results analysis is now being retired from the top of the blog's main page into this post. Time to move on, now ... to general election nominations coverage, and more analysis of some new metrics I've been adding to the site. Meantime, here is the data that could be found at the punditsguide.ca home page during the week and a half following the by-elections.

• by-election summary
• by-election result details overview
• riding profiles for Toronto Centre, Willowdale, Desnethé – Missinippi – Churchill River, Vancouver Quadra, including links to their pages at Elections Canada, Statistics Canada, Wikipedia, the Library of Parliament, the CBC.ca 2004 and 2006 Election profiles, the CTV.ca 2006 Election profile, and their pages at the Election Prediction Project. Les versions françaises des profils lient aux ressources francophones disponible.
• Blog postings

	Vancouver Quadra	DMCR, SK	Willowdale, ON	Toronto Centre, ON
Winner	MURRAY, Joyce (F)	CLARKE, Robert G. (M)	HALL FINDLAY, Martha (F)	RAE, Bob (M)
Contest	Lib-Cons	Cons-Lib	Lib-Cons	Lib-NDP
Polls	237/237	182/182	270/270	275/275
%TO	34.0%	25.0%	24.4%	27.9%
Raw Margin	151	1696	6666	10875
Votes/Poll	0.6	9.3	24.7	39.5
% Margin	0.5%	16.2%	29.3%	45.6%
% Marg 1-3	21.6%	30.3%	53.6%	46.1%
% Marg 1-4	22.6%	44.8%	54.6%	47.1%

Party Scorecard - 2008 By-election(s)

2008 By-election(s)	Lib	NDP	Grn	BQ	Cons	Rest
Vote Pct	48.3% (-2.5%)	12.1% (-4.9%)	10.1% (+5.7%)		29.1% (+1.7%)	0.4% (+0.0%)
Seats	3 (-1)				1 (+1)
2nds	1 (+1)	1 (--)			2 (-1)
Rebate Eligib.	4 (--)	3 (-1)	2 (+2)		4 (--)
Raw Vote	41136 (-59,207)	10297 (-23,202)	8645 (-211)		24780 (-29,205)	371 (-450)

Labels: March 17 2008 By-elections, Party Scorecard

Elections Canada has released "validated" results for three of the four by-election ridings (all but Desnethé – Missinippi – Churchill River), which have now been added to the database here. The margin hasn't changed from 151 for Vancouver Quadra, to answer the first obvious question; and, no, they haven't reported the final two poll results from DMCR either.

I've also updated the first two "pundit queries" on the "Search the Database" page: (i) Nominations Progress in Seats with Retiring Incumbents no longer includes the by-election ridings, and (ii) Nominations Progress in Seats with First-time Incumbents now includes all the by-election ridings since the last general election (but still sorted by who won the seats in the last general election; it's going to take a bit more work to adjust it according to the current incumbent).

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

I would also like to add a very warm welcome to all the new readers who stopped by courtesy of Paul Wells' very kind referral the other day. Boy, he sure packs a punch traffic-wise!

Labels: March 17 2008 By-elections

Tonight there is at least more women, one more aboriginal person, and one more former Premier in Parliament ... and almost certainly one more recount.

In case you went to bed early on the east coast, Vancouver Quadra proved the surprise shocker of the evening, when with the last 2 polls reporting, the Liberals' margin suddenly dropped dramatically to only 151 votes over the Conservatives ... just 0.5% of the vote, or 0.6 votes per poll. Wow.

The other see-saw of the evening was the three-way battle for 2nd place in Toronto Centre between the NDP, Greens and Conservatives, but fortunately or unfortunately they don't give recounts for that.

Looking at the Party Scorecard, the Liberals lost one seat to the Conservatives in Desnethé – Missinippi – Churchill River, the Greens increased their vote enough in two ridings to become eligible for a rebate of candidate election expenses, and the NDP and Liberals lost votes percentage-wise to the Greens and Conservatives.

In their skirmishes for who placed ahead of whom, the Greens and NDP will no doubt take consolation in their standings in Willowdale and Toronto Centre respectively.

But pundits will probably be looking more closely at the Vancouver Quadra results, since the Greens grew their vote substantially enough there (by 8.5 percentage points or so, 7 of them from the Liberals), with the Conservatives taking another 6.5 percentage points out of Liberal support on the other side, to nearly cost them the seat. Of note, this riding had the highest turn-out of the four tonight (that nice B.C. weather perhaps?), although none were as high as the turnouts in the three seats contested in Québec last fall.

Recounts rarely change final results to the tune of 150 votes, so Liberal Joyce Murray is probably safe in her victory in Quadra. But no candidate in that situation can truly breathe easy until the official count and recount are put to bed and the writ is returned to the Speaker.

Labels: March 17 2008 By-elections, Party Scorecard

This afternoon, I'm introducing a scorecard to keep track of the parties' performance on by-election night Monday.

Of course, winning a seat is the primary objective of a political party in any first-past-the-post system. However, pundits would get very bored if that were the only criteria for ranking things.

Therefore, I've compiled a summary table that shows at a glance where gains and losses are made on four other metrics as well: 2nd place finishes, percent of the vote, raw vote, and the number of seats in which a candidate achieved a sufficient vote percentage to become eligible for a rebate of election expenses (one metric, believe me, that the parties look at *very* closely ... especially the ones for whom fund-raising and campaign finance is a major preoccupation).

The Party Scorecard table will appear at the top of the home page here (i.e., the blog's main address) throughout the by-elections result period, and will stay as "live" as I can keep it that night. Then I'll retire it to a blog-post for historical reference.

For an example of what you'll find there, here's what the Party Scorecard looked like for the past two sets of by-elections.

Party Scorecard - 2007 By-election(s)

2007 By-election(s)	Lib	NDP	Grn	BQ	Cons	Rest
Vote Pct	14.2% (-3.0%)	17.1% (+8.0%)	2.6% (-1.7%)	28.1% (-16.2%)	37.0% (+12.2%)	1.0% (+0.7%)
Seats	(-1)	1 (+1)		1 (-1)	1 (+1)
2nds	1 (+1)			1 (--)	1 (-1)
Rebate Eligib.	1 (--)	1 (--)		3 (--)	2 (-1)
Raw Vote	12104 (-10,076)	14587 (+2,729)	2197 (-3,374)	23891 (-33,311)	31480 (-474)	882 (+458)

A few things jump out of the 2007 By-election score-card: (i) the Conservatives although increasing their percentage of the vote, actually lost raw votes across the three ridings (Outremont, Roberval – Lac-Saint-Jean, and Saint-Hyacinthe – Bagot, all in Québec), and in fact dropped below the rebate threshold in Outremont, (ii) the NDP was the only party to increase both its raw vote and vote percentage, and (iii) the strong showing of the Green Party from the previous set of by-elections in 2006 (held in London North Centre, ON and Repentigny, QC) was not repeated in the 2007 group.

Party Scorecard - 2006 By-elections

2006 By-elections	Lib	NDP	Grn	BQ	Cons	Rest
Vote Pct	22.0% (-3.0%)	10.9% (-5.1%)	14.2% (+9.9%)	29.8% (-0.3%)	21.9% (-2.3%)	1.2% (+0.8%)
Seats	1 (--)			1 (--)
2nds			1 (+1)		1 (-1)
Rebate Eligib.	1 (--)	1 (--)	1 (+1)	1 (--)	2 (--)
Raw Vote	15225 (-13,731)	7552 (-11,056)	9845 (+4,803)	20635 (-14,323)	15149 (-12,943)	836 (+393)

This last point is important to underscore, because by-elections are so highly volatile ... they are ridings without incumbents, where parties are able to focus as much or as little attention on them as they like, and where the set of ridings in play is small and random and not usually representative of the political terrain as a whole.

[UPDATE: Blogger sucks at tables. I hope they fix that soon. :-(]

Labels: March 17 2008 By-elections, Nov 27 2006 By-elections, Party Scorecard, Sept 17 2007 By-elections

Elections Canada has just released preliminary advanced voting numbers for the four by-election ridings, and there appears to be a lot of interest in the race in Vancouver Quadra. The level of advanced voting there is higher, relative to advanced voting in the last general election, than what is being reported for the other 3 ridings.

Preliminary number of advance poll voters in 2008 By

Electoral district	# advance poll voters 2008 By	# advance poll voters 2006 GE	% of 2006 GE adv vote	Electors 2008 By	% of Electors 2008 By
TOTAL	7,470	19,739	37.8%	308,743	2.4%
Desnethé– Missinippi– Churchill River	850	2,365	35.9%	41,682	2.0%
Toronto Centre	1,721	5,220	33.0%	87,898	2.0%
Vancouver Quadra	3,437	6,097	56.4%	85,512	4.0%
Willowdale	1,462	6,057	24.1%	93,651	1.6%

Pundits will be asking whether campaigns are making special efforts to "get out the vote" to the advance polls, and whether the advanced voting is taking place at any one place more than others (e.g., the University of B.C.). Since overall turnout is usually lower during by-elections than in general elections, a higher-than-expected advance voting turnout in one riding certainly makes that riding worth watching closely come Monday.

Labels: March 17 2008 By-elections, Turnout, Vancouver Quadra

Vancouver Quadra, home to the University of British Columbia (UBC), had one of the largest adult populations in Canada according to the 2001 Census. Adults are slightly more likely to be legally married (46%) than single (40%), although the latter category is slightly overrepresented compared to the Canadian norm, and the riding is slightly above average in the proportion of couples vs. lone-parent families.

As with other large Canadian cities, the riding has a significant immigrant population (37%), and a much larger than average percent of non-permanent residents. 30% reported membership in a visible minority group, notably Chinese (21%) plus a smattering of other predominantly south and east asian groups. However at just 1%, it recorded the 3rd lowest proportion in Western Canada of residents identifying themselves as Aboriginal.

The largest group claim no religious affiliation (38.5%), followed by Protestants (27.9%), Catholics (16.3%) and Buddhists (4.5%). Although 31% had a mother tongue other than English or French, all but 2.6% had knowledge of English if not French as well. 71% speak English at home and another 11% speak both English and a non-official language there. The riding is in the top 10% of residents speaking both English and a non-official language at work, however the vast majority (87%) speak English only in the workplace.

As expected in a riding that's home to a major university, education attainments of Quadra residents are very high: 49% had a university certificate, diploma or degree in 2001, the 2nd-ranked riding in this regard across the country (only Westmount-Ville Marie in Montréal is higher). Labour force participation in the riding is close to the Canadian norm, as is the unemployment rate (6.3% in 2001). However, the riding boasts the highest individual income, household income and family income in its province of British Columbia and is within 6 and 13 spots of the national maximums as well. It also recorded the highest average dwelling value in the country in 2001 at $552,781, in a riding where 57% are home-owners (in the lower fifth of the national range).

The major occupational categories are Business, finance and administrative occupations (18.1%), Sales and service occupations (17.9%; although the riding ranks 5th lowest in Canada here), Management occupations (15.5%), and it boasts the highest percent of residents employed in Occupations in social science, education, government service and religion (16.6%) in Canada. Riding employment also ranks high in Health occupations (8th in the country at 7.6%) and Occupations in art, culture, recreation and sport (11th nationally, at just under 7.6%).

Whoever wins Vancouver Quadra (its 1996 predecessor is found here) seems to keep the seat for several terms in a row, going back as far as 1949. Progressive Conservative Howard Green kept the seat for five terms until 1963; Liberal Grant Deachman kept it for three terms until 1972; Conservative Bill Clarke kept it for four terms until 1984, when he lost to Liberal Leader John Turner in spite of the Mulroney sweep. After two terms, Turner was replaced by Liberal Ted McWhinney in 1983, who served another two terms before retiring in favour of Liberal Stephen Owen in 2000. Owen was reelected twice, before retiring to accept a position with UBC, leading to the current by-election.

Notwithstanding the longevity of its elected M.P.'s, the riding has also seen larger slates of candidates from a variety of political backgrounds, including Canadian Action Party leader Connie Fogal in 2004, Marijuana Party leader Marc Boyer in 2006, along with recently-deceased peace and environmental activist Betty Krawczyk who ran there as an independent in 2006 as well. [UPDATE: I apologize for making this error; currently trying to track down how I could have got this mixed up. FURTHER UPDATE: It was Harriet Nahanie, for whom Betty Krawczyk was advocating, that passed away and I should have double-checked my memory of the details before writing this.]

The NDP has never been a serious factor in this riding, although it increased its vote share enough in 2004 and 2006 to become eligible for a rebate of election expenses. On the other hand, the combined Reform/Canadian Alliance plus PC vote in 1997 and 2000 (44.5% and 45.8%) exceeded the vote share obtained by the Liberals both times. The new Conservative party, represented by former Social Credit cabinet minister Stephen Rogers in 2004 and 2006, has not yet been able to assemble this coalition at the polling booth, with the old PC vote apparently splitting off between the NDP, the Greens and the Liberals. Both the leading parties raised and spent close to the spending limit in 2004 and 2006 without significant or any assistance from their central parties.

In the current campaign, three of the six candidates have a connection to UBC: Conservative candidate Deborah Meredith is a lecturer, New Democrat Rebecca Coad is a political science student, and Green candidate Dan Grice is a graduate and former UBC student politician. Two others are graduates of Simon Fraser: Canadian Action Party candidate Psam Frank, and Liberal Joyce Murray who has already run once federally in New Westminster-Coquitlam in 2006. Both Murray, the first environment minister in the provincial BC Liberal government, and Deborah Meredith won their nominations after competitive races. Former Rhino Party candidate John Turner is making a reappearance on behalf of the neorhino.ca party. It seems likely, however, that regardless of the outcome in this race, Vancouver Quadra will be represented by a woman after all the votes are counted.

	1997 GE	2000 GE	2004 GE	2006 GE
Lib	18,847 (42.1%)	22,253 (44.8%)	29,187 (52.4%)	28,655 (49.1%)
NDP	4,486 (10.0%)	2,595 (5.2%)	8,348 (15.0%)	9,379 (16.1%)
Cons/CA/Ref	12,340 (27.6%)	18,613 (37.5%)	14,648 (26.3%)	16,844 (28.9%)
PC	7,546 (16.9%)	4,112 (8.3%)
Grn	1,155 (2.6%)	1,434 (2.9%)	3,118 (5.6%)	2,974 (5.1%)
Ind
Oth	346 (0.8%)	625 (1.3%)	364 (0.7%)	462 (0.9%)
TOTAL	44,922	49,826	55,829	58,445
ELECTORS	66,299 (67.8%TO)	78,664 (63.3%TO)	83,918 (66.5%TO)	86,513 (67.6%TO)

Labels: March 17 2008 By-elections, Vancouver Quadra

Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill River (DMCR) is the 7th largest riding in Canada and had the 12th smallest population in the 2001 census, nearly two-thirds of whom (64%) identified themselves as Aboriginal, with an immigrant population of just 1.5%. In fact, after Nunavut and Churchill, MB in 2001, DMCR had the third highest concentration of aboriginal residents of any riding in Canada.

Although adult residents were slightly more likely to be married than single (45% vs. 42%), the riding was among the top 10% percentage of single (never married) residents, and had the 7th highest percent of single-parent families (26%; 20% female-headed), with the number two percent of male-headed single parent families in the country (6%), and the number three family size (3.5).

By religion, 45% are Catholic, 38% Protestant, 13% claim no affiliation, and there are no other groups of note. 34% report a mother tongue other than English or French (with the remainder nearly all reporting English), and that mother tongue is spoken at home either with English (21%) or on its own (another 12%). The riding also records the fourth highest rate of speaking a combination of English and non-official languages in the workplace (19%), although most people work in English only (78%), and just 2% work exclusively in a non-official language.

The education profile of the adult population skews predominantly towards those not having completed high school (at 53%, the second-highest ranked riding nationally), and is among the lowest ranked in completing high school (4th), college (2nd) or university credentials (7th), although it ranks in the top third for Trade certifications.

42% of the adult population is not in the labour force and, of those participating, the riding recorded the 11th highest unemployment rate in 2001 (17.8%). While most reported doing 5 to 29 hours of unpaid housework, the percentages reporting 60 or more hours (14%) and 30-59 hours (16%) were the highest and fourth highest nationally. Thus, in 2001 the riding recorded the second-lowest individual income and second-lowest family income in Canada (and the lowest in Saskatchewan), and was among the bottom 10% nationally in household income.

Most people reported working in Sales and service occupations (21.1%), Occupations unique to primary industry (16.9%), and in Trades, transport and equipment operators and related occupations (16.1%), and although the riding scored highest in Canada in unclassified occupations (6.1%), it ranked 4th lowest in Business, finance and administrative occupations (just 9.5%).

53% of the riding are home-owners, 23% are tenants, with the remainder presumably living in band-owned housing or other forms of land tenure. The average dwelling value of $76,978 is in the bottom 10% nationally.

The seat has re-elected an incumbent Member of Parliament just once (Rick Laliberté in 2000) since it was formed in 1987 from parts of the former ridings of Mackenzie, Prince Albert, and The Battlefords-Meadow Lake. Laliberté had run for the NDP nomination against incumbent M.P. Ray Funk when the riding was called Prince Albert-Churchill River in 1993 and, having lost the nomination, ran as an independent against Funk, likely costing Funk his seat to Liberal Gordon Kirkby. Laliberté succeeded in winning the NDP nomination in 1997, and defeated Kirkby to take back the seat (now called Churchill River) for the NDP, but then crossed the floor a few years later to sit and run for re-election as a Liberal in 2000.

By 2004, following reported criticisms of his travel spending, Laliberté chose not to re-present for the Liberal nomination and to retire from federal politics. But he later on opted to run as an independent after all, and his 10% vote-share is credited by some as perhaps handing the seat to Conservative Jeremy Harrison, in an election with a historically low turn-out for the riding (47% vs. its usual turnout of 57%-59%). In 2006, the Liberals nominated well-known Prince Albert Tribal Council president Gary Merasty, who defeated Harrison by a margin of just 67 votes in a return to historical turn-out levels, although to this day some Conservatives remain sceptical about the high turn-outs reported in many of the most remote communities where they were not able to supply scrutineers.

The Reform/Canadian Alliance/Conservative raw vote held steady at around 7,000 from 1997 to 2004, rising to just over 10,000 with an incumbent running in 2006. The vote share of the other parties has depended on turn-out, the strength of their campaign (only the Conservatives and Liberals raised and spent close to the limit in 2004 and 2006), and the participation and vote share of independent candidates. Thus, given that by-elections are usually characterizied by low turn-out, one might expect that under normal circumstances the Conservatives would be favoured here this time.

However circumstances have been anything but normal with candidate nominations in this contest, given the controversy that arose over Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion's decision to appoint an aboriginal woman candidate, Joan Beatty, with other local nomination candidates already active in the field (including Dion supporter and Saskatchewan organizer David Orchard, and aboriginal John Dorion). Moreover, Dion's choice of a very recently re-elected provincial MLA also raised concerns about the timeliness of her jump to the federal arena. Local supporters of the other nomination candidates complained about decisions being imposed on them from afar and met to form a breakaway Liberal riding association.

Also new for this riding, and so far as I can tell for the entire country, is the presence of an all-aboriginal slate of candidates by the three major parties (the Green Party announced a young non-aboriginal male candidate, Robin Orr, on the closing day for nominations). In addition to Beatty, who was the first aboriginal woman elected to the provincial legislature and appointed to cabinet, the Conservatives are running Aboriginal RCMP office Rob Clarke, and the NDP has the Deputy Mayor of Buffalo Narrows, Brian Morin. This development can be expected to further up-end any predictions one could make from past voting behaviour, putting DMCR on the top of every pundits' list of ridings to watch on March 17.

	1997 GE	2000 GE	2004 GE	2006 GE
Lib	5,994 (28.4%)	9,856 (41.8%)	5,815 (29.9%)	10,191 (41.4%)
NDP	7,288 (34.5%)	5,141 (21.8%)	3,910 (20.1%)	3,787 (15.%)
Cons/CA/Ref	6,750 (32.0%)	7,679 (32.6%)	7,279 (37.4%)	10,124 (41.1%)
PC	1,077 (5.1%)	755 (3.2%)
Grn			539 (2.8%)	534 (2.2%)
Ind			1,923 (9.8%)
Oth		143 (0.6%)
TOTAL	21,214	23,669	19,542	24,724
ELECTORS	37,059 (57.2%TO)	39,807 (59.5%TO)	41,216 (47.4%TO)	42,315 (58.4%TO)

Labels: Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill, March 17 2008 By-elections

Willowdale is among the top third most populous seats in Canada, located in the north of Toronto. In the 2001 census, over 50% of its population over 15 was married, and it was in the lowest 10% of the country in numbers of divorcees. 85% of its families were couples, virtually all of them married, and in fact Willowdale had the 8th lowest percentage of common-law couples nationally.

A solid majority of the riding were immigrants in 2001 (at 56% the 11th highest riding in this regard in Canada), plus another 2.25% non-permanent residents. Similarly, a majority of the riding belonged to a visible minority group, notably Chinese (29%), Korean (at 5% the riding with the highest concentration of Korean residents), followed by South Asian, West Asian and Black. The largest group in the religion category was "no affiliation" (27%), however Protestants and Catholics are present in roughly equal number (22% vs. 21%), and Jews slightly outnumber Muslims 4-to-3 (the riding has the 11th highest concentration of Jewish worshippers nationally).

Again, the majority of the riding reported a mother tongue other than English or French in 2001 (55%), but English is known by most everyone (85% plus another 10% who know English and French). Half speak English at home (48%) or English plus a non-official language (27%), but 23% speak only a non-official language at home (12th highest in the country in this regard). Still, 82% speak only English at work or English plus another non-official language (another 12%).

Willowdale contained the 10th highest percentage of university graduates nationally (at 39%), and another 23% have completed high school and perhaps some post-secondary education. Thus, while most people work in Business, finance and administrative occupations (22.4%), Sales and service occupations (18.0%), and management (16.7%), the riding scores high in employment in Natural and applied sciences and related occupations (at 13.4%, the 6th highest in Canada), and is 6th lowest in service sector employment.

Unemployment in 2001 (6.8%) was about half-way between the best and worst ridings in Canada, but then Willowdale was in the lowest 10% of ridings for labour force participation (only 59.4% were in the labour force). It ranked in the top 20% for Average individual income ($35,689), Average household income ($74,952) and Average family income ($81,664), and sported the 11th highest average dwelling value ($323,963) across the country. Nearly two-thirds of residents were home-owners (62.9%).

The seat (and its predecessor) was held by Liberal Jim Peterson since 1980, with a break between 1984 and 1988 when John Oostrom captured it for the Progressive Conservatives. During the period covered by this database, Peterson (the brother of the former Ontario Premier David Peterson) obtained a solid majority of all ballots cast. The NDP has not been much of a factor in this riding, although manged to restore its vote to historic levels by 2006 and become eligible for a rebate of election expenses. The combined Reform/Canadian Alliance and PC vote in 1997 and 2000 was 33-34%, and by 2006 the new Conservative party had captured all but 4% of that. The Green Party, which did not field candidates until 2004, has registered about 4% each time since, even as the NDP vote grew, suggesting that Green support may have come from disaffected PCs. Also noteworthy is the 6% point swing from Liberal Jim Peterson to second-time Conservative candidate Jovan Boseovski in 2006. Again, the relative competitiveness of the main players is confirmed in their fund-raising and spending records: only the Liberals and Conservatives locally raised and spent the limit, while the NDP conducted a more modest effort, nevertheless outraising and outspending the Greens by a factor of 2-to-1.

This time three of the four parties have nominated women candidates: the Liberals have appointed former Newmarket-Aurora candidate and party leadership contestant Martha Hall-Findlay, while the Conservative are running lawyer Maureen Harquail (Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's cousin), and the NDP is represented by former University of Toronto undergraduate Student President Ranjini (Rini) Ghosh. The Green Party is running first-time candidate Lou (Luigi) Carcasole, a former provincial public servant.

	1997 GE	2000 GE	2004 GE	2006 GE
Lib	27,311 (58.4%)	27,038 (61.3%)	30,855 (61.4%)	30,623 (55.2%)
NDP	2,833 (6.1%)	2,404 (5.4%)	4,812 (9.6%)	6,297 (11.4%)
Cons/CA/Ref	6,007 (12.9%)	7,411 (16.8%)	11,615 (23.1%)	16,254 (29.3%)
PC	10,043 (21.5%)	7,134 (16.2%)	883 (1.8%)
Grn			1,844 (3.7%)	2,268 (4.1%)
Ind			253 (0.5%)
Oth	534 (1.2%)	145 (0.3%)
TOTAL	46,989	44,311	50,474	55,658
ELECTORS	69,024 (68.1%TO)	77,817 (56.9%TO)	82,856 (60.9%TO)	88,671 (62.8%TO)

Labels: March 17 2008 By-elections, Willowdale

Toronto Centre is a core urban seat, the most populous in south Toronto and among the top fifth of Ontario ridings in population, according to the 2001 census. It also has the fourth-highest population density of any riding in the country. Over 50% of its population over 15 years is single (never married); it ranked the highest of any riding in Ontario in this category in 2001, and the lowest in legally married couples. Of families in the riding, over 20% are head by single-parents (only 8 ridings in Ontario have a higher percentage), and 9 in 10 of them are headed by women.

Some 43% of the riding population were immigrants in 2001, and another 3% were non-permanent residents (only 4 ridings in Canada had a higher percentage). 41% of the riding population belonged to a visible minority population; the biggest groups were Black (9.1%), South Asian (8.6%), Chinese (8.3%) and Filipino (5.2%). Most reported no religious affiliation (27%) (only 3 ridings in Central Canada have a higher percentage), followed by Catholics (26%) and then Protestants (22%), and there are two and a half times more Muslim worshippers than Jewish.

37% had a mother-tongue other than English or French, although 82% know English, and another 16% know English or French. Non-official languages are spoken in the home, either combined with English (18%) or on their own (13%), however the vast majority speak English at work (88%, plus another 6% who speak English as well as another language in the workplace).

The riding is well-educated; it has the 5th highest percentage of university graduates in the country (44%), and the 6th lowest percentage of residents having completed less than high school graduation (16%). While most people work in Sales and service occupations (21.5%), Business, finance and administrative occupations (20.1%) and management (13.4%), the riding also boasts the 13th highest percentage of social science, education, government service and religion workers (12.5%), and the fourth highest percent of workers in art, culture, recreation and sport (9.0%).

At 7.8% Toronto Centre had the highest unemployment rate in south Toronto in the 2001 census, although nationally it ranked 109 out of 308. It had the third-highest average individual income in the country however ($52,484), the third-highest average family income ($124,082), and at $404,277 the 5th highest average dwelling value, but also ranked 8th in the country for highest percentage of tenants at 73%.

Since 1997 (the period covered by this database so far), the Liberals' Bill Graham held the seat (and/or its Toronto Centre-Rosedale predecessor) with 50% of the vote or more. A strong campaign by former Conservative M.P. David MacDonald, by then running for the NDP, gave that party slightly over 20% in 1997 (he had just become romantically involved with NDP Leader Alexa McDonough at the time). NDP support dipped to 11% in 2000, but doubled to 24% in 2004 and 2006 under Urban health analyst and housing advocate Michael Shapcott, likely on the strength of the former Progressive Conservative vote, which was never fully captured by the new Conservative Party, and also perhaps the vote obtained by maverick Paul Hellyer who obtained 3% of the vote in 2000 running for the Canadian Action Party. The Conservative party grew its strength over the 4 elections, but has not yet attained a level of support equal to the combined support of the former Reform/Canadian Alliance vote plus the former PC vote (totalling 27-28% in 1997 and 2000), in spite of running a very well financed campaign in 2006 (Lewis Reford raised over $100k locally before and during the 2006 campaign). All three of the major parties spent close to the limit in 2004 and 2006, and raised enough money locally to break even, with the exception of incumbent Liberal MP Bill Graham in 2006, who received $40K from his party's central campaign in addition to the $40K raised locally.

Note that the Green vote rose even as the NDP vote increased, so it appears the Green Party benefitted here from part of the former PC vote; rising to 5.2% of the vote in 2006 under Chris Tindal, who is running for his party again in the current by-election. Of note, the 1997 Green candidate in this riding, Jim Harris, had just lost a leadership race to Joan Russow in April that year, but went on to become his party's leader six years later in 2003.

Of the current slate of candidates only Tindal and Liz White (of the Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party of Canada) have run in the riding before. However Liberal candidate and former NDP Premier Bob Rae was first elected to the House of Commons in a 1978 by-election in the neighbouring riding of Broadview (now Toronto Danforth), and was reelected in 1980 before departing for Queen's Park as NDP Leader in 1982. The Conservative candidate Don Meredith, a pentacostal pastor and landscaping contractor, was nominated by his party after it fired candidate Mark A.A. Warner late last year. The NDP has nominated immigration lawyer and gay muslim activist El-Farouk Khaki. First-time candidate Doug Plumb is nominated to run for the Canadian Action Party. The riding is held provincially by Liberal Health Minister George Smitherman who was reelected handily last fall.

	1997 GE	2000 GE	2004 GE	2006 GE
Lib	22,945 (49.2%)	26,203 (55.3%)	30,336 (56.5%)	30,874 (52.2%)
NDP	9,597 (20.6%)	5,300 (11.2%)	12,747 (23.8%)	14,036 (23.7%)
Cons/CA/Ref	3,646 (7.8%)	5,058 (10.7%)	7,936 (14.8%)	10,763 (18.2%)
PC	8,993 (19.3%)	8,149 (17.2%)
Grn	577 (1.2%)		2,097 (3.9%)	3,080 (5.2%)
Ind
Oth	884 (1.9%)	2649 (5.6%)	547 (1.0%)	359 (0.6%)
TOTAL	47,065	47,605	53,905	59,364
ELECTORS	70,234 (67.0%TO)	83,243 (57.2%TO)	85,165 (63.3%TO)	89,230 (66.5%TO)

Labels: March 17 2008 By-elections, Toronto Centre

A few quick updates:

• Rob Oliphant won the hotly contested Liberal nomination Sunday night in the riding of Don Valley West, ON, currently held by Liberal M.P. John Godfrey whose retirement takes effect on July 1.
• First-time candidate, notary Hoang Mai, will be running for the NDP in Brossard – La Prairie, QC, while 2006 candidate Céline Brault will return for that party in Pontiac, QC.
• I did a wholesale update of Green Party nominations, based on new names that have surfaced on their own web-site, as well as the two pages at Wikipedia. This resulted in about nine new names, including former public sector union president and one-time federal NDP candidate in Ottawa South, John Fryer, in the Vancouver island riding of Nanaimo – Alberni, BC (the riding containing Clayoquot Sound).
• Elections Canada has released its final list of candidates for the four by-elections. I have updated the charts and entries here according. Note that the nomination sources for future elections are displayed on the riding profile pages now (in addition to showing up on the Party Elections Details tab), along with links to the candidates' web-sites.

The latest nomination totals can now be found here. Simply click on the link for the totals you want to see, and the table will be prepared live for you whenever you like.

Regular users of the Pundits' Guide will notice some cosmetic clean-ups, a bit of added functionality at the Search Data page, some bug-fixes and performance enhancements to the "pundit query" tabs on two of the three main browsing pages, and the inclusion of a few more links on the riding profile pages.

On Thursday, the Government House Leader announced that this would be a full week of confidence votes on either the budget or votable opposition day motions , so I am working hard to get the site ready for any heavier traffic that might be expected to ensue with an election call in the very near-term. Stay tuned for additional upgrades in the coming days.

Labels: 40th General Election Nominations, March 17 2008 By-elections

Nominations closed today in the four St. Paddy's Day by-elections. The Green Party has finally named its candidate for the northern Saskatchewan riding of Desnethé – Missinippi – Churchill River ... computer technician Robin Orr will be making his debut run for a federal seat.

Elections Canada also reports that Liz White of the Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party of Canada will be making her second run in the Ontario riding of Toronto Centre, joining Canadian Action Party candidate Doug Plumb. Vijay Sarma also of the Canadian Action Party may not have filed his nomination papers in time however, since although he is listed on the CAP website as their candidate in the other Ontario riding of Willowdale, his name does not appear on the list at Elections Canada as of late this afternoon. Vancouver Quadra still appears to have the same slate of five candidates, including CAP's Psam Frank.

Between now and Thursday February 28, the Returning Officers and Elections Canada officials will review the candidates' nomination papers to ensure they are in order, and that enough valid signatures have been collected, and then they release the official list Thursday.

For now it appears we have 19 or 20 candidates running in the four ridings, 8 of them women (3 Liberals, 2 Conservatives, 2 NDP, 0 Greens, and 1 other, i.e., Liz White).

[And, after a brief hiccup with FTP service, the chart finally reflects these numbers as well.]

Labels: Greens, March 17 2008 By-elections, Women Candidates

Today's update includes two nominations from Saturday, which just happen to highlight rather nicely the use of two new query tables I've been working on, over on the "Search Data" page.

To run them, click either the hyperlink or the arrow for the query you want, in order to issue the request to the database. Afterwards you can hide and show the results again by clicking in the same way.

(Ces resultats sont aussi disponible en français à "Rechercher les données", mais le texte n'est pas encore traduit car la page reste en construction. La redirection entre anglais et français sur cette page n'est pas encore construite non plus. J'espère que mes amis français continueront d'être patient avec moi.)

Today's new query tables are:

Nominations in seats with retiring incumbents (first query currently found on the page).

• 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.

Nominations in seats with first-time incumbents (second query currently found on the page).

• 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.

In coming days, rather than manually create static result tables inside these blog posts, I will be creating permanent "live" (i.e., always up-to-date) versions of them over on the Search Data page. That page will also serve as an index to and overview of the so-called "pundit queries" which already accessible from the Browse Regions / Browse Elections / Browse Parties pages, and will be listed as one of the left-hand navigation tabs, rather than on the top-most navigation bar where it sits now.

To change the subject briefly, Monday is the close of nominations for the four by-election ridings. I am hearing that the Green Party will have a candidate in place for Desnethé – Missinippi – Churchill River by then (but not who it is yet). Ironically, here is a riding that fits both of the above categories: former Liberal M.P. Gary Merasty was a first-time incumbent in 2006, and has already since retired.

[If you're wondering why that riding appears twice in the second query, there's just a little tweaking to the query code I need to do eliminate the second blank entry. Basically I have separate entries for the by-elections and general elections, but only list candidates in the first one (long story). I'm working on it now.]

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

This morning's updates:

• The NDP has nominated Brian Morin, a Fire Protection Officer and the Deputy Mayor of Buffalo Narrows, and the son of a former Senator, as their candidate for the by-election in Desnethé – Missinippi – Churchill River. The Green Party is now the only major party not fully nominated for the by-elections, as they are missing a candidate in this same riding.
• Morin is Métis and speaks English, Cree, Dene, meaning that there may be perhaps for the first time in this constituency, an all-aboriginal slate of candidates; including Joan Beatty now running for the Liberals, and aboriginal RCMP officer Robert G. Clarke running for the Conservatives. Nominations close for all 4 by-elections at 2 PM on Monday, February 25, so we'll know by then whether this remains the case, and of course whether any other independent candidates step forward.
• By my count, today (or possibly tomorrow) is the last day on which the Prime Minister could also call a by-election for Westmount – Ville-Marie in order to have it fall on March 17 with the other 4 by-elections.

Meantime, I have also located a few more Green Party nominations for the general election (including former Canadian Action Party candidate Greg Chatterson now running in Regina – Qu'Appelle, who remains a big fan of "statesman" David Orchard and is inviting him to join the Greens as well). I am waiting on some further information from the political parties, and may have further updates later in the week.

Here are my latest nomination totals by party and province.

	1	1	1	36	28	14	14	106	75	10	11	4	7	308
Party	YT	NT	NU	BC	AB	SK	MB	ON	QC	NB	NS	PE	NL	Total	Pct	Wom	Pct
BQ									57					57	19%	17	29.8%
Cons	1	1		32	26	11	10	93	54	7	7	2	4	248	81%	39	15.7%
Grn	1			10	9	1	2	55	15	3	7			103	33%	27	26.2%
Lib	1		1	27	22	6	9	87	32	9	9	4	4	213	69%	76	35.7%
NDP		1		27	17	10	6	54	31	4	8	1	3	162	53%	59	36.4%
Rest				2	11	1		21	3	1	2			50		3

Also, Jack Layton announced over the weekend that well-known Québec environmentalist Daniel Breton has agreed to run for the NDP in a seat to be named later (probably Jeanne-Le Ber). However, since Breton has not been nominated as yet, his name has not been added to the database as yet.

Finally, a big thanks to one of my favourite sites, National Newswatch, for linking to me. Paul's work in compiling news stories from across the country has been a big help to me in tracking the nominations data. I'm honoured to be on his list.

Labels: 40th General Election Nominations, Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill, Greens, March 17 2008 By-elections, NDP

A couple of recent announcements have put the issue of women in Canadian politics top of mind once again.

First is the Liberal Party's caucus retreat announcement that they are on track to meet Stéphane Dion's goal of running 33% women candidates. Campbell Clark's story in the Globe uses the numbers "78 women among their 209 nominated candidates - or 37 per cent"; the Liberals are using the number 210 but haven't published an official list of candidates; and I had the numbers 76/213 - or 35.6 per cent, but have now confirmed that two previously nominated male Liberal candidates have withdrawn since the expected election did not materialize (Skid Crease in Dufferin – Caledon and John D. Waite in Simcoe North). So I'm now showing 76/211 for the Libs in my counts.

Second is the announcement by NDP Leader Jack Layton and his new Québec lieutenant Thomas Mulcair that they have attracted the Bishop's University Sociology Department chair and feminist academic/activist, Cheryl Gosselin, to run for them in Sherbrooke.

So, here are the latest nomination totals by party and province:

	1	1	1	36	28	14	14	106	75	10	11	4	7	308
Party	YT	NT	NU	BC	AB	SK	MB	ON	QC	NB	NS	PE	NL	Total	Pct	Wom	Pct
BQ									57					57	19%	18	29.8%
Cons	1	1		32	27	11	10	93	54	7	7	2	4	249	81%	38	15.7%
Grn	1			10	9		2	53	15	3	7			100	32%	25	26.0%
Lib	1		1	27	22	6	9	87	32	9	9	4	4	211	69%	75	36.0%
NDP		1		27	17	10	6	54	32	4	8	1	3	163	53%	60	36.8%
Rest				2	11	1		21	3	1	2			50		3

The advocacy group Equal Voice was founded to advocate for the nomination of more women in party and electoral politics. It maintains its own dataset, the most recent report of which can be found here (last update at time of writing was November 2007).

Another interesting analysis of where the Liberals will have to make up the remainder of their woman candidates to sustain their target can be found here (undertaken by Steve Janke in early December).

Here are my latest nomination counts by party standing in the seat at the last general election:

Party	Seats	2nds	Less	Plus	Current Standings		Nom Inc	%	Nom 2nds	%	Nom Oth	%		TOT Nom	%
BQ	51	20	-4	2	49		49	96%	8	40%				57	19%
Cons	123	117	-2	3	125		119	96%	84	72%	46	69%		249	81%
Grn		1							1	100%	99	31%		100	32%
Lib	103	116	-9	2	96		95	92%	78	67%	38	43%		211	69%
NDP	29	53		1	30		28	97%	39	74%	96	42%		163	53%
Ind	1			3	4		1
VAC				4	4

And as promised in an earlier post, I have now pulled out the numbers of women nominated accordingly to party standing in the seat, as shown below:

Party	Seats	2nds	Current Standings		W/Nom Inc	W/Nom 2nds	W/Nom Oth	W/TOT Nom
BQ	17/51 33%	20	17/49		17/49 35%	0/8 0%		17/57 30%
Cons	14/123 11%	117	14/125		15/119 13%	17/84 20%	7/46 15%	39/249 16%
Grn		1				0/1 0%	26/99 26%	26/100 26%
Lib	21/103 20%	116	21/96		22/95 23%	38/78 49%	16/38 42%	76/211 36%
NDP	12/29 41%	53	12/30		12/28 43%	16/39 41%	32/96 33%	60/163 37%
Ind	1		1/4		1
VAC			4

It's probably fair to conclude that the NDP is concentrating its recruitment of women candidates in the 53 seats in which it came 2nd last time, having already elected a 41% caucus, while the Liberals are concentrating fairly equally on their 2nd-place and other-place seats. The Conservatives are trying to step up their numbers a bit in the 2nd-place seats; and at 26%, the Green Party is somewhere between its best-ever and worst-ever showing on this metric.

-----

In an unrelated note to the above data, the number of "Other" party nominations has also jumped from 18 to 50, reflecting the list of Canadian Action Party (CAP) candidates I came across the other day. Notably absent from the list thus far is that party's (woman) leader, Connie Fogal, who has run in one of a number of Vancouver ridings in the past 4 elections.

CAP has also recruited candidates for 3 out of the 4 St. Paddy's Day by-elections.

Labels: 40th General Election Nominations, Bloc Québécois, Conservatives, Greens, Liberals, March 17 2008 By-elections, NDP, Women Candidates

A lot of the commentary on the situation in the by-election riding of
Desnethé – Missinippi – Churchill River has focussed on the tight margin in the 2006 general election race (67 votes, or 0.4 votes per poll) as compared with the 2004 general election (here are this morning's examples) .

But margin is not the whole story, as demonstrated below in a summary results table of DMCR and its predecessor riding Churchill River.

	1997 GE	2000 GE	2004 GE	2006 GE
Lib	5,994 (28.3%)	9,856 (41.6%)	5,815 (29.8%)	10,191 (41.2%)
NDP	7,288 (34.4%)	5,141 (21.7%)	3,910 (20.0%)	3,787 (15.3%)
Cons/CA/Ref	6,750 (31.8%)	7,679 (32.4%)	7,279 (37.2%)	10,124 (40.9%)
PC	1,077 (5.1%)	755 (3.2%)
Grn			539 (2.8%)	534 (2.2%)
Ind			1,923 (9.8%)
Oth		143 (0.6%)
TOTAL	21,109	23,574	19,466	24,636
ELECTORS	37,059 (57.2%TO)	39,807 (59.5%TO)	41,216 (47.4%TO)	42,315 (58.4%TO)

The Conservatives won in 2004 with a higher margin (8.7 votes per poll), but an uncharacteristically low turn-out (47.4% vs. an average of around 58%).

This distinction should be important to pundits wanting to handicap the race during the current set of by-elections. It's anyone's guess what effect the current controversy will have on the turn-out, but whichever party guesses right (or influences it to their benefit) will clearly have the advantage.

Labels: Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill, March 17 2008 By-elections

Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion has just appointed recently-reelected Saskatchewan NDP MLA Joan Beatty to be the federal Liberal candidate in Desnethé – Missinippi – Churchill River. The nomination totals are now updated accordingly. There are now 7 women running out of 14 identified candidates to date in the 4 by-election ridings (3 Libs, 2 each NewDems and Conservatives, and 0 Greens). Click here to see the nomination details.

Trivia item: the NDP's candidate in the same riding during the 2006 General Election, Anita Jackson, was none other than Joan Beatty's constituency assistant. From the riding profile page, follow (for example) the CBC links to read the biographies of all the candidates from the last federal election.

Meantime, I've done a bit of work to try and accomodate the Safari 2.0 Mac browser, and I think the layout is working better overall. Internet Explorer 6 and Firefox 2.0 for Windows are working as intended. I still need to test on Safari 3.0 for the Mac and PC. Internet Explorer 5.2 for the Mac is a lost cause though, and I might just give up on it altogether.

Labels: Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill, Liberals, March 17 2008 By-elections, NDP, Women Candidates

Although I haven't seen any reference to this in the Ottawa-based media, there is another candidate already in the field besides David Orchard, vying for the Liberal nomination in the Saskatchewan riding of Desnethé – Missinippi – Churchill River (hat-tip to commenter "mushroom" on the Calgary Grit blog). John K. Dorion of Prince Albert was appointed to the National Parole Board in 2004 (UPDATE: for three years until 2007, and he has also been Chief of the John Cochrane First Nation north of Prince Albert for the past five years). More background to the nomination race can be found here (UPDATE: and here; FURTHER UPDATE: here and here too; LAST UPDATE: and here).

Elections Canada published preliminary estimates of eligible voters ("number of electors on the preliminary list") for each of the four by-election ridings in the Canada Gazette on December 28th, which have now been added to the site.

Meantime, your Guide has been doing more plumbing work on the site, to make sure it displays and functions properly in Mac-based browsers, and to address some of the MySQL performance problems in a more permament way. At some point in January she will take a breather from winter in sunnier climes, but will be back in time to see whether a fifth by-election does indeed get called for Westmount-Ville Marie in Montréal.

Labels: Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill, March 17 2008 By-elections

The NDP is now nominated in Willowdale, bringing the total number of women candidates to 6 out of 13 (2 each for the Conservatives, NDP and Liberals, none as yet for the Greens).

Elections Canada has also announced the preliminary campaign spending limits for the by-elections, which have now been added to the Pundits' Guide profile for each riding.

For further information:

• by-election summary
• nomination details
• riding profiles for Toronto Centre, Willowdale, Desnethé – Missinippi – Churchill River, Vancouver Quadra, including links to their pages at Elections Canada, Statistics Canada, Wikipedia, the Library of Parliament, the CBC.ca 2004 and 2006 Election profiles and the CTV.ca 2006 Election profile (french versions of the profiles link to available french-language resources)

Labels: Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill, March 17 2008 By-elections, Toronto Centre, Vancouver Quadra, Willowdale

Yesterday the Prime Minister called by-elections in four vacant seats for March 17, 2008. And last week former Liberal cabinet minister Lucienne Robillard announced her resignation from the Montréal seat of Westmount-Ville Marie effective January 25, 2008, making that riding a likely addition to the writ in a month's time.

Meantime, the Liberal party has announced the decision of its green-light committee regarding incumbent M.P. Blair Wilson's ineligibility to carry the party banner in the coastal B.C. riding of
West Vancouver – Sunshine Coast – Sea to Sky Country in the forthcoming general election.

Thus his nomination has been deleted, and the nominees in the 4 by-election ridings have also been removed from the general election counts and re-classified as nominations for the by-elections.

To date, all parties are nominated in Vancouver Quadra and Toronto Centre, all but the NDP are nominated in Willowdale, and none but the Conservatives in Desnethé – Missinippi – Churchill River.

So far 5 of the 12 nominated candidates are women (2 Liberals, 2 Conservatives, 1 New Democrat, 0 Greens). The remaining nomination races promise to be quite newsworthy.

Labels: Conservatives, Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill, Greens, Liberals, March 17 2008 By-elections, NDP, Toronto Centre, Vancouver Quadra, Westmount-Ville Marie, Willowdale

The parties have been on a push to recruit and nominate their candidates for a much-anticipated by-election in Outremont, the former riding of former-Liberal-turned-Bloc-founder-turned-reborn-Liberal Jean Lapierre.

Calls are also expected for the Québec ridings of Ste-Hyacinthe--Bagot and possibly Roberval--Lac-St-Jean, and could come soon for the BC riding of Vancouver Quadra and the Saskatchewan riding of Desnethé -- Missinippi -- Churchill River.

Meantime, I have been on a push to get my site ready to go public. Right now it's touch and go whether it will be ready before the PM is ready to call Willowdale and Toronto Centre. Wish me luck.

Labels: March 17 2008 By-elections, Outremont, Roberval-Lac-St-Jean, Sept 17 2007 By-elections, Ste-Hyacinthe-Bagot