The Conservatives defied nearly all the pundits Monday night, picking up a seat on the south shore of eastern Québec, and regaining their former seat in Nova Scotia more handily than some had expected. The Liberals were shut out of both first- and second-place finishes, but appear at least to have exceeded the 10% vote share threshold required to obtain candidate expense rebates in all four ridings (up from 3 in 2008).

Conservatives also topped the popular vote across the four ridings (with 35.7%), pushing the Bloc (who held that position last time) down to third place (at 20.8% for a drop of 3.3 percentage points) behind the NDP, who jumped a spot to second place with 24.4%. The Liberals kept 4th place in the popular vote, even though they placed 3rd in each riding. The Green Party pulled up the rear with 3.1% overall, down 0.6 percentage points, with no candidate earning a rebate. Their best performance was in New Westminster – Coquitlam, BC (4.3% of the vote), although they did edge out the Christian Heritage Party leader in Cumberland – Colchester – Musquodoboit Valley, NS.

It was a disappointing night for the Bloc Québécois, losing their seat in Montmagny – L'Islet – Kamouraska – Rivière-du-Loup, QC to the Conservatives, and with a drop in popular vote of 3.3 percentage points. New Democrats did not achieve the wildest dreams of their most optimistic supporters, but passed the Liberals in Hochelaga, QC, attained a record vote share in Cumberland – Colchester – Musquodoboit Valley, NS, and obtained nearly half the vote in New Westminster – Coquitlam, BC. In fact, the BC race proved not to be close at all.

I should add that many observers were bemoaning the low turnout tonight, but in many cases it wound up higher than ridings in the March, 2008 by-elections.

For those readers who only usually access the Pundits' Guide via an RSS reader, you'll want to visit the site's main page today, to see the Party Election Scorecard, the By-Election Metrics Summary Table, various charts, and all the detailed data for each riding. All the relevant riding and local region charts have been updated as well.

Labels: Nov 9 2009 By-elections, Party Scorecard

With the polls set to close soon, let's take a look at the baseline that each party is starting from, as a way of reminding readers what the Party By-Election Scorecard is going to tell us.

First, a couple of views of the overall electoral history across those 4 ridings, starting with the Bar + Stacked Area Chart:



... and continuing with the Line + Bar Chart:



Then the baseline party scorecard:

Party Scorecard - 2009 By Baseline

2009 By	Lib	NDP	Grn	BQ	Cons	Rest
Prev VotePct	14.1%	19.3%	3.6%	24.1%	22.6%	16.3%
Prev Seats		1		2		1
Prev 2nds	1	1			2
Prev RebateEligib.	3	3		2	2	1
Prev RawVote	25,236	34,689	6,498	43,214	40,633	29,191

It's interesting to note that the Bloc was so strong in its two seats that it won the popular vote across all four, polling some 24.1%. The Conservatives followed with 22.6%, with the NDP third at 19.3%, and the "Rest" (mostly Bill Casey in CCMV) coming in fourth. The Liberals were already running fifth overall in popular vote (at 14.1%) in these four seats. However, they did earn the minimum of 10% needed to receive a candidate rebate in 3 of the 4 seats, as did the NDP, while the Conservatives and Bloc only achieved that threshold in 2 of them. The Bloc obviously held both Quebec seats, while the Conservatives achieved two second-place finishes. The NDP had one seat and one second-place finish, with Independent M.P. Bill Casey making up the other seat. The Liberals had their one second-place standing in the fourth seat.

Turning to the charts, one trend that pops out is the decline in Liberal vote over the four previous elections. In the Transposition of the 2000 election results onto the current boundaries, the Liberals did not win a seat, but they did place second in all four seats, earning some 30% of the vote. Over the next three elections, they lost one second-place finish per election, and overall saw their vote share drop by half.

The Liberal vote was being pushed down by a combination of the rising NDP vote, a slight increase in the Green vote, a one-time increase in the Bloc vote in 2004, followed by an increase in the Conservative vote in 2006, and a huge increase in the Independent/Other vote in 2008. The NDP went from no second place finishes in 2000, to one in 2004, a seat in 2006 and one seat plus one second-place finish in 2008.

The Bloc has held its two seats since 2000 (we only show 2000 and forward here, as that's all that is available for the current boundaries, but obviously they had held them since 1993). The Liberals held the CCMV predecessor seat for one term from 1993-1997, and the NDP held the NWC predecessor from 1988 to 1993. Apart from that, the Conservatives, Canadian Alliance and/or PCs had won the other two until 2006, when the NDP's Dawn Black won in the BC seat, followed by 2008 which saw former PC and Conservative M.P. Bill Casey win re-election as an Independent.

As soon as the polls close in BC, I'll post whatever I have by way of results in chart and table format at the top of the home page of the Pundits' Guide website.

Labels: Nov 9 2009 By-elections, Party Scorecard

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

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