We'll conclude this series on the November 2009 by-election poll-by-poll result maps with the British Columbia riding of New Westminster – Coquitlam. (You'll also notice that I got the push-pin colour problem solved, and so apartment and mobile polls appear in the correct colours now.)

This riding was a 3-way race in 2004 and 2006, becoming a close but geographically segregated 2-way race in 2008, and a fairly decisive win in the by-election. Unusually, the NDP won more polls than the Conservatives in 2004, but lost the popular vote and thus the race that year.

The riding is composed of all or part of three municipalities: New Westminster in the lower left-hand corner, Coquitlam in the centre-right, and a part of Port Moody in the top-left corner. Coquitlam polls seem to have voted Conservative over the last number of elections, but by recruiting a candidate from the Coquitlam city council, the NDP was able to make significant inroads there.

Earlier unofficial results had showed the Green party candidate as having just 47 votes at one point. The official voting results, however, placed candidate Rebecca Helps at 1,047 votes: a bit closer to historical levels for that party.

The Liberals' vote share has been declining in the riding since 2004, to the point where they did not win a single poll in the 2008 general election, and won just 1 geographic poll in the 2009 by-election, along with the Special Voting Rules Group 2 (special ballots) which may in fact have been responsible for putting their candidate Ken Beck Lee over the rebate eligibility threshold of 10% of the ballots cast.

Notably, the Conservatives did make their now-characteristic push to get their supporters out to the Advance Polls here, winning them 49%-41%. But they couldn't touch the NDP's Fin Donnelly on election day. And while on the one hand turnout was low across the board, it was apparently so across all parties.

I'll try and get the other bug sorted out this weekend, so that users can select poll maps for the election of their choice. Next, obviously we have to get seriously caught up on nominations, and then I'll try and fulfill a request from several quarters that we look at the proposed changes to the redistribution process, to change the seat allocations by province.

New Westminster – Coquitlam, BC, 2004 GE, Poll-by-Poll Winners:


New Westminster – Coquitlam, BC, 2006 GE, Poll-by-Poll Winners:


New Westminster – Coquitlam, BC, 2008 GE, Poll-by-Poll Winners:


New Westminster – Coquitlam, BC, 2009 By-election, Poll-by-Poll Winners:


Vote Share, Percent of the Electorate, and Number of Polls Won+Tied, by Party, 2000 Tr - 2009 By, New Westminster – Coquitlam, BC

Elec		Lib	NDP	Grn	Cons | CA	Rest
2009 By	% Vote % Elec Won+Tied	10.3% 3.1% 2+0	49.7% 14.9% 175+1	4.3% 1.3% 0	35.7% 10.7% 47+1	-- -- --
2008 GE	% Vote % Elec Won+Tied	11.3% 7.0% 0	41.8% 25.7% 125+2	7.2% 4.4% 0	38.8% 23.9% 87+2	0.8% 0.5% 0
2006 GE	% Vote % Elec Won+Tied	23.5% 15.3% 6+1	38.3% 24.9% 158+3	3.0% 1.9% 0	32.5% 21.2% 73+4	2.6% 1.8% 0
2004 GE	% Vote % Elec Won+Tied	27.4% 17.4% 21+3	32.6% 20.7% 97+3	5.6% 3.6% 0	32.9% 20.9% 88+4	1.5% 0.9% 0
2000 Tr	% Vote % Elec Won+Tied	28.7% 17.6% 12+5	12.8% 7.9% 0+2	-- -- --	8.0% | 47.3% 4.9% | 29.0% 0+2 | 188+5	3.2% 2.0% 0+2

Labels: Google Maps, Nov 9 2009 By-elections, Poll-by-Poll Results

Continuing with the third in our series showing the poll-by-poll maps for the four November by-election ridings tonight we move on to Hochelaga, QC.

The maps tell the story of this riding fairly well: it's a Bloc stronghold through and through, with a pocket of Liberal support in the northwest corner next to St-Léonard. All that's changed over time is that the Liberal support has abated somewhat, and the NDP support has increased to the point where it just passed the Liberals in the by-election, but not in a concentrated enough fashion to win more than 3 polls, although notably they were in previously Bloc-held areas of support rather than Liberal ones (1 in Rosemont and 2 in Hochelaga including the poll where Jean-Claude Rocheleau's campaign office was located). The Conservatives also won one poll here, for the first time since they held the seat for a term in 1988, but as it was just one split (73C) of polling division split into 3 polling stations (73A-73B-73C, along Sherbrooke, across from the hospital), and since they didn't win the other splits, it doesn't appear on the map.

As with many Québec ridings in 2008, the Liberals had increased their vote in Hochelaga. Looking at the vote shares in the 2009 by-election, it could appear that, with the Liberals down about 6 points and the NDP up about 6 points, this represented a vote shift from the former to the latter. Yet the NDP won polls in areas of previous Bloc strength. This example highlights the danger in extrapolating actual vote shifts from riding vote totals. To more accurately answer the question of who switched where, we would need a methodology that, once it confirmed whether the polling division boundaries were consistent over time, examined the party vote changes at the polling division level and looked for patterns of change in all the parties' support.

Next time: New Westminster – Coquitlam, BC.

Hochelaga, QC, 2004 GE, Poll-by-Poll Winners:


Hochelaga, QC, 2006 GE, Poll-by-Poll Winners:


Hochelaga, QC, 2008 GE, Poll-by-Poll Winners:


Hochelaga, QC, 2009 By-election, Poll-by-Poll Winners:


Vote Share, Percent of the Electorate, and Number of Polls Won+Tied, by Party, 2000 Tr - 2009 By, Hochelaga, QC

Elec		Lib	NDP	Grn	BQ	Cons | CA	Rest
2009 By	% Vote % Elec Won+Tied	14.3% 3.2% 13+0	19.6% 4.4% 3+0	3.3% 0.7% 0	51.2% 11.4% 202+0	10.1% 2.2% 1+0	1.5% 0.4% --
2008 GE	% Vote % Elec Won+Tied	20.7% 11.9% 19+2	14.4% 8.3% 0	4.3% 2.4% 0	49.7% 28.6% 198+2	9.2% 5.3% 0	1.7% 0.9% 0
2006 GE	% Vote % Elec Won+Tied	17.2% 9.9% 11+0	8.9% 5.1% 0	4.9% 2.8% 0	55.6% 31.9% 212+0	12.2% 7.0% 0	1.2% 0.7% 0
2004 GE	% Vote % Elec Won+Tied	25.6% 14.5% 22+2	5.5% 3.1% 0	3.0% 1.7% 0	60.1% 34.0% 191+2	4.1% 2.3% 0	1.7% 0.9% 0
2000 Tr	% Vote % Elec Won+Tied	35.7% 19.7% 50+4	1.9% 1.1% 0+1	-- -- --	50.5% 27.9% 161+4	4.0% | 3.4% 2.2% | 1.9% 0+1 | 0+1	4.5% 2.5% 0+1

Labels: Google Maps, Nov 9 2009 By-elections, Poll-by-Poll Results

Tonight we continue our series showing the poll-by-poll maps for the next of the four by-election ridings from last November, Montmagny – L'Islet – Kamouraska – Rivière-du-Loup, QC (aka "MIKR"), along with a table showing the changes in percent of the valid ballots by party (% Vote), percent of the eligible electors by party (% Elec), and number of polls won+tied (Won+Tied).

Since neither the NDP, Green Party nor Christian Heritage Party have regularly cracked 5% in this riding, its story is the changing nature of the two-way race, from a Bloc-Liberal contest in 2000, to a Bloc seat with two opponents of roughly equal strength in 2004, to a Bloc-Conservative race in 2008, and as we all know, a Conservative upset in the by-election.

Since falling behind the Conservatives, the Liberals were only able to win mobile polls in 2006 (6 won + 1 tied) and 2008 (7 won + 1 tied), winning a few geographic polls again in the 2009 by-election (but not their candidate's hometown of Cap-Saint-Ignace) but meantime losing 4 more mobile polls. A mobile poll is taken around to various residential and long-term care facilities for seniors and those who would not otherwise be able to get themselves to a regular polling station, each mobile poll representing one or more residences/locations. From the maps we can see that there are a lot of them in MIKR (but again, remember that for now I just have the use of blue pins, so the colour doesn't tell you who won them just yet).

The maps show that Conservative strength grew from the south part of the riding northwards, from 2004 to the 2009 by-election. The riding adjoins or is closer to other areas of Conservative strength in the south (and indeed the Prime Minister attended an event with Maxime Bernier in Beauce, two ridings over, during the campaign), while the north part adjoins Rimouski and other areas of Bloc strength in the Gaspé peninsula. By 2009, the Conservatives and the Bloc were splitting the polls in Rivière-du-Loup (Bloc candidate Nancy Gagnon's hometown), all but one of which had been won by Paul Crête in 2008. Moreover, they won nearly every poll in their candidate Bernard Généreux's hometown of La Pocatière (also the hometown of former Bloc M.P. Crête), polls that had all been taken by Crête in the general election.

Looking at the raw vote and percent of the electorate for the three parties over time, we can see that Généreux's campaign was able to hold its vote during the by-election, while the Bloc vote dropped by half, and the Liberal vote broke through its earlier low of 2006.

I've added a link to the last map image below, so you can click through to the interactive version. Given the large number of mobile polls being shown, and the less than ideal differentiation between the Bloc and Conservative shades of blue at present, you'll want to be able to zoom in yourself and see what's going on. I'll also be working on making the earlier versions available through the riding profile page as soon as possible, although I need a little programming help finding the bug that's preventing me from doing so now. Sorry about the delay.

Next time: Hochelaga.

Montmagny – L'Islet – Kamouraska – Rivière-du-Loup, QC, 2004 GE, Poll-by-Poll Winners:


Montmagny – L'Islet – Kamouraska – Rivière-du-Loup, QC, 2006 GE, Poll-by-Poll Winners:


Montmagny – L'Islet – Kamouraska – Rivière-du-Loup, QC, 2008 GE, Poll-by-Poll Winners:


Montmagny – L'Islet – Kamouraska – Rivière-du-Loup, QC, 2009 By-election, Poll-by-Poll Winners:


Vote Share, Percent of the Electorate, and Number of Polls Won+Tied, by Party, 2000 Tr - 2009 By, Montmagny – L'Islet – Kamouraska – Rivière-du-Loup, QC

Elec		Lib	NDP	Grn	BQ	Cons | CA	Rest
2009 By	% Vote % Elec Won+Tied	13.2% 4.8% 7+0	4.8% 1.8% 0	1.7% 0.6% 0	37.7% 13.8% 96+4	42.7% 15.6% 150+4	-- -- --
2008 GE	% Vote % Elec Won+Tied	15.4% 8.7% 7+1	5.5% 3.1% 0	2.2% 1.2% --	46.0% 26.1% 183+2	30.6% 17.4% 62+3	0.3% 0.2% 0
2006 GE	% Vote % Elec Won+Tied	14.1% 8.2% 6+1	4.6% 2.7% 0	3.8% 2.3% 0	52.4% 30.8% 232+2	25.1% 14.7% 15+2	-- -- --
2004 GE	% Vote % Elec Won+Tied	29.6% 16.7% 28+3	2.0% 1.1% 0	2.2% 1.2% 0	57.1% 32.3% 219+3	9.1% 5.1% 0	-- -- --
2000 Tr	% Vote % Elec Won+Tied	39.5% 23.0% 87+3	1.1% 0.6% 0+1	-- -- --	48.9% 28.5% 147+3	3.8% | 6.5% 2.2% | 3.8% 0+1 | 0+1	0.2% 0.1% 0+1

Labels: Google Maps, Nov 9 2009 By-elections, Poll-by-Poll Results

Here are the poll-by-poll maps for the first of the four by-election ridings from last November, along with a table showing the changes in percent of the valid ballots by party (% Vote), percent of the eligible electors by party (% Elec), and number of polls won+tied (Won+Tied).

2008 was the outlier election, given that Independent and former Conservative M.P. Bill Casey won every poll but 2 (the NDP won a couple of the indian reserve land polls, which you can see on that map just below the 3 blue push pins near Truro).

By 2009, the riding had returned to a new normal with newly-elected Conservative M.P. Scott Armstrong winning the majority of the polls again (although fewer of them than Casey in 2000), but this time with a more concentrated NDP vote and a more dissipated Liberal one (I say this because the NDP's vote share resulted in more polls won than did the Liberals'). Also note that Christian Heritage Party leader Jim Hnatiuk won his home poll of Enfield in the bottom left-hand corner, and tied for first in two others nearby (the polls are called Goffs and Dutch Settlement).

Due to the late hour, I'll leave the rest of the analysis to my capable readers, and will be interested to read your thoughts in the comments section below.

Cumberland – Colchester – Musquodoboit Valley, NS, 2004 GE, Poll-by-Poll Winners:


Cumberland – Colchester – Musquodoboit Valley, NS, 2006 GE, Poll-by-Poll Winners:


Cumberland – Colchester – Musquodoboit Valley, NS, 2008 GE, Poll-by-Poll Winners:


Cumberland – Colchester – Musquodoboit Valley, NS, 2009 By-election, Poll-by-Poll Winners:


Vote Share, Percent of the Electorate, and Number of Polls Won+Tied, by Party, 2000 Tr - 2009 By, Cumberland – Colchester – Musquodoboit Valley, NS

Elec		Lib	NDP	Grn	Cons | CA	Rest
2009 By	% Vote % Elec Won+Tied	21.3% 7.6% 8+0	25.7% 9.2% 34+2	3.3% 1.2% 0	45.8% 16.3% 199+2	3.2% 1.3% 1+2
2008 GE	% Vote % Elec Won+Tied	8.5% 4.9% 0	12.3% 7.1% 2+0	-- -- --	5.1% 5.1% 1+0	70.4%* 40.5% 237+0
2006 GE	% Vote % Elec Won+Tied	23.9% 14.7% 4+1	20.7% 12.8% 3+2	2.1% 1.3% 0	52.0% 32.0% 234+1	1.2% 0.7% 0
2004 GE	% Vote % Elec Won+Tied	26.5% 15.9% 10+1	18.9% 11.4% 3+0	3.1% 1.9% 0	50.5% 30.4% 214+1	-- -- --
2000 Tr	% Vote % Elec Won+Tied	26.4% 16.0% 15+4	13.0% 7.9% 8+5	-- -- --	47.4% | 13.1% 28.8% | 8.0% 202+7 | 1+4	0.1% 0.1% 0+3

Labels: Google Maps, Nov 9 2009 By-elections, Poll-by-Poll Results

Riding-level results are nice to have so far as they go, but serious strategists want to know how the parties did in various parts of a riding: where they grew, where they fell back, who they switched to and whose switchers they picked up, how well they pulled their supporters out to the Advanced Polls, and so forth.

Ideally we'd like to see that mapped, but there are some key interim steps, some of which are very time-consuming. Obviously an essential one is assembling a complete set of the poll-by-poll results, which is what I'm reporting on tonight.

I now have a complete set of poll-by-poll result tables in the Pundits' Guide relational database from 1997 forward (including the 2000 Transposition), which are fully cross-referenced against all the other riding result tables, parties, elections, and candidates already in it. There are 395,371 polls and 2,174,723 individual candidate poll results, and between the size of the tables themselves and their associated database indexes (what makes the pages run reasonably quickly), this new dataset is taking up just over 700 Megabytes of space in the database.

It was assembled from the raw data provided by Elections Canada for each general election plus the transposition, and hand-typed in many cases from the PDFs they supplied for by-elections. Thanks to the Chief Electoral Officer for responding favourably to my plea for raw by-election data on their website as well, which certainly made the job easier towards the end. Thanks also to my long-suffering housemate, who read those printed by-election results out loud to me while I typed them. The whole thing was a herculean task, not least because the raw data was supplied in at least 3 different formats over that period of time, and candidates were sorted alpha by family name, rather than consistently by party. The latest Elections Canada format for poll-by-poll results, however, represents a marked improvement, and I could certainly live with it going forward. I also had to cross-check and double-check my data entry to make sure everything added up properly in every direction, in the process of which I discovered a few errors with the 1997 raw data in 4 Quebec ridings, which Elections Canada is now fixing up.

A "poll" here means a "polling station". Polls in the mapping context are "polling divisions". You'd think there would be a one-to-one relationship between them, but in fact sometimes polling divisions get too large population-wise and have to be split. If they're split geographically before an election is called, you get poll numbers like "195", "195-1", "195-2", which represent different polling divisions. On the other hand, if they're not split until after the campaign has started, it's done alphabetically by family name, and the polls are called "195A" and "195B" for example. In such a case they are considered to be 2 polling stations for the same polling division (195). You can even see examples of poll numbers such as "195", "195-1A", "195-1B", "195-2". Here the original polling division was geographically split into 3 polling divisions before the election, but the second part was still found to have too many electors and thus was split alphabetically into 2 polling stations after the writ was issued.

Polling divisions can also get too small. s.538(1) of the Elections Act says that they should have a minimum of 250 electors, and so sometimes a polling division can get merged into another one, or combined with another one (a new development it appears since 2004, and I'm not sure I understand the difference between the two at the moment), or be declared "void" or "no poll held".

There are several different kinds of polling stations:

• Regular polls, pretty much what you'd expect, they are numbered sequentially starting from the number 1, and they represent the votes of people who voted on Election Day.
  
• Apartment polls, which are a subset of the regular polls, but are numbered in the 400s; also for Election Day voters.
  
• Mobile polls, which are designed for residents of long-term care facilities and the disabled, further to various provisions of the Elections Act. They are numbered in the 500s. The polling station is brought to their room, and/or remains in a central lobby area for a defined period of time on Election Day.
  
• Advance polls, which are numbered in the 600s. They include votes cast on the defined Advance voting days, but not special ballots nor people who voted in the returning office as I understand it.
  
• Special Voting Rules Group I (SVR1), which is not really either a polling division or a polling station, but is reported in a separate line. The official definition is "Includes Canadian citizens temporarily residing outside Canada, members of the Canadian Forces (except members of the Canadian Forces who voted at the polling station established for the polling division of their place of ordinary residence) and incarcerated electors", so not exactly a strategically homogenous group!
• Special Voting Rules Group II (SVR1), again neither a polling division nor station, but reported on its own line in the official voting results. The official definition is "Includes Canadian citizens residing in Canada who voted by special ballot in or outside their electoral districts"; in other words here are the special ballot voters and folks who voted in the Returning Office.
  

Neither Advance polls nor the SVR2 group has a defined count of electors, obviously. So we can calculated a candidate's share of the vote in those polls, but not their share of the electorate in that poll-type (I suppose you could express the result as a percent of the whole electorate for the riding, but I haven't done that here). Merged polls have a defined number of electors, but no results, so I had to precalculate the "merged electors" of the polls they got merged into, for database performance reasons.

You've probably also noticed the "Number of Polls" measure for each election on the riding profile page here, which is also found at the bottom of any poll-by-poll report from Elections Canada. Here's how they come up with that number:

• Take the highest regular poll number from the bottom of the printed poll-by-polls results report
• Add the number of geographically split polling divisions, eg 190-1
• Add the number of non-geographically split polling stations, eg 70A, 70B
• Add the number of 400-series apartment polls
• Add the number of 500-series Mobile polls
• Add the number of 600-series Advance polls
• Subtract the number of polls merged or combined into others
• Subtract the number of void or "no poll held" polls
• This gives you the stated # of polling stations by Elections Canada
• It doesn't include the Special Voting Rules Groups I and II for each riding

The next step of course is to assemble, model and import all the polling division boundary geospatial data, so the polling station results can be linked to their polling divisions, and the whole kit and caboodle can be mapped. Not an overnight project.

However, so that we can make use of the poll-by-poll data that's available now, I've provided a 5th tab on each riding profile page called "Poll-by-Poll". It shows the number of polls won + tied by each candidate, broken down by each type of poll (Regular, Mobile, Advance, SVR1 and SVR2), along with their share of the vote, and their percent of the electorate in the cases where that's measurable (i.e., not for Advance or SVR2, as explained above).

This allows us to see whether a certain party was more effective in pulling its support to the Advance Polls, is overrepresented in the Mobile Polls, or whether the vote shifted in a certain riding between the Advance Polls and Election Day itself.

For example, let's look at the riding of Brampton – Springdale, ON: the Conservatives won the Advance Polls by 50.3% to 37.2% over the Liberals, but by Election Day the Liberals won the Regular Polls 41.6% to 36.5%. The Conservatives won 17 Advance Polls outright (there were no ties) to the Liberals' 5, but on Election Day they won 77 of the Regular Polls outright to the Liberals' 145, plus they were tied in a further 6.

Finally, I've supplied handy links to the original poll-by-poll result reports for each electoral event at Elections Canada from 2004 forward (the earlier data is not linkable). Just click on the little Elections Canada icon next to the election of interest on any riding profile page's "Poll-by-Poll" tab to go directly to the Official Voting Results (OVR) Poll-by-Poll Results report.

OK, with that job out of the way, I'd say it's high time we got caught up on the nomination news around here, don't you.

Labels: Poll-by-Poll Results