Thanks to daveberta.ca, some news about upcoming nomination meetings in a couple of Edmonton ridings:

• Edmonton Centre, AB - Both the Liberals and NDP will be nominating their candidates here in a few weeks, ironically with a day of each other, and both are expected to be acclaimed. On Monday July 27, Liberals will meet to select Mary McDonald, a lawyer and former aide to former Liberal M.P. Anne McLellan. The next day, New Democrats will meet to select their candidate, likely small businessperson and local human rights activist Lewis Cardinal. The riding is currently represented by two-term Conservative M.P. Laurie Hawn, who took it on his second try against "Landslide Annie", as Anne McLellan came to be known for the consistently small margins she won by. Hawn was reelected in 2008 with a considerably larger margin, however it looks like both the Liberals and NDP are targetting this riding.
  
• Edmonton East, AB - On the same night, indeed at the same meeting, the NDP will be nominating its candidate in neighbouring Edmonton East, where former provincial leader and former federal candidate Ray Martin will almost certainly be acclaimed. Martin achieved the second-highest vote share of any NDP candidate in Alberta in 2008 (31.8%), although his campaign was far from fully funded (he spent just 29% of the limit, to the Conservatives' 78%). Conservative M.P. Peter Goldring has held the seat since 1997, and like Hawn was automatically renominated as his party's incumbent on May 4 after their party's referendum results. Goldring defeated one-term Liberal M.P. Judy Bethel who was first elected in 1993, who herself defeated one-term NDP M.P. Ross Harvey first elected in 1988. [UPDATE: Thanks are due again to daveberta.ca for the correction he made in the comments below.]
  

One characteristic of these two ridings that really struck me just now in reviewing their history is their incredibly low turnout, both historically and in the last election. Turnout in Edmonton Centre was 51.6% last time, down from 59.8% and 62.5% in 2004-2006 and 54%-56% in its predecessor seat of Edmonton West. And this is in spite of the tight margins by which Ms. McLellan used to win her seat, defying one of the usual hypotheses for low turnout in Alberta (namely that the one party dominance has usually meant there's little to decide at the polls on election day). For more on turnout in Alberta provincial elections, see the excellent series of features last year from Jason Fekete and Renata D'Aliesio of the Calgary Herald.

Edmonton East next door chalked up just 45.4% turnout in 2008, consistent with the downward trend but overall low turnouts in this riding and its predecessors since 1988. It has consistently shown the lowest turnout of any riding in Edmonton, and perhaps not coincidentally also ranks the lowest on many census measures of income and employment. To put the 45.4% figure into perspective, it is the 13th worst turnout of the last election and 19th worst turnout of any riding in any general election since 1988.

The strategies to hold or win over low turnout ridings might look very different than those needed to win elsewhere, which undoubtedly the parties will be taking into account.

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Liberals, NDP, oter Turnout, Voter Turnout

One of the most frequent user requests for additional queries is the ranking of ridings by their rate of voter participation, or "Turnout" (TO). Although Turnout is reported throughout the database, nowhere are ridings ranked by turnout, whether high or low, and nowhere was it easy to find ridings with the greatest increases and decreases in turnout ... until now.

In fact, given the very low overall rate of voter turnout in the recent election, now seemed as good a time as any to get around to this item of work.

For a full definition and discussion of Turnout see the relevant section on the Pundit Metrics page. It is usually expressed as a percent -- "Total Ballots"/"Electors on the List" -- meaning that rejected ballots as well as ballots validly cast for a candidate are all included when determining Turnout. On the other hand, the vote share/vote percent obtained by a candidate and/or a party is calculated using only the "Valid Ballots" ("Candidate Vote"/("Total Ballots" - "Rejected Ballots")).

So without further ado I present four new "Election Pundit Queries", which you can access from the "Search the Database" page, from the "Pundit Queries" tab on the "Browse Elections" page, or more simply just from here:

• Ridings with the highest turnouts
• Ridings with the lower turnouts
• Ridings with the greatest increases in turnout
• Ridings with the greatest decreases in turnout

Since results are shown for every riding for every election, they can all take a second to load ... so try to be patient !

Labels: Voter Turnout

Although the scope of this website is for now usually limited to federal elections, your Guide is visiting Alberta and British Columbia this Canada Day long weekend, and happened across an excellent series of features in the Calgary Herald that readers might find interesting.

"Black Mark: Why We Don't Vote" is an in-depth look at why voter turnout (that's the percent of people on the voters list who actually cast a vote) hit an all-time low of 41.3% in Alberta during the recent provincial election.

To quote from the lead story, penned by Renata D'Aliesio and Jason Fekete:

Alberta gave the country Senate reform, spawned several historical political movements and helped women gain the right to vote.

But can the province with the lowest turnout in Canada rescue itself from a disturbing new trend -- where more than half of its population decides not to mark an X at the ballot box? This is the question confounding politicians, pundits and pollsters as the electorate grapples with the stark fact that six in 10 Albertans didn't vote in the March election. It's believed to be the worst showing ever in a provincial campaign.

Leaders from municipal councils to the House of Commons worry a troubling trend is emerging across the country as more people disengage from the democratic process.

"We Canadians sometimes take our democracy for granted, but we don't realize how unique we are," Prime Minister Stephen Harper told the Herald in an editorial column to be published Sunday.

The Prime Minister was joined by Preston Manning, and other prominent Albertans and academics in contributing their perspectives on why turnout was low in the last provincial election, and how it might be increased, and included the results of a poll commissioned by Elections Alberta exploring people's reasons for non-participation.

So, how can we use the Pundits' Guide to look at Voter Turnout in Federal Elections?

• Nationally -- The summary chart at the top of the "Browse Elections" page shows us the three relevant numbers for all the general elections in the guide:
• (a) "Electors" - the number of people eligible to vote, by virtue of citizenship, residency and age,
• (b) "Voted" - the number of electors who voted, and
• (c) "% TO" - where TO stands for "Turnout"; it is calculated as (b) - Voted divided by (a) - Electors and then multipled by 100 (for further information, see the description on the Pundit Metrics page).
• Broken down by Electoral Event -- Still on the "Browse Elections" page, and looking down the left-hand column of the "Election Summary Data" tab, you will see the Percent Turnout (% TO) for every electoral event, including by-elections as well as general elections. For example, the electoral events with the lowest turnouts in recent history (that means with the lowest turnout in this database, i.e., since 1997) were:
• the June 16, 2003 By-elections (at just 25.7%) in the ridings of QC: Lévis-et-Chutes-de-la-Chaudière (23.5%), and QC: Témiscamingue (29.2%)
• the November 15, 1999 By-Elections (at 28.1% TO) in the ridings of ON: York West (27.4%), QC: Hull – Aylmer (25.4%), QC: Mount Royal (27.5%), and SK: Saskatoon – Rosetown – Biggar (33.7%), and
• the March 17, 2008 By-elections (28.0%), which have been covered extensively in this blog already.
• Broken down by Region, Province or lower -- Still on the "Browse Elections" page, notice the drop-downs and list-boxes to the left of the chart. Select a province from the drop-down list, and notice that all the calculations have been re-done for just that province (let's pick Prince Edward Island, for example). Turnout there jumped from 70.8% in the 2004 General Election to 73.2% in the 2006 General. Now let's select a different province (I guess we ought to look at Alberta then). Notice that turnout in federal elections in Alberta has varied between 58.5% and 61.9%. And in fact, the by-election that returned Stephen Harper to Ottawa as an M.P. showed only a 23% turnout in the lone Alberta riding voting that day, namely Harper's riding of AB: Calgary Southwest (although the Liberal party did not field a candidate in that race).
• Broken down by Riding -- The riding profile page for any riding shows the history of its voter turnout for each electoral event. For example, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC on the West Island of Montréal had the highest turnout in 1997, Cardigan, PE had the highest turnout in both the 2000 and 2004 General Elections, while Nepean – Carleton, ON, currently represented by Conservative M.P. Pierre Poilievre, had the highest voter turnout in the 2006 General Election.

Anyway, I can see that it would be nice to have a Turnout by Province by Electoral Event cross-tabulation table somewhere (likely the "Search Data" page), for comparisons' sake. There also needs to be a new Election Pundit Query about ridings with the highest and lowest turnouts. For now, have fun exploring the data on turnout currently available throughout the Pundits' Guide.

Labels: 2_How to Search the Database, Voter Turnout