Susan Delacourt had an interesting story in Saturday's Toronto Star (and a follow-up on her blog) on the differential rates of election of women between urban and rural ridings. The research she's citing from Louise Carbert, of Dalhousie University in Halifax, apparently looks back several decades. But I had the data handy to examine the last 5 general elections, with the following results.

[For the purposes of this analysis, I've used the same urban vs. rural riding designations as for last summer's analysis of party success done for the Chronicle Herald (with the one exception that I later realized I had accidentally miscategorized Wascana, SK as an urban riding). Notice that I've grouped the Canadian Alliance/Reform and Progressive Conservative parties together for the years 1997 and 2000 in the following charts.]

The first observation we can make is that women have been twice as likely to be nominated in urban ridings compared with rural ridings, although the number of women nominated in rural ridings is increasing overall. This was mostly due to increased number of rural Liberal women in 2008, while their number of urban women candidates stayed roughly constant. The Conservatives also had their best year ever for urban female nominees in 2008. Between 2004 and 2008, the Liberals, NDP and Greens were nominating between 2/3rds and 3/4rs of all urban women candidates, but by 2008 virtually all of the rural ones. Given that these parties traditionally have their bases of support in urban Canada, it's clear that the majority of those rural women candidates were facing an uphill battle.

Turning to the number and distribution of women who got elected, however, we can see that the number of women elected in both urban and rural seats stayed fairly constant, although the distribution between parties changed a bit. And as the article indicates, the Conservatives did manage to increase the number of women they elected in rural seats in 2008, increasing the overall number there slightly and leaving the Liberals with just one woman elected in a rural seat anywhere in the country (Judy Foote in Random – Burin – St. George's, NL). The number of rural women elected by the Bloc Québécois also declined in 2008, mainly due to retiring incumbents.

Obviously, if parties are going to meet their commitments to increase the number of women candidates they run, it will be by definition in non-incumbent ridings that will therefore be harder to win. If more women are to be elected in rural ridings, it will either be because retiring Conservative incumbents are replaced by women candidates (as happened for example when Candice Hoeppner replaced Brian Pallister in Portage – Lisgar, MB), or because women candidates from the other parties can win over those seats (although the Conservatives only lost 6 seats overall last time, 2 to women, both urban).

One picky point to finish with, though. The sidebar to the Star article refers to Agnes MacPhail as the first woman to be elected a Member of Parliament (and in a rural riding), saying that she "ran in the first federal election in which women had the vote, for the Progressive Party, a forerunner to the Progressive Conservative party." However, Ms. MacPhail herself did not join the PCs, but rather had belonged to the Ginger Group faction of the Progressive Party which went on to participate in the formation of the CCF, the precursor of the modern NDP. She ran under the banner of the "United Farmers of Ontario-Labour" party in 1935 and 1940, ultimately joining the CCF in 1942, and it was the NDP's fund for women candidates which bore her name.

Labels: Data Analysis, Rural vs Urban Seats, Women Candidates

While verifying some data against the Elections Canada Nominations Database this morning, I realized that they had a few names not already in the Pundits' Guide database, so let's rectify that right now:

• Stormont – Dundas – South Glengarry, ON - On May 14 local Greens renominated their 2008 candidate, David Rawnsley, by acclamation. This eastern Ontario riding is currently held by three-term Conservative M.P. Guy Lauzon, and at least one candidate (Bernadette Clement) is also considering a run for the Liberals, as reported here earlier.
• Dufferin – Caledon, ON - On June 2 Greens in this riding met to acclaim their 2008 candidate as well. Ard Van Leeuwen posted his party's 6th best performance of the last election, and while at least one Liberal blogger had been suggesting this seat as a good choice for Elizabeth May to run in, it appears for now that Greens in this riding are already represented for the next election. This largely rural riding northwest of Toronto is currently represented by three-term Conservative M.P. David Tilson, and will also have a new Liberal candidate with the resignation from party politics of 2008 candidate Rebecca Finch earlier this year.
  
• Trinity – Spadina, ON - The next day on June 3, local Greens also met in this downtown Toronto riding to renominate their 2008 candidate, performance artist and arts educator Stephen La Frenie, also known as "Mime-guy". La Frenie, who was acclaimed, rejoins 2008 Liberal candidate Christine Innes who was also recently acclaimed for another run. The riding is currently held by two-term NDP M.P. Olivia Chow. No potential Conservative candidate has surfaced as yet. The riding's recently history was covered here last month.

This brings my count of Green Party candidates up to 27, 11 of them women. Of the 10 Conservative non-incumbent candidates already nominated, there are no women as yet. Of the 19 non-incumbent Liberal candidates, just 4 are women. The NDP has nominated just one non-incumbent candidate so far in a potential by-election riding, but just not a woman. And of the three non-incumbents nominated by the Bloc, none are women either.

I've written before that you can get an indication of which next-tier ridings parties are targetting based on where they nominate non-incumbents early. Clearly everyone has a bit of work to do if they are going to meet their commitments to Equal Voice of last month. Of course it may be a bit early to assess their slates in terms of gender and ethnic diversity, but it's a trend worth watching over the coming months.

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Greens, Women Candidates

Further to yesterday's announcement of the Equal Voice 2009 Canada Challenge, the Ottawa Sun followed up with an interview of Carleton University political science professor and Equal Voice executive member Melissa Haussman, who hypothesized that parties might support women candidates less than male candidates.

Parties block female candidates says Prof

By LAURA CZEKAJ, Sun Media
Last Updated: 19th June 2009, 7:16am

Public opinion may favour having more women involved in federal politics, but it’s difficult to tell if that translates into more votes during an election, says an elections expert.

Melissa Haussman, a political science professor at Carleton University, said more research needs to be done to see how women fare when running against a male opponent.

Out of the 11 Ottawa-area federal ridings, Cheryl Gallant, MP for Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke, was the only female elected in the 2008 election.

Research has shown that in close campaigns, candidate gender matters less than party affiliation.

Where women find roadblocks to their candidacy is at the riding association level, where they are selected in “unwinnable” ridings or not offered the same campaign resources and support granted male candidates running under the same party flag, claimed Haussman.

"The net effect is the same in that women get treated as weaker candidates by the party apparatus even though they are not," she said.

"We have to overcome this labelling. If women are given a fair chance we will do equally, or better than men."

She said voter reluctance is often used as an excuse at the riding association level not to support women who are willing to run.

I thought this was an interesting hypothesis to test, and quite easy to do with the data in the normalized Pundits' Guide relational database. Here is the result using the reported value for "Transfers from Registered Parties" for the best available candidate election return ("as reviewed by Elections Canada" if entered into my database, or "as submitted" otherwise), but expressed as a percent of the Candidate Spending Limit for that riding, to standardize the contributions across all ridings.

Registered Party Transfers to Candidates as a Percent of the Candidate Expenditure Limit, and Candidate Counts, by Party and Gender, 2004 - 2008 General Elections

Elec	Gen	Lib	NDP	Grn	BQ	Cons	ALL
2008 GE	F M	3.8% 6.5%	5.2% 3.7%	2.2% 0.4%	21.0% 21.1%	7.9% 8.6%	4.7% 4.6%
2006 GE	F M	9.3% 6.6%	4.3% 3.4%	0.3% 0.3%	13.0% 12.3%	23.6% 15.9%	6.4% 5.8%
2004 GE	F M	7.1% 7.4%	2.9% 2.4%	0.5% 0.5%	35.5% 25.4%	5.1% 5.4%	4.4% 4.1%
2008 GE	F M	114 192	105 203	89 213	21 54	62 243	446 1150
2006 GE	F M	79 228	108 199	71 234	23 52	38 270	378 1236
2004 GE	F M	75 233	96 211	74 230	18 57	36 272	384 1280

As we can see, women candidates across all three general elections examined obtained a slightly higher rate of transfers from their party headquarters than male candidates, contrary to Professor Haussman's expectation. This varied by party, however, with the NDP as the only party to consistently favour its women candidates in this regard, the Bloc Québécois and Green Party either favouring women candidates or treating them the same, and the Liberal and Conservative parties each favouring male candidates over female candidates in 2 of the 3 elections studied here.

Elections were chosen for inclusion above based on the quality of available data on central party support of candidates. Because of amendments to the reporting requirements in the Canada Elections Act that took effect in time for the 2004 General Election, candidates had to separately break out the transfers they received from party headquarters ("registered parties") and their local riding associations ("registered associations"), and thus we are able to more quickly identify the financial assistance they received.

Candidate gender is as collected by me from web searches and through other means, and is virtually complete for all electoral events at least for the major parties reported on above.

Anyway, I thought this was an interesting dataset -- one that contradicts earlier expectations -- and so I hope readers will find it interesting.

Labels: Party Finance, Women Candidates

The organization Equal Voice held a news conference with women parliamentarians this morning as part of their "2009 Canada Challenge" campaign, to encourage the major political parties to increase the number of women candidates they run in the forthcoming campaign.

Opposition party leaders and the Minister for the Status of Women responded by making pledges in the Equal Voice news release (PDF) and during Members' Statements before Question Period:

• NDP Leader Jack Layton was first up, and pledged that his slate for the forthcoming election would include "at least 50% women".
  
• Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe said that "we are going to do our utmost to reach that objective", and stated that their goal was "parity, which is only normal".
• Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff pledged on behalf of his party that "no fewer than one-third of our Liberal candidates will be women in the next election".
• Status of Women minister Helena Guergis quoted in the release stressed that women should have every opportunity "to make a meaningful contribution to democratic life in Canada, which includes the option of running for elected office," and in the House she highlighted her government's funding of the Equal Voice program to foster political education amongst women, and the record number of women appointed to Cabinet by the Prime Minister.
  
• Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, also quoted in the release said that "we need more women candidates to ensure that the issues important to Canadians are raised and important questions asked".

The Pundits' Guide will allow users to track how parties are doing in meeting their recruitment commitments; both overall (in the Nominations Progress table at the top of the main page), but also in various categories of seats, such as Incumbent Seats, Seats in which the party placed 2nd last time, Seats in which the party placed a strong 3rd last time, and other Seats.

For this latter breakdown, go to the "Search the Database" page, and select the second query under the heading "Nominations Progress" entitled "Nomination counts by party and previous rank for the 41st General Election".

This breakdown can be important to examine because, for example, while the Conservative caucus had fewer women going into the last campaign, their party made an obvious effort to recruit women candidates in vacant incumbent seats and next-tier winnable ridings. That progress ought to be able to be measured as well.

One statistic mentioned by Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe was his party's record of success in actually electing the women candidates it runs. I've realized before that this was a desirable statistic to track, and when I revamp the Summary panes this summer I'll be adding it in there to provide us with a more complete picture.

I realize it's still controversial for some readers that parties might recruit candidates on the basis of a characteristic such as gender, rather than seeking to pick "the best person for the job". To this I would merely say that if the candidate were selected *only* on the basis of a characteristic, that would be a recipe for political failure. By the same token, I might argue, often when new candidates are allowed to bypass a competitive nomination process they may be missing out on a crucial testing ground that could serve them well later on. So the nature of the selection process may be as important as the candidates' attributes. However, we don't even debate the importance of regional representation in the Chamber or the cabinet, and some parties also observe conventions about alternating the language profiles of their leaders, as they did with religion in days gone by.

Much as many new participants were inspired to participate in politics in the United States this past year as a result of the candidacies of President Obama and Senator Clinton, I remember a time 25 years ago when the first woman nominee for Vice President was selected. That was in the summer of 1984, and the excitement this event generated is part of what led me to become involved in politics myself. I would like to see many more such role models, of many different backgrounds and with many different attributes and skills, included in the parties' slates for the forthcoming campaign, in the hopes of motivating another generation of young folks to become involved in the democratic life of their country.

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Women Candidates

As we count down to the expected call of four by-elections, the Green Party has nominated another candidate in one of the by-election ridings:

• In Don Valley West, ON, the Chief of the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department at the Scarborough Hospital, Georgina Wilcock, was selected at a nomination meeting last Friday to represent her party in the riding vacated by Liberal M.P. John Godfrey.

Godfrey announced he would be stepping down on July 1 of this year. However it appears his resignation has not yet taken effect, since the seat is not yet listed as vacant at the Parliamentary web-site's list of vacant seats. Thus, if we wanted to speculate (what pundits do, after all), perhaps the Prime Minister is waiting for the seat to become vacant, and then call all four by-elections on his return from the G8 meeting.

[UPDATE] Any speculation on the situation in Don Valley West, ON should take into account the reporting by John Ivison at the National Post this morning that John Godfrey will apparently not now resign until August 1. This was news to me, but if true, need only delay the call for Don Valley West by a week or so beyond the last day for calling Westmount – Ville-Marie, QC.

[FURTHER UPDATE] Ivison's column does make a small factual error that affects the calculations, however. He writes "The Tories are obliged to call a vote in the Montreal riding of Westmount on July 23 for a by-election as early as seven weeks later", however the minimum length of an election is now five weeks (and thank goodness for that, too, because the old 7-week campaigns were brutal). Thus, the Prime Minister could call a by-election for the three other seats on or before July 26 with a date of Monday September 8, and then call Don Valley West the following week for the same date. Parliament is currently scheduled to return on Monday September 15. So, there: I guess I've picked September 8 as the likely date. Now just watch events go and prove me wrong!

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

The Guide has been in the news again, well at least in the blogosphere, thanks to a mention in the well-read blog of The Toronto Star's Susan Delacourt, aptly named "Politics". An interesting discussion ensued, and Liberal blogger James Curran suggested an alternate calculation for the percentage of women (or presumably other) candidates, not as a percentage of candidates nominated, but as percentage of seats to be contested. Like I said, I'll have to figure out how to fit that extra calculation into the teeny tiny table, but it's now firmly on my to-do list, so thanks for the suggestion James. Now if only I could find some time ...

Labels: 40th General Election Nominations, Fall 2008 By-elections, Greens, Women Candidates

While Stéphane Dion has been campaigning for his party's "Green Shift" in Alberta, Jack Layton's party has taken the first part of the summer announcing and nominating more candidates to fill out its slate. Here are two more:

• In Don Valley West, ON, one of the by-election seats, the party will be represented by Canadian actor and ACTRA vice-president, David Sparrow.
• In Edmonton – Leduc, AB, human resources consultant and LEAF (the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund) activist, Hana Razga won a contested nomination to run against four-term Conservative M.P. James Rajotte.

With these names, two milestones have been reached by the NDP: (i) given the expected announcement of the party's candidate in Westmount-Ville Marie later today, its slate is now complete for the set of by-elections expected to be called soon, and (ii) the party, although hovering just below for sometime, has just passed the 40% threshold in women candidates.

It may seem that the Green Party and NDP are getting the lion's share of nomination write-ups at the Pundits' Guide these days, but that's for the simple reason that the Conservatives (85%), the Bloc Québécois (81% in Québec only), and to a slightly lesser extent the Liberals (76%), already have the vast majority of their general election slate of candidates in place. The NDP is sitting at 62% nominated, and the Greens are at 44% (they claim this number is low, but I just can't track down all the names, although it is time for another scavenge hunt).

If you have a name of a nominated candidate that's not in the Pundits' Guide, please do send it along to me here.

Labels: 40th General Election Nominations, NDP, Women Candidates

Here are a couple of quick nominations updates:

• Former student Green activist and current Green Party staffer, Emily Berrigan, won a contested nomination to represent her party in Peterborough, ON on Monday night. She will face first-time Conservative M.P. Dean Del Mastro.
• Former Liberal M.P. and labour lawyer Françoise Boivin was officially nominated as the NDP candidate in Gatineau riding on Wednesday night. She will be in a rematch with first-time Bloc Québécois M.P. Richard Nadeau who defeated her in 2006.

The parties' percentages of women candidates have not changed significantly since the last time I took a snapshot, although they are all moving up slowly. The NDP is still in the lead, and up two points from 36.8% to 39.2% by my count, the Liberals are close behind and up one point from 36.0% to 36.9%, the Bloc is up from 29.8% to 30.5% (caution, though, because I haven't done a full scour-type update of Bloc nominations yet ... sounds like a good project for the Fête Nationale, though), the Greens are starting to move up from 26.0% to 27.6%, and the Conservatives are up a point as well from 15.7% to 16.7%.

Labels: 40th General Election Nominations, Greens, NDP, Women Candidates

Spring gardening: check. Spring cleaning: check. Paperwork, client work, sending bright young person off into the world for a first job in her new profession: check, check, check. Starting back into running along the Rideau Canal to lose some of the "pundit's girth" I've accumulated over this very intense, very sedentary first year of the project: well, I'm trying ... I'll go out again tomorrow ... promise ...

Meantime, a few things have drawn me back to the Pundits' Guide, not least of which were the very kind emails I've received from several readers asking would I return soon. Thank you everyone so much for writing (Sally Field moment).

Also with the scheduled adjournment of the House of Commons looming, nomination news is revving back up; the 2006 Census Federal Electoral District profiles are expected soon; and the party with the ammo may now finally have its finger on the trigger [UPDATE: but will probably not pull it on Monday after all] . So I have to get ready on a number of fronts.

One big item of news this week was the announced retirement of four-time Halifax, NS M.P. and former NDP Leader, Alexa McDonough. Since Ms. McDonough had already been nominated, the NDP count is now down by one, and of course the count of Retiring Incumbents (see the second "Nominations Progress" query on the Search Data page) is now up by one to 27 as well. At this point, only Green Ryan L. Watson is nominated in Halifax riding, former Liberal candidate Martin MacKinnon having stepped down to take another job in February. [UPDATE: Stephen Maher has a good run-down of the potential candidates in this morning's column, but read it quickly, as it's only up for 7 days.]

A sidebar: Alexa mentioned in several interviews this week that she had been the only woman M.P. elected from Atlantic Canada in the 2006 General Election. How would we use the Pundits' Guide to see these stats? Well, start by going to the "Browse Parties" page, then selecting "2006 General Election" from the Elections drop-down to the left of the chart, and "Atlantic Canada" from the Regions drop-down (or click here). The "Party Summary" tab appears by default, and shows that in the 32 ridings down east, the Conservatives nominated just one woman in the last election, the Liberals nominated two, the Green Party ran 11 women (34.4%), and the NDP ran 13 women (40.6%).

Now, to see who the candidates were: still on the same page, click on the "Party Details" tab (or click here), and notice that the winning candidates are highlighted in the left-hand column (only one has an "(F)" next to their name). Casting your eyes down the list, notice that each party's candidates are highlighted in turn in their own colum, so we see that the lone Conservative woman candidate was Cynthia Downey in Random – Burin – St. George's, NL, and the two Liberal women were Siobhan Coady in St. John's South – Mount Pearl, NL and Marcelle Mersereau in Acadie – Bathurst, NB.

In any event, I figured it's time to get back into the pundit groove. Now, where were we? Ah yes, I promised an update of nominations from the Green Party. Coming right up ...

Labels: 2_How to Search the Database, 39th (2006) General Election, Women Candidates

Two items of news:

• Green Party nomination in Prince Edward – Hastings, ON: Former community newspaper editor Alan Coxwell was uncontested at a nomination meeting this past weekend in Belleville.
• Liberal Party nomination in St. John's South – Mount Pearl, NL: Their nomination meeting is scheduled for this coming Monday, and will now be contested.

Also, one new query table, Nomination counts by party and previous rank for the 40th General Election, has been added to the "Search Data" page. It answers the questions:

• In what percent of the seats they won at the last election, has a party nominated candidates now? Obviously, parties will focus on the seats they hold, followed by the seats in which they came second last time, and/or other seats they may be targetting. This shows how well they're doing at concentrating their efforts on those priorities.
• What percentage of women candidates has been nominated in the parties' best seats (i.e., its wins at last election, and second-place finishes), as compared with the "other" seats.

Labels: 2_How to Search the Database, 40th General Election Nominations, Greens, Liberals, Women Candidates

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

Last week's Hill Times published a list of 24 M.P.'s who have announced they will not run for re-election, which accords more or less with a similar list found at the Wikipedia page for the 40th General Election, except that the Hill Times included Joe Comuzzi who is now thinking of running again after all, and Lucienne Robillard whose seat is already vacant.

Suppose we exclude Comuzzi, but include Robillard since no by-election has been called (yet), for a total of 23 seats. 12 of the seats are currently held by Liberal MPs (or were until last week), 8 are now held by Conservatives, 2 by Bloc members, and 1 by a New Democrat. 4 of the Conservative vacancies are in Alberta, 2 in Saskatchewan, and 1 each in Manitoba and Newfoundland & Labrador. The vacant NDP seat is in Manitoba, and the 2 vacant Bloc seats obviously are in Québec; leaving the remainder vacated by Liberals.

Ridings with no incumbents running can be highly volatile, and this makes them early targets for well organized political parties. The willingness of parties to nominate women candidates in such seats would also particularly demonstrate their commitment to electing a higher proportion of women to the House of Commons. Here is a table showing the parties' progress in nominating candidates for these ridings to watch.

			1		4	2	2	6	4	1		1	2	23
Party	YT	NT	NU	BC	AB	SK	MB	ON	QC	NB	NS	PE	NL	Total	Pct	Wom	Pct
BQ														0
Cons					3	1		6	3	1		1	1	16	70%	4	25.0%
Grn					2			2	1	1				6	26%	1	16.7%
Lib			1		3			5	2	1		1	1	14	61%	3	21.4%
NDP					2	2		4					1	9	39%	2	22.2%
Rest					1			1		1				3		3

The list of ridings is shown below.

On an unrelated note, the issues surrounding Mississauga – Streetsville M.P. Wajid Khan's candidate financial return have apparently been resolved with Elections Canada, and he has rejoined the Conservative caucus in Parliament.

Seats with Retiring Incumbents		Prev Contest
NL	Random – Burin – St. George's	Lib-Cons
NL	St. John's East	Cons-Lib
PE	Egmont	Lib-Cons
NB	Fredericton	Lib-Cons
QC	LaSalle – Émard	Lib-BQ
QC	Longueuil – Pierre-Boucher	BQ-Cons
QC	Saint-Lambert	BQ-Lib
QC	Westmount – Ville-Marie	Lib-Cons
ON	Don Valley West	Lib-Cons
ON	Guelph	Lib-Cons
ON	Huron – Bruce	Lib-Cons
ON	Newmarket – Aurora	Lib-Cons
ON	Nickel Belt	Lib-NDP
ON	Scarborough Southwest	Lib-Cons
MB	Elmwood – Transcona	NDP-Cons
MB	Portage – Lisgar	Cons-Lib
SK	Prince Albert	Cons-NDP
SK	Saskatoon – Rosetown – Biggar	Cons-NDP
AB	Calgary Northeast	Cons-Lib
AB	Edmonton – St. Albert	Cons-Lib
AB	Edmonton – Sherwood Park	Cons-Lib
AB	Wild Rose	Cons-Grn
NU	Nunavut	Lib-Cons

Labels: 40th General Election Nominations, Bloc Québécois, Conservatives, Liberals, NDP, Women Candidates

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.

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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

The nomination totals below exclude nominations for the four by-election ridings, but include another review of the Elections Canada Nominations Database, the party web-sites, Wikipedia and various news sources.

Labels: 40th General Election Nominations, Bloc Québécois, Conservatives, Greens, Liberals, NDP, Wild Rose, Women Candidates

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

Some more updates from various sources (Elections Canada, party web-sites, etc.).

	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	31.6%
Cons	1			33	26	12	11	92	45	7	7	1	4	239	78%	36	15.1%
Grn				11	9		2	51	14	3	7			97	31%	25	25.8%
Lib	1		1	29	18	6	9	90	32	9	9	4	4	212	69%	74	34.9%
NDP		1		28	17	10	6	55	29	4	8	1	3	162	53%	61	37.7%
Rest				2	6			7	2		1			18		3

It's interesting to note that the Liberals seem to be on track to meet their goal of 33% female candidates so far, exceeded only by the NDP. Shortly I will attempt an analysis of how likely the parties are to nominate women in seats vacated by their own incumbents, seats they lost last time, and seats in which they came second last time ... since these are the seats they are more likely to win and where the nominations are most competitive.

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%	81	69%	39	58%		239	78%
Grn		1							1	100%	96	31%		97	31%
Lib	103	116	-9	2	96		99	96%	76	66%	37	42%		212	69%
NDP	29	53		1	30		28	97%	40	75%	94	42%		162	53%
Ind	1			3	4		1
VAC				4	4

Labels: 40th General Election Nominations, Bloc Québécois, Conservatives, Greens, Liberals, NDP, Women Candidates