Canada Election 2006 - Minor Party ResultsI crunched a few numbers from the election results (some are still preliminary) because I was curious to see how the minor parties did...
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I crunched a few numbers from the election results (some are still preliminary) because I was curious to see how the minor parties did. The last column indicates each party's share of the popular vote in the ridings they ran in. So for instance, while the Christian Heritage Party and the Progressive Canadian Party got a mere fraction of the total popular vote, they actually got over 1% if you look only at the ridings they contested. (The PC Party likely benefited from confused voters who thought they were voting for the Conservatives.)
Advocacy groups are not allowed to advertise during electoral campaigns, so the Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party of Canada (AACEV) was formed not so much as a party, but apparently as a way around that law. So I'd say the Marxist-Leninists and the Communist Party are the biggest losers (statistically) in this campaign despite being rather old parties. If only they would decleft the far left, they could jump a few spots!
Meanwhile, the Green Party didn't come close to wining a riding. They came closest in Ottawa Centre where David Chernushenko got an endorsement from the Ottawa Citizen and 10.2% of the vote, behind the grits, tories and the N.D.P. candidate who won with 36.9%. The Green Party did best in Alberta, of all places, likely because they didn't lose any votes to strategic voting.
The biggest winner in Quebec was Maxime Bernier (Conservative) who got 67% of the vote in Beauce. The biggest winner in Canada was Kevin A. Sorenson (Conservative) who got 82.5% of the vote in Crowfoot, AB. The biggest losers were Marsha Fine and Yves Le Seigle, both of the Marxist-Leninists, who got 0 votes apiece. In all likelihood, they weren't running in their own ridings, but part of me wants to believe they didn't vote for themselves. These two have now disappeared from the validated raw data, so perhaps their names never actually appeared on the ballots. Next poorest showing: independent Régent Millette with 24 votes.
Source: Elections Canada, on 2006-01-26. Some results were preliminary, others validated.
3 comments There were definitely no Marxist-Leninists on the ballot in my riding. I think that was an Elections Canada mix-up.
I believe the Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party of Canada, with its 75 votes, was the worst result of any political party, federal or provincial, in the history of Canada. I wonder if it is the worst result of any national-level, official political party in the history of western democracy? Anyone?
Speaking of surprise election results, how is it that Hamas won? I thought most of their supporters blew themselves up. | |
Based on our canvassing where we had strong campaigns the Progressive Canadian support is far less than it should have been due to a last minute flood to the Liberals to stop Harper's Conservatives. Our growth in support is very much understated by our voter turnout due to the re-run of "fear factor" that played out on election night.
The loss that we suffered there is a far more important issue. I could conclusively demonstrate where this hit us. Where there was no stop Harper "wave" our new candidates with no budgets and modest campaigns easily outdid our national average vote. In areas where every vote went to block Harper's Conservative we lost heavily to strategic voting -- even when we had canvass or poll numbers that showed us as serious contenders for the vote. And you have to know what a realist I am to know that this isn't "spin" or "fantasizing". We had solid vote that moved strategically.
This strategic voting is unfortunate, but its a fact of life in elections. That, I would submit, is the real factor in understating our true growth.
I've heard this old chestnut about voter confusion in two elections now and I have trouble with it. Could it happen? Certainly. For the few people who have no idea who they are voting for who actually go out to vote, and who, in the face of a multi-million dollar advertising campaign on TV, radio and print, don't know the difference. On that basis, however, some people voted Libertarian when they meant to vote Liberal. And Jim Harris Harris (Green) picked up votes from my supporters who didn't remember Jim Love as the Progressive Canadian (PC) party candidate and just voted for some guy named Jim.
As a party, it's equaly likely that we lost votes from the unknown number of months where a Conservative supporter used a common typo in our full party name to divert traffic to the Conservative web site. Our complaints to the Conservatives went unanswered so this took us months to track down the person ourselves. We have no idea what the impact of that was on our vote. It could easily be as high, or higher than this mythical voter confusion.
I won't bore you with the details of our own analysis, but our numbers show that there is no material advantage gained by us as a result of the confusion.
Not that anyone who came in wanting to vote for the old PCs without knowing the candidate would be wrong in voting for us. We have the same constitution as the former federal Progressive Conservative Party, the same principles and the same socialy progressive and fiscally responsible, centrist views that the party had under Robert Stanfield and Joe Clark. We are, as I like to say, all of the best of not only what the federal party was, but also what it could have been. But as I said, we've heard this -- we dont see it turn up in our numbers in any meaningful way.
Otherwise, a very nice analysis. Thanks.
Jim Love President Progressive Canadian (PC) Party www.progressivecanadian.ca
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I would like to disagree with Jim Love. Here in Trinity-Spadina, the vote for the PC party dropped from 531 to 392. There certainly wasn't any strategic voting against the Conservative candidate in this riding. Additionally, the PC party got just 4 votes out 1314 cast in the special balloting. Since they are write-in ballots without party identification, this suggests that nearly half of the votes that the PC Party received were from confused voters who thought they were voting for the former Progressive Conservative party. | |
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