Saturday, October 3, 2015

Small Parties - where are they running?

There are 3 "major" parties in Canada. There are also 2 other parties that receive regular attention. These 5 are the 5 "main" political parties in our country. They are all running what can be called "Full Slates".

One of these parties only runs in Quebec, and in Quebec, they have all 78 ridings covered.
Another decided not to run in one riding, and missed the deadline in another. Considering they cover 99.4% of all ridings, it's very difficult to claim they have not run a "full slate".

If you wish to contest this, I'd point out in 2008, and in 2004, the Alberta Liberals missed a riding, pushing them down to 98.8% coverage, and still managed to win the official opposition, with 3 times the vote of the nearest competitor. The NS Libs missed a riding in 2006, despite taking 23% of the vote. The BC Greens elected a member in 2013 with only 73.5% coverage. The Manitoba PC Party missed a riding in 2007, and still took 38% of the vote, the same in 2003, but 2 points less. Heck, even the sitting government of Quebec in 2014, the PQ, only ran 124 candidates in a 125 seat province. There are many more examples, but perhaps the best example is from Saskatchewan in 2007. The winning party, the Saskatchewan Party, skipped a riding, and still won the entire election with 51% of the vote. I consider missing 1, 2, or even 3 ridings to still mean you are running a "full slate" and I hope with this evidence, you will agree with me.

Getting back to my main point;

There are 338 ridings in Canada, and in 118 of them, only the "main" parties are running.

This means that 220 ridings have candidates from other parties, or Independents running. Which 220 ridings? Fortunately, I've made a map!!










These will be the maps going forward in this series about the parties. I will highlight which of these ridings that the party or parties I am talking about are running candidates, but the "base" map will be unchanged, and still contain the grey ridings. the ridings marked in Green will also remain, these are the 2 ridings without Green candidates, meaning both these ridings only have 3 candidates, a Tory, a Liberal, and an NDPer.

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