Americans
Basically, that map shows ridings; what the Brits and Aussies call seats, and you'd call congressional districts. Each riding elects a member to the national parliament, and the party/coalition of parties with the most members wins the election. The ridings change in size according to population. In Canada, the government is a coalition of the (Red) Liberal Party and (Orange) New Democratic Party, the two main leftist parties.
In the UK, the left-wing Labour Party holds government, and is not in coalition with anyone as it holds an outright majority-it has the most seats in the lower house of parliament, more then all the others put together. In Australia, the Liberal Party (74 members), the Country Liberal party (1 member) and the National Party (12 members) are in a coalition of right-wing parties to form government.
The map shows which parties hold which riding/seat/congressional district, and you can see that the Red seats, despite being smaller, are the most prevalent, followed by the opposition party, the (Blue) Conservative Party. But when the Orange and Red seats are put together, there are more then the Blue seats and also the Cyan seats, which are from the minor party that only runs in the province of Quebec, the Bloc Quebecois.
Questions?
