2011 Canadian election maps

[DL]

I'd be very curious to see a map of Westmount-Ville Marie

[DL]

North Bay is one place in northern Ontario that has absolutely no history of NDP support. ThunderBay, Sudbury, Timmins, the Soo have all gone NDP federally and provincially quite regularly, but North Bay never does and in fact the NDP is almost always a distant third there. is there any theory or reason as to why this is the case?

[DL]

Now I'm drooling to see a similar map for Montreal!

[DL]

Scar Rouge River has a huge Sri Lankan Tamil population? That whole community shifted almost en masse to the NDP from the Liberals after the Liberals decided to support the Sri Lankan government against the Tamils in the civil war.

[DL]

Did Jack even visit the riding much? It was not on anyone's radar in the pundit world. If Andrea visits the riding, we'll know we have a shot.

Actually, the last event of the 2011 NDP leader's tour was in Scarborough Rouge River. As you may recall, that final Sunday May 1 was a bit of a whistlestop down the 401 to Kingston, then Oshawa and then late at night on election eve Jack spoke at a mammoth rally in Rouge River with something like 1,000 people. I think they got word that it was looking very good in the home stretch!

[DL]

I think Ottawa-Vanier will be very, very high on the NDP target list next time. The NDP came pretty close this time despite not targeting the riding at all and running a bit of a no-name candidate. Demographically it should be an NDP seat. Next time the NDP will probably get someone high profile and make an investment in the riding, Mauril Belanger may quit, and on top of that with Ontario gaining 18 new seats - its likely that some of the less NDP-friendly outer parts of the riding will get lopped off in redistribution.

It will also be interesting to see what happens to a riding like Westmount-Ville Marie with redistribution. Even though the seat allocation for Quebec may not change much - some boundaries will shift and Montreal could lose a seat or two to allow for new seats in burgeoning suburban areas. If Outremont is too small in population compared to Westmount - the downtown NDP part of Westmount-VM could get shifted into Outremont or Laurier-Ste. Marie. Who knows?

[DL]

Hell yeah, York went NDP. And the science section of the campus (where I live) went NDP in 2006 too. Heh.

How many voters are there at York U? Are there big residences or other student housing there?

[DL]

Regarding this issue of whether rural areas ever vote left while cities vote right as may be the case in northern Ontario. There are some other examples in the first world (this is already common in Latin America) up until the 1980s in Saskatchewan the CCF/NDP tended to win the rural areas and to do less well in Regina and Saskatoon. But northern Ontario is a whole different situation. First the"cities" are really not very big at all (I.e. Sudbury and Thunder Bay barely have over 100,000 people) and second of all when we talk about "rural" northern Ontario we are not talking about typical rural with lots of farms and quaint villages. We are talking about resource ext ration based communities full of miners, foresters etc...many of who are unionized, plus lots of First Nations.

[DL]

Weird thing I just noticed:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calgary_Northeast

How the hell did the Liberals get their best result since 1993??!! Won a fair number of polls - all in new suburban areas!

I think northeast is the closest thing there in Calgary to a downscale heavily suburban immigrant riding - sort of like Scarborough-Rouge River or Bramalea Gore-Malton or parts of Surrey. When the day comes that people in calgary stop being so "tribal" in their voting patterns - it could be a target for a non-Tory candidate.

[DL]

Calgary is becoming more and more Liberal. We are only 2 or 3 elections away before the Liberals win a seat here, and, are then able to hold on to it.

Two or three elections from now - the Liberal party of Canada may not even exist anymore and the NDP might be the ones trying to make Calgary Northeast into the next Scarborough-Rouge River!

BTW: The London map makes it look like almost any change in boundaries in London is likely to create a second NDP target seat.

[DL]

I thought all of Ahuntsic was pretty much allophone.

If that was the case do you think Ahuntsic would ever have elected a BQ MP in the first place. The Bloc Quebecois literally gets ZERO votes among non-francophones.

[DL]

I wonder if the NDP might have won over a few towns in Essex given how much their vote increased in that riding?