A Proportional Analysis of the 2019 Federal Election
(This is an abridged version of another article on Montopedia - This one is intended to be an addition to the Wikipedia "2019 Canada election" page but I doubt from past experience that the powers that be on that site will allow such an illuminating and insightful piece to be included there. instead an analysis of privately-conducted survey polls hold dominance on the Wikipedia page. As well the Wikipedia page map shows percentage of support but does not indicate who won a riding, nor does it give provincial/regional analysis such as I am presenting here.)
Total votes cast 17,810,860
Harsh representation
Over whole country Alberta
vote p.c. seats seat p.c. vote p.c. seats seat p.c.
Conservative 34 121 36 68 33 97
Liberal 33 147 46 14 0 0
NDP 16 24 7 12 1 3
Bloc Quebecois 8 32 9 000000000000000000000
Green 7 3 1 3 0 0
People's Party .4 1 .3 2 0 0
The Liberals and Conservatives took many more seats than they were due at the expense of the NDP, the Greens and the People's Party. -- more on this below.
The election also saw no party take a majority of the seats although a working majority is required to pass laws.
The Liberals took more seats than the Conservatives despite receiving less votes (being less popular in first preferences). If it had come to a run-off ballot between Liberals and Conservatives it seems the Liberals would have won a majority -- more on that below.
More voters voted for the Conservatives than voted for the Liberals, but 29 percent of the Conservative voters were in Alberta and Saskatchewan, a small part of Canada. (AB/Sask holds only 14 percent of the seats in Canada.) Voters in AB/Sask voted Conservative at a rate of two to one to the frequency of Conservative vote outside those two provinces. This regional base gave the Conservatives almost all the seats in AB/Sask where actually about a quarter of the seats in AB/Sask should have gone to other parties (the Liberals and the NDP).
The Conservatives are over-represented in AB/Sask, holding 98 percent of the seats in those two provinces with less than 68 percent of the vote there.
While the Conservative party was over-represented in those two provinces, it was under-represented outside the two provinces, where the Liberal party, the leading party, benefitted from First Past The Post .
The Conservatives' strong showing in Alberta and Saskatchewan (69 percent of the vote in the two provinces) left only a bit more than 70 percent of the country-wide Conservative vote spread over the remaining 86 percent of seats in Canada. Outside of Alberta and Saskatchewan Conservatives took only 74 seats.
Under the First Past The Post system many votes are wasted. Others are over-represented. It took 59,000 Conservatives outside Alberta/Sask to win a seat, while in AB/Sask it took only 38,000.
(Meanwhile it took 235,000 NDP votes in Alberta to get one seat. Outside Alberta it took 115,870 NDP votes to win a seat (2,665,000 divided by 23).
The Conservatives with about 30 percent of the vote took 26 percent of the seats outside AB/Sask.
Outside AB/Sask, the Liberals received a million more votes than the Conservatives so it could be said they deserve to govern. There were 5.6M Liberal votes and only 4.4M Conservative votes outside of AB/Sask.
Outside AB/Sask, the Liberal party reaped the reward that the FPTP system awards the leading party. It reaped more seats than it deserved just as the Conservatives did within AB/Sask.
With the Liberal party being more popular than the Conservatives outside AB/Sask, if a Conservative government was installed in the House of Commons, it would be the rest of the country, 86 percent of the country, that would be upset -- although it is doubtful they would be so defensive as to threaten to leave Canada.
Saskatchewan different from Alberta and visa versa,
but NDP and Liberals suffer in both
Due to their somewhat accidental almost-total Conservative sweep in Alberta and Saskatchewan, the two provinces are being lumped together. But the political complexion in the two provinces is quite different.
In Saskatchewan the NDP was the second-most popular party, taking almost twice the votes of the Liberals.
Unlike in Saskatchewan, in Alberta the Liberal party was the second most popular party. This is disguised by the NDP winning a seat in Alberta but none in Saskatchewan. The NDP with a micro-regional base of Strathcona took that district with almost a majority of the district vote, while the other NDP-ers - ten percent of the AB votes - went without a seat although due 3.
NDP voters in Alberta deserve to be represented by four MPs. The undemocratic FPTP voting system has thrown their votes in the trash.
Saskatchewan NDP-ers, casting 20 percent of the vote, got no seats although they were due three seats. The undemocratic FPTP voting system has thrown their votes in the trash.
The Liberals in Alberta with 14 percent of the vote deserved 5 seats but got none. The undemocratic FPTP voting system has thrown their votes in the trash.
NDP mis-fortune
Country-wide, the NDP did not have a regional base. Spread out across the country, it suffered under FPTP within AB/Sask and outside that area as well. It was due six seats in AB/Sask and got just one. It deserved 49 seats outside AB Sask seats but won only 23. Proportionally it should have 55 seats but only won 24.
Bloc Quebecois benefitted under FPTP
The Bloc Quebecois took 41 percent of that province's seats (32 seats) with less than 35 percent of the province's votes. Its narrow regional base - in fact it ran candidates only in Quebec - gave it concentrated strength and it won 32 seats (about a tenth of the country's seats) with only 8 percent of the vote country-wide, which should have given it only 27 seats.
Thus the FPTP system benefitted a narrow provincial party without a national agenda while hurting broad parties with pan-Canadian messages.
The Big Two are over-represented
Overall the Liberals and the Conservatives received more seats than they were due, while the NDP and the Greens suffered under-representation.
The Liberals should have won only 112 seats but won 157.
The Conservatives should have won 116 but won 121 seats.
The Greens should have won 22 but won only 3.
The NDP should have won 55 but won only 24 seats.
The People's Party proportionally should have won six but won none.
An Independent - a sitting MP formerly of the Liberal party - won as well. She and the Bloc Quebecois's 32 brings the total number of MPs elected to 338.
General proportionality woes
Proportional Representation, measured at the national level, may in fact create more questions than it answers.
As stated above, under general proportional representation, the Conservative should have more seats than any other party. This would be displease the majority of voters, it seems, the Liberals (plus the NDP plus the Greens who would likely prefer even a Liberal government to the Conservatives).
The Conservative lead was only created in two provinces. There were 5.6M Liberal votes and only 4.4M Conservative votes outside of AB/Sask.
Party-list proportional representation would also give 6 seats to the People's Party, an extremist party that was reprehensible to a vast majority of Canadians.
FPTP-fostered Regionalism
In addition to the Conservatives' over-representation in AB/Sask, regionalism was also seen in other ways.
Regionalism is accentuated under FPTP as is evident from the seat counts in this election.
The Conservatives won 20 percent of the vote east of Ontario but won only 14 seats, instead of the 20 they were due.
The Liberals garnered 20 percent of the vote west of Ontario and won only 15 seats, instead of the 21 they were due.
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Here's a dramatic representation of the 2019 federal election. If all the party votes across the country cast in the 2019 federal election are converted into cents on the dollar, you get a much different scattering of pennies across the country than when the country's federal seats by party are converted into cents on the dollar. Using provinces (and Alberta/Saskatchewan as one entity) as the basis of distribution, you see wide variance between the number of seats parties get and the number of seats the parties should have received proportional to the vote. (In the one, each cent equals about 179,000 votes;
in the other, each cent equals about 3.4 seats.)
Canada's votes in 2019 as per the Dollar method --- the Proportional Vote
To show how the seats should be distributed at the provincial level proportionally, we can represent all the votes cast in the election with a dollar.
If all the votes cast in the election were a dollar:
Conservatives would have 34 cents, ten of which would be in AB/Sask, with 24 cents spread across the rest of the country.
The Liberals would have 33 cents, two cents in AB/Sask., 31 cents spread across the rest of the country.
The NDP would have 16 cents, two in AB/Sask.
The Bloc Quebecois would have 8 cents, all within Quebec.
The Greens would have seven cents.
The People's Party 2 cents.
The Seats as per the Dollar method -- The Un-proportional seat distribution
Meanwhile Instead the House of Commons looks like this.
If all the seats won in the 2019 election were a dollar:
Conservatives would have 36 cents, 14 of which would be in AB/Sask, with 22 cents spread across the rest of the country.
The Liberals would have 47 cents, no cents in AB/Sask., 47 spread across the rest of the country.
The NDP would have 7 cents, less than one in AB/Sask.
The Bloc Quebecois would have 9 cents, all within Quebec.
The Greens would have less than one cent, spread over east and west coasts.
The People's Party would have no cents.
A much different result than the Proportional vote dollar described above! I find this very compelling!
Thanks for reading.
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