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Tom Monto

Small change = big diff in 2019 Canadian election (2019 federal election)

Updated: May 28, 2023

One-thousandth of the vote secured the 2019 Liberal victory


With up to three-fifths of a district's votes being wasted and with razor-thin differences between the leading parties in many districts, a slight shift in votes would have produced a very different result.


17.9M votes were cast in the election. If only one-thousandth of them had gone a different way, Conservatives would have taken more seats than the Liberals.


The Liberals won 157 seats to Conservatives' 121 in the election.


But if only 17,000 votes had shifted, the Liberals could have lost 23 seats, bringing their total down to 134 seats, while with some of those votes switching to Conservative candidates, the Conservative seat total could have risen by 14 seats to 135 seats.


The movement of less than one-tenth of a single percent of the vote would thus have meant a minority Conservative government, instead of a Liberal minority government.


The small number of votes that could have changed the result of the election is as follows:

riding

count number situation amount of lead

1 11003 Liberal lead over Conservative 900

2 12001 Liberal lead over Conservative 1600

3 12003 Liberal lead over Conservative 500

4 12010 Liberal lead over Conservative 1300

5 13006 Liberal lead over Conservative 400

6 13009 Liberal lead over Conservative 1400

7 24005 Liberal lead over BQ 672

8 24016 Liberal lead over BQ 2366

9 24023 Liberal lead over BQ 3043

10 24028 Liberal lead over BQ 319

11 24059 Liberal lead over BQ 215

12 24073 Liberal lead over NDP 634

13 35006 Liberal lead over Conservative 1465

14 35018 Liberal lead over NDP 1472

15 35046 Liberal lead over Conservative 273

16 35092 Liberal lead over Conservative 2732

17 35105 Liberal lead over Conservative 2352

18 59002 Liberal lead over NDP 1560

19 59003 Liberal lead over Conservative 2866

20 59008 Liberal lead over Conservative 339

21 59012 Liberal lead over Conservative 1802

22 59032 Liberal lead over Conservative 4853

23 60001 Liberal lead over Conservative 72

Total of leads: 33,135 in these 23 ridings


We can divide these leads by about half, because if the Liberal lost one more than half of the lead and the votes shifted to the leading contender, the Liberal candidate would not have won the seat.


Thus a shift of only 17,000 votes could have caused a Conservative minority government.


These 17,000 votes are less than one-tenth of one percent, less than one-thousandth of the total vote.


This shows how First Past The Post elections are little more than lotteries, capable of producing almost random effects.

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