Living in the City… Living
2008 Federal Election
2008 election results as percentage of popular vote
Canada has another Conservative minority government
Not news to anyone who’s awake and has the radio on or checked headlines. The questions I’m most interested in are -
- What percentage of Canadians want this government?
- How do the results compare to the 2006 election results?
I ran a few numbers.
The Conservatives have more seats with a lower percentage of the popular vote than in 2006
| 2008 | |||
| Vote share | % popular vote | seats | |
| Conservatives | 37.63 | 22.23933 | 143 |
| Liberals | 26.24 | 15.50784 | 76 |
| NDP | 18.2 | 10.7562 | 37 |
| Bloc | 9.97 | 5.89227 | 50 |
| Green | 6.8 | 4.0188 | 0 |
| 2006 | |||
| Vote share | % popular vote | seats | |
| Conservatives | 36.3 | 23.4498 | 124 |
| Liberals | 30.2 | 19.5092 | 103 |
| NDP | 17.5 | 11.305 | 29 |
| Bloc | 10.5 | 6.783 | 51 |
| Green | 4.5 | 2.907 | 0 |
These are my numbers, based on data from CBC and MapleLeafWeb. They’re indicators rather than absolutes.
In my first post about the 2008 election I pointed out that the Conservatives received roughly 25% of the popular vote; popular vote being eligible, or registered, voters.
In this election the Conservatives received 22% of the popular vote and elected 19 more members!
Now only 22% of Canadians chose the government.
Can you say Electoral Reform, boys and girls?
Discussion
7 comments for “2008 election results as percentage of popular vote”
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© 2008 Living in the Country.
It’s astounding to me to see that canadians were so apathetic in this past election.
Obviously, the reason these percentages are so ludicrous…(approx 23 for the Cons and 19 for the Libs), is that the overall percentage of Canadians voting was only 60-something.
I don’t know how other Canadians feel about being governed by someone elected by about 23% of voters, but I can tell you right now that I hate it.
Electoral Reform?? Proportional Representation? Damn right.
The majority of people who voted AGAINST Harper, deserve a voice in government. Otherwise, it’s “Goodbye Democracy”.
Next thing we know the Americans will be here to assist us in regaining our democratic tradition.
I’m sure I could figure out how to graph the trends – but I’m not going to.
If voter turnout continues to decrease and we don’t change the electoral system we’ll eventually end up being governed by a party elected by 10% of the people. (Or 10 people – if it gets bad enough)
I’m willing to bet they’ll be conservative!!
You and I will be long gone by then but it isn’t something I want to leave to my children and their children.
I don’t know enough about the various electoral options to comment. I do know that the Canadian electoral system needs to be reformed.
I hear lots of talk all over internet-land about the need for electoral reform/PR (I agree) — I would love to see a post with some specifics as far as what action we citizens can/should take to bring that about.
Hi Bethany
I’m with you. I’m not sure at this point what we can do but am researching and as soon as I have some ideas I’ll post them.
Sam
Actually, since voter turnout was only 59%, the tories were elected by only 13% of canadians registered to vote.
I calculated 38% of 59% to get the 22. How did you get the 13%?
13% may be too scary to contemplate.