Daemonic Dispatches

Canadian election results trivia.

• Closest ridings: In the riding of Parry Sound--Muskoka, the Conservative candidate, Tony Clement, is currently ahead of the Liberal candidate, Andy Mitchell, by 21 votes. Other close ridings (within 250 votes) are Louis-Hebert (Conservative 103 votes ahead of Bloc Quebecois), Desnethe--Missinippi--Churchill River (Liberal 106 votes ahead of Conservative), Winnipeg South (Conservative 110 votes ahead of Liberal), Glengarry--Prescott--Russell (Conservative 210 votes ahead of Liberal), and St. Catharines (Conservative 244 votes ahead of Liberal).
• Widest margins of victory: The widest margin of victory is in Crowfoot, where the Conservative candidate, Kevin Sorenson, is 39,134 votes ahead of the NDP candidate, Ellen Parker. The top 14 margins of victory are all Conservative wins in Alberta; the only other margin of victory of 25,000 votes or more is in Beauce, where the Conservative candidate, Maxime Bernier, is 25,918 votes ahead of the Bloc Quebecois candidate, Patrice Moore.
• Votes cast: Thanks to a growing population and increased voter turnout, 14,816,000 votes were cast, exceeding the previous record (13,667,671 votes cast, in the 1993 federal election) by over a million.
• Votes received by the winning party: The Conservative party received 5,371,000 votes, the third-largest total ever, after the Progressive Conservative party in 1984 (6,278,818 votes) and the Liberal party in 1993 (5,647,952 votes).
• Votes received by the second-place party: The Liberal party received 4,477,000 votes, the second-largest total ever for a losing party, after the Liberal party in 1979 (which received 4,595,319 votes -- almost half a million more than Joe Clark's Progressive Conservatives -- but came second in the number of seats).
• Proportion of votes received by the winning party: The Conservative party received 36.3% of the votes cast, the second-lowest proportion ever for a winning party, after the Progressive Conservative party in 1979 (which received 35.89% of the popular vote and formed a short-lived minority government, in spite of the Liberal party receiving 40.11% of the popular vote).
• The Green party did not win any seats, but did come second in the riding of Wild Rose, where Sean Maw trails the Conservative candidate, Myron Thompson, by 33558 votes. The Green party came third in two ridings, Bruce--Grey--Owen and Calgary West, and fourth in 223 ridings.

Note to media and blogs: Feel free to republish the above (in part or in whole), giving credit to Colin Percival or a link to this post.