Election insights from Bernard
Posted May 13, 2009 by Sacha Peter - Link
Category: Links
Comments (3)
Bernard Schulmann has a lot of interesting insight on the 2009 election, including his review of the election, getting lots of votes and still losing (in addition to Vancouver Island being ripped off in terms of seat count vs. the number of voters).
Hopefully you’re already reading him.
Also, we are both looking to fine tune our performances in terms of predicting future election outcomes!
He has a point, but he is still comparing voters rather than eligible voters. While there are more eligible voters per riding on the Island than in the North, turnout was also much higher on the Island, which makes the disproportionality look worse than it is.
Turn out in the Peace was really bad, but the rest of the north were on a par with the turn out on the Island bar the four ridings with close to 64% of the vote.
Still does not change the fact that Stikine has less than one third of the eligible voters of Comox Valley.
As I said, it’s a good point, but it’s about eligible voters/riding rather than votes cast/riding. Total votes cast is a function of eligible voters per riding and turnout. The turnout is incidental. In your example, you compared ridings with very high turnout on the Island to ridings with mixed turnout in the North (Stikine was very high, but the Peace Rivers were very low, don’t know about North Coast or Nechako) inflates your point.