OVERVIEW OF DATA AND SPREADSHEET CONTENTS
SOURCE OF DATA
The Manitoba data comes from Elections Manitoba's website.
Neither Elections Ontario nor Saskatchewan had a
similar file posted. However both provided email copy and
thank-fully so, Elections Saskatchewan very promptly upon request!
CONTENT OF DATA: WHICH "OFFICIAL"
VERSION OF DATA USED
As an improvement over the Federal election data,
all three provincial files have an added column providing the total
electorate by constituency. This makes possible further new
calculations such as turnout by constituency and "Grand
Plurality", the candidate's plurality expressed as a % of the
total constituency electorate.
For the Manitoba, Ontario and Federal data, the
"unofficial results" were used. The "official
results", which include the small numbers of
"institutional votes" are not published until months later.
Saskatchewan, provided the "official
results", which then also included information on spoiled
ballots called "Rejected".
SPECIAL EXCEPTION TO SASKATCHEWAN DATA
Due to the availability of "rejected"
data and in order to present this data efficiently, each
constituency includes a further "candidate" and
"party" called "rejected" which was arbitrarily
assigned the candidate rank of 1.9, regardless of plurality
position.
PLEASE NOTE: For the district of Regina
Walsh Acres, the Saskatchewan Party leader Brad Wall squeezed their
local candidate to resign prior to the election but after the
ballots were printed. Of particular interest, an unusual
number of people still voted for the deposed candidate, causing the
"rejected" category to balloon.
FORMAT OF FILES
The spreadsheets are available either as Excel (xls)
or Comma Separated Variables (CSV) files.
Not possible with the csv files, the Excel files
include common colour coding to identify party affiliation, as well
as highlighting key data such as which candidates were elected.
REARRANGING THE ORDER OF THE DATA
To help facilitate comparing candidate results
over several different criteria, there are six special
"sort" columns.
In all instances below, the candidates are
arranged by their "plurality" from highest to lowest.
Furthermore:
Sort(1) arranges the constituencies in the
original alphabetical order.
Sort(2) arranges the constituencies from highest
to lowest on the bases of % of turnout. "Turnout"
may signify how "competitive" or "contested" a
constituency is.
For Sort(3) etc.
Two differing presentations of plurality are
provided. The standard "plurality" of a candidate is
expressed as a % of turnout. "Grand Plurality"
expresses the candidate's plurality as a % of the total electorate
in the constituency. Thus, regardless of turnout, an approval
rating is readily available.
To help avoid "clutter", six columns are
colour coded. "Plurality" data is coloured
"pink" and "grand plurality", "aqua".
The Sort columns to the left of the yellow
coloured column (blank in csv) provide the rank or each candidates
plurality against all candidates.
The Sort columns to the right of the yellow
coloured column provide the rank according to the plurality of the
elected candidate based on the size of the legislature. The
same value's are then assigned to all the other candidates to
facilitate grouping all candidates by constituency based upon the
rank of the elected candidate's plurality.
COLUMN HEADINGS
The initial row of column headings also makes
expanded note on the column's contents.
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