Demographic round-up

If you live in a Conservative riding, you are probably richer than the average Canadian and an anglophone. If a New Democrat is your MP, you are probably a francophone in Quebec. And if your riding voted Liberal on May 2nd, there is a good chance that you are a visible minority and/or university educated.

These are the results of an analysis of the average demographic profile of ridings held by the three main federal parties.

You can read the rest of the article on The Globe and Mail website here. There is also a condensed version with the infographic in today's print edition of the newspaper.

This piece looks at the percentage of Canadians in each demographic group and region represented by each party. It closes the series of pieces I have done looking at the demographic profile of the ridings now represented by each party in the House of Commons.

One of the aspects I did not focus on in the piece is the disconnect between the number of votes each party earned and the percentage of Canadians they now represent.

Looking at the Conservative party, with 39.6% of the vote they now represent 56% of Canadians, 58% of immigrants, 66% of aboriginals, 54% of visible minorities, 54% of university graduates, 72% of anglophones, and 57% of Canadians whose first languages are neither English nor French. In part because of our electoral system and in part because of where the party won its seats, the Tories are over-represented by these groups compared to their vote share. They are under-represented among francophones. They only represent 15% of them.

The New Democrats, on the other hand, generally represent a proportion of the population similar to the proportion of votes earned. With 30.6% of the vote, the NDP now represents 32.5% of Canadians. They hit above their weight among francophones (75%) and university graduates (31%), but below their weight among anglophones (17%), allophones (27%), immigrants (26%), aboriginals (28%), and visible minorities (27%).

But the Liberals, Bloc Québécois, and Greens were greatly disadvantaged by our electoral system. With 18.9% of the vote, the Liberals only represent 9.9% of Canadians. The demographic group they most represent are visible minorities (18%). They least represent francophones (5%).

For the Bloc, despite garnering 6% national support they only represent 1.1% of the population, while the Greens represent 0.4% of the population though they had 3.9% of the vote. While that is an improvement for the Greens, who have never before elected an MP, it is a twist of fate for the Bloc Québécois, the party that has most benefited from our first-past-the-post system over the last two decades.

BC Conservatives in the race?

A mysterious poll from the Mustel Group, mentioned in several different news articles but the only proof of its existence is here in this political tracking chart produced by the polling firm, shows that the BC Liberals and BC New Democrats continue to run neck-and-neck in the province. But it also shows that the BC Conservatives under newly minted leader John Cummins, a former MP for the federal Tories, are riding high at 18% support - up from their 2% in the 2009 provincial election.

UPDATE: Mustel has informed me the poll was taken between May 4-15 and included 500 respondents, meaning a margin of error of 4.4%, 19 times out of 20.

What can we make of this rise of the BC Conservatives? Certainly Cummins gives the party a good degree of legitimacy, and the more centrist Christy Clark might be pushing some voters further to the right. That there might be some confusion between the provincial and federal parties, or an undeserved transfer of support from one to the other in the wake of Stephen Harper's victory, could also be a major factor.

Compared to Mustel's last poll, this is an 11-point jump for the BC Conservatives, so nothing to sneeze at. This has hurt the BC Liberals, who are down four points from that December poll to 37%. The BC New Democrats are only down one point to 35%, indicating that they may be skating above the fray between the two provincial parties on the right. The Greens muddy the water, though, as they are down six points. A lot of support swapping seems to be going on.

Do the BC Conservatives need to be taken seriously? We cannot know if they will even run a full slate in the next provincial election. They were far from doing so in 2009. This also makes it a bit trickier to make seat projections. Until we know differently, I can only assume that the BC Conservatives will run candidates in the same ridings they did in 2009, which makes their prospects for seat gains much lower (that 18% is spread across the province, including the 2/3rds of ridings in which they did not run a candidate last time).

Accordingly, with this poll ThreeHundredEight projects the BC Conservatives win only one seat, Boundary - Similkameen. Of course, we don't know if they will even have a candidate there in the next election, as that could be as far away as 2013. And if they run a full slate, it is very difficult to predict which ridings might turn blue, and which ridings might go with the NDP because of a split between the Conservatives and the Liberals.

In any case, with this poll the BC Liberals win 46 seats, the BC New Democrats 37, and one independent is elected. A majority for Ms. Clark.

Still, it is a majority won within the margin of error. A two-point lead in a poll with a 4.4 margin of error is no lead at all, and certainly not something Ms. Clark could risk her majority government on. With the BC Conservatives coming from the right and the BC New Democrats not going anywhere, the prospects for an election in British Columbia this year would appear slim. But people have a way of doing funny things.