The votes that didn't count.... Or, some less touted numbers from the 2015 Federal Election, and what they tell us about 'First Past the Post'

It is always interesting to see how Canada's democratic structure distributes power in a general election. In Canada's 'first past the post' system there are always going to be discrepancies between vote share and seat share (or between the percentage of people who voted for one party and the percentage of power that party gets in the house). Whether or not this is a 'good' thing is not the point of my post today... Rather, after each election I do like to track down those numbers that don't seem to be reported very loudly in the media in order to get a sense of how a different democratic structure might have yielded a different distribution of power in the legislature.

So, without further ado, here are some of those key points:

1) The Liberals would not have gotten a majority if this was a proportional system. Their share of the popular vote was just under 40%, and yet they have earned nearly 55% of the seats in the House of Commons.

2) The NDP would have gotten much more power, and the Conservatives slightly more power than they did. The NDP got just under 20% of the popular vote, and yet only 13% of the seats. Meanwhile, the Conservatives got nearly 32% of the popular vote, and yet just over 29% of the seats.

3) The Green Party got far fewer seats than their vote share, yet again. The Green Party gets 1 seat, equivalent to just 0.3% of parliamentary 'power', and yet nearly 3.5% of voters chose that party!

4) Nearly 1 in 20 votes went towards a separatist party. The Bloc received nearly 5% of the popular vote. They received about 3% of Parliamentary power. 

5) The Bloc gets 10 times more power than the Green Party, despite having received less than 1.5 times more votes. The Bloc gets 10 seats in the House, while the Green Party gets 1. This is just indicative of the power discrepancies between parties compared to vote discrepancies. As another example, the Liberals get more than 4 times more power than the NDP, and yet the Liberals only got 2 times more votes than the NDP.

6) Nearly 1 in 100 votes did not go to the top 5 parties. There were 142,943 votes that went to 'other' parties than those listed above.

7) About 1 in 500 votes went to the Libertarian Party! This was the most successful political party that is not part of the top 5, having received 37,407 votes. The Christian Heritage Party was next, with 15,284 votes.

8) 1 in 3 eligible voters just didn't exercise their 'right' to vote. We hear the 'good news' that 68% of eligible votes were cast. This is a jump up from the 2011 election. It also means, however, that 32% of eligible votes were not cast. How would the outcome have differed if people were required to vote, as is the case in many countries?

9) Just over 1/4 of eligible voters chose 'Liberal' - a party which now holds the majority of power.

10) Just over 1/5 of eligible voters chose 'Conservative' - a party which is now the official opposition.