Electoral maps part 4

The Edmonton map looks good. 

Strathcona gains some bad areas in the south west of the riding, but those losses will be more than made up for by also adding Riverdale north of the river.

Edmonton Centre gets smaller, with some poor NDP areas to the west being shaved off.

And Edmonton Greisbrecht takes some of the best areas of the provincial ridings of Highlands, Beverly-Clariview and Calder (all held by the NDP) and puts them into one riding.

With the NDPs current level of support - these three ridings should be competitive.

If the NDP were to rise a little in Alberta, Edmonton Manning and Millwoods would be competitive as well.

I don't know Calgary very well, but the basic boundaries of the old inner city ridings of Calgary Centre, Centre-North and East all seem to be more or less intact.

Lou Arab wrote:

Edmonton Centre gets smaller, with some poor NDP areas to the west being shaved off.

So, Lou, if Lewis Cardinal carries through on his promise to run again in 2015, will Edmonton McDougall be the former riding of Edmonton Centre?

Stockholm wrote:

I like that idea...extremely rich people have a community of interest so why not pack all the wealthiest neighbourhoods of vancouver into one "silk-stocking" district and then those people will be free to elect an MP whose singular job will be to promote interests of the rich!!

So long as said silk-stocking riding doesn't include the predominantly renters neighbourhood of Marpole. My younger brother recently moved into a rental apartment in Marpole, and he has a only a modest income, as is the case with the majority of the renters in Marpole. He and the other modest-income renters in Marpole won't be very well served by an MP who primarily represents the interests of the rich in Shaugnessy.

A simple proposal for BC's redistribution. There are currently 85 seats in the provincial legislature, which were very recently redrawn. Under the new model, BC will have 42 seats - almost precisely half this number. Why not simply create federal seats by combining two provincial ridings into one federal riding? If I recall correctly, Toronto municipal wards are the federal ridings split into two. Any reason why the process couldn't work in reverse? Seems to me we'd have more reasonable boundaries than some of these goofy proposals.

For example, Burnaby North + Burnaby-Lougheed = Burnaby North, Burnaby-Deer Lake + Burnaby-Edmonds = Burnaby South

North Vancouver - Lonsdale + North Vancouver-Seymour = North Vancouver

West Vancouver-Garibaldi + West Vancouver-Capilano = West Vancouver

Powell River-Sunshine Coast + North Island = North Island - Sunshine Coast

Also, the prize for worst proposed new riding name has to go to the generic "Foothills" in Alberta.

Paul Gross wrote:

Concerning the issues with the North Vancouver area discussed in the previous thread: What do people think of a single riding stretching from Horseshoe Bay to Deep Cove, called "North Shore--The Crawl"

I seem to recall that Wilf Day mentioned in the previous thread chunk that the north shore is more than 10% deviation above one quota, so that probably wouldn't fly.

On a slightly related note, what's the obsession with hyphated riding names? I'm not really a fan. I'm of the view that if at all possible, ridings should be named after one geographical feature, with no hyphens. Seems to me that the single north shore riding, if it were feasible, could simply be named "North Shore", no? (this isn't just about your proposed riding name Paul, but about the whole practise of long, complicated, hyphenated riding names, some a lot longer than this proposal).

Good point. Forgot about that.

I also noticed that a few municipalities (Vancouver, Surrey, Victoria/Oak Bay) have an odd number of seats within their municipal boundaries and so you would end up having some seats crossing municipal boundaries.

There seem to be quite a few seats in BC and Alberta using the Saskatchewan 'rurban' model - ie slice an urban centre into pieces and lump it in with a bunch of surrounding rural communities - eg Price George-Peace River/Cariboo-Prince George, Central Okanagan-Coquihalla/Kelowna-Lake Country, Red Deer-Mountain View/Red Deer-Wolf Creek, etc.

A couple more points on the Alberta map:

Calgary Centre North was the best NDP riding in the city in 2011.  It get's renamed Calgary Confederation, the University area gets added to it, while some very Conservative surburban areas to the north are dropped.

Lethbridge is shrunk quite dramatically, cutting out lots of rural areas from the riding.

Both of these are positive developments for the NDP.

Alberta has 34 ridings, six of them new. Where are the new six ridings? That depends how you look at it. I think there are three in metropolitan Edmonton, two in Calgary, and a new Bow River riding as a result of growth east of Calgary.

There are two new ridings in Calgary city, where Calgary Southeast was 43% over quotient, Nose Hill was 42% over, Northeast and West were each 40% over, and so on. I won't speculate which of the two will have open Conservative nominations.

Wildrose (29% over quotient) loses 0.31 quotient to become the Calgary suburban riding of Banff -Airdrie, making 11 ridings in the Calgary metropolitan area.

The three new ridings in the Edmonton metropolitan area, also totalling 11, are:

1. Edmonton Manning takes 0.50 quotient from Edmonton-Sherwood Park (28% over quotient) after Sherwood Park and Fort Saskatchewan (0.78) form most of the suburban Sherwood Park-Fort Saskatchewan. The new Edmonton Manning picks up 0.49 quotient from Edmonton East (26% over), which in turn picks up 0.24 quotient from Edmonton-St. Albert (27% over) to become Edmonton Griesbach.
2. The new hybrid Edmonton-Wetaskiwin comes from Edmonton-Leduc (40% over quotient) shrinking about 0.37 quotients to become Edmonton Riverbend, while Edmonton - Mill Woods - Beaumont (30% over) shrinks 0.29 quotients to become Edmonton Mill Woods. Those 0.66 quotients add 0.34 quotients from the present Wetaskiwin to make the new riding.
3. The new suburban riding of Sturgeon River is created when Edmonton-Spruce Grove (41% over quotient) shrinks about 0.45 quotients to become Edmonton Callingwood. That 0.45 quotient joins with 0.32 (?) quotient from Yellowhead and 0.22 (?) quotient from the south part of Westlock-St. Paul.

In the North which deserves half a new riding, Peace River (41% over quotient) becomes Grande Prairie (0.96) by losing 0.45 quotient to Peace River-Westlock. Yellowhead also loses 0.25 quotient to Peace River-Westlock, while Fort McMurray - Athabasca (8% over) loses 0.11 quotient to Peace River-Westlock. The present Westlock-St. Paul contributes 0.22 (?) quotient to Peace River-Westlock, 0.33 (?) quotient to the new suburban riding of Sturgeon River, and 0.46 quotient to the renamed Lakeland (0.97). Vegreville-Wainwright (9% over quotient) shifts half a riding to the north and is renamed Lakeland after it loses 0.32 quotient to Battle River and 0.26 to the new suburban Sherwood Park-Fort Saskatchewan.

In the South, Lethbridge (17% over quotient) shrinks 0.18 quotients. Macleod (15% over) shrinks 0.18 quotients to become Foothills. Medicine Hat (12% over) shrinks 0.10 quotients.

The new riding of Bow River (0.95) picks up those 0.46 quotients and 0.49 from Crowfoot (17% over quotient), leaving the majority of Crowfoot (0.68 quotient) to be renamed Battle River.

From Red Deer (25% over quotient), the south part (0.71 quotients) takes in Mountain View (including Olds and Didsbury, 0.30 quotients, most of what's left of Wildrose after creation of Banff-Airdrie) to become the renamed Red Deer-Mountain View. The present Wetaskiwin (6% over) takes Lacombe County and Ponoka, Hobbema, etc. (0.45 quotients) and adds them to the rest of the present Red Deer (0.54) to form the renamed Red Deer-Wolf Creek, while the present Wetaskiwin loses parts of Leduc and Wetaskiwin counties with 0.34 quotients to the new suburban Edmonton-Wetaskiwin, and loses 0.27 (?) quotient to Yellowhead which has shifted south. 

If SK were so easy to redraw we might have heard from them by now. I would not be surprised if the committee is deliberating this quite heavily. Mulcair himself told me that a lot of the people who pushed in 2002 for the rural/urban ridings were NDPers and that they can't repeat this mistake agian.

theleftyinvestor wrote:

If SK were so easy to redraw we might have heard from them by now. I would not be surprised if the committee is deliberating this quite heavily. Mulcair himself told me that a lot of the people who pushed in 2002 for the rural/urban ridings were NDPers and that they can't repeat this mistake agian.

The hard part of drawing the ridings has to do with the growth of Saskatoon and Regina while the rural areas continue to lose population.  This means that the Conservatives are unsure whether they should continue with the mixed ridings.  If the urban parts of the ridings dominate the ridings, could it in fact start to work in the NDP's favour to have the ridings remain mixed ridings?  I cynically sugggest the delay goes down to that issue...   How much smaller do the 8 mixed ridings get in area and what is the split between rural and urban.

Saskatoon has grown to the point that metro-Saskatoon has approximately 265,000 while metro Regina/Moose Jaw combined has 248,000.  The province's population, according to the census is 1,033,000, meaning each riding should have approximately 74,000 votes.  Dividing Saskatoon's population into 4, gives an urban/rural split of 66,000 urban to 8,000 rural.  Dividing Regina/Moose Jaw's population by 4, gives an urban/rural split of 62,000 urban to 12,000 rural.  The split is getting signficant enough that I think the Conservatives on the commission are considering whether these mixed ridings are still in their best interests.  I suspect that we might find that we have 4 completely urban ridings and 4 mixed ones, with boundaries drawn to make the NDP winning more than 2-4 of them unlikely.

If in fact the Saskatchewan map is subject to partisan influence, then Northern-54's remarks make a lot of sense. BUT.....

1. The northern Saskatchewan seat is bound to be significantly smaller in population than the rest, thereby raising the quotient somewhat for the rest of the province. 

2. Given the potential size of some of the rural ridings could the Commission not justfy a larger population for the "rurban ridings" , thereby continuing to dilute the influence of city voters?

Incidentally can anyone provide the % breakdown, urban vs rural, with the present 8 rurban ridings?

Palliser was the riding where the NDP came second closest to winning, losing by 766 votes.  The rural polls represented 13.8% of the vote while the urban ones were 86.2%. The Conservatives won approximately 68.4% of the rural vote while the NDP got about 23.7% (the remaining to the Liberals and Greens). No discernible pattern with the rural vote. The NDP won most of the polls in Regina but not all. The vote in Moose Jaw was fairly evenly split. The urban vote result was about 48% NDP, 43.5% Conservative. The Conservatives won the rural area by 2,081 votes while the NDP won the urban area by 1,315.

nicky wrote:

1. The northern Saskatchewan seat is bound to be significantly smaller in population than the rest, thereby raising the quotient somewhat for the rest of the province. 

Not necessarily. The Alberta proposals are all within 5%, even in the North. In 2002 the Manitoba Commission did the same thing, even for Churchill. They then gave in slightly, ending up with Churchill -8%. 

Northern-54 wrote:

The hard part of drawing the ridings has to do with the growth of Saskatoon and Regina while the rural areas continue to lose population.  This means that the Conservatives are unsure whether they should continue with the mixed ridings.  If the urban parts of the ridings dominate the ridings, could it in fact start to work in the NDP's favour to have the ridings remain mixed ridings?  I cynically sugggest the delay goes down to that issue...   How much smaller do the 8 mixed ridings get in area and what is the split between rural and urban.

One solution would be Saskatoon West Centre and Saskatoon East Centre, both within the city, and Saskatoon-Martensville and Saskatoon-Watrous, both urban-rural (one half urban, one quarter suburban, one quarter rural).

Would anyone like that?

Wilf Day wrote:

Northern-54 wrote:

The hard part of drawing the ridings has to do with the growth of Saskatoon and Regina while the rural areas continue to lose population.  This means that the Conservatives are unsure whether they should continue with the mixed ridings.  If the urban parts of the ridings dominate the ridings, could it in fact start to work in the NDP's favour to have the ridings remain mixed ridings?  I cynically sugggest the delay goes down to that issue...   How much smaller do the 8 mixed ridings get in area and what is the split between rural and urban.

One solution would be Saskatoon West Centre and Saskatoon East Centre, both within the city, and Saskatoon-Martensville and Saskatoon-Watrous, both urban-rural (one half urban, one quarter suburban, one quarter rural).

Would anyone like that?

This would pretty much guarantee two NDP seats and two Conservative ones as the NDP vote is highest in the centre of Saskatoon.  Generally, it would put the Conservaitve urban polls with the Conservative rural ones.

The same could be done with Regina, having two urban seats be Regina Northeast and Regina Northwest, having the more Conservative southern-eastern part of Regina be lumped in with extensive rural area south and east of the city and the more NDP south-western part of the city lumped in with Moose Jaw and the country in between.  This would give the NDP a good chance of winning 2 of the seats and a possible chance at the 3rd. 

That is how I would draw the ridings.  Seeing as I'm an NDP partisan, I suspect the commission will not draw the ridings that way. 

The new proposed Nova Scotia map is out:

http://www.redecoupage-federal-redistribution.ca/content.asp?section=ns&...

Not much change. I think if anything Dartmouth-Cole Harbours becokmes a safer NDP seat and i think South Shore St. Margaret may have annexed some NDP areas in Halifax...but i will leave it to the local experts to extrapolate

Wilf Day wrote:

The four proposed Halifax ridings are collectively 21.6% over quotient, while the other seven are 21.6% under quotient. The two Cape Breton ridings alone are 23.82% under quotient. Both exceed the 10% deviation that most Commissions consider desireable. (Alberta went to the other extreme with 5%.) I thought (see post 3#) Central Nova should lose all of Antigonish to a Cape Breton--Antigonish. No.

I thought all of Halifax (except the 9,253 in St. Margaret's) with 4.55 quotients should have four and a half ridings, so we would get Sackville-Truro (a good NDP prospect, entirely made up of NDP provincial ridings.) Instead, we get a slice bizarrely added to Kings-Hants, which was right on quotient, making it over. We get another slice added to South Shore - St. Margaret's, which in turn has to lose a slice to West Nova, which was right on quotient but is now 8% over. We find another slice (including Halifax Airport) added to Central Nova. I call this a dog's breakfast.

To cite them as "21.6% over quotient" gives the incorrect mathematical impression that there are 21.6% more people living in those ridings than the representation they will be getting. But you arrived at that figure by adding up the four deviations. It would be much more correct to say that the Halifax region is 5.4% over 4 quotients. Only three ridings province-wide deviate by more than 10%, the worst over being Halifax at 10.41% and the worst under being Sydney-Victoria at 12.49%.

Stockholm wrote:

The new proposed Nova Scotia map is out:

http://www.redecoupage-federal-redistribution.ca/content.asp?section=ns&...

Not much change. I think if anything Dartmouth-Cole Harbours becokmes a safer NDP seat and i think South Shore St. Margaret may have annexed some NDP areas in Halifax...but i will leave it to the local experts to extrapolate

I've done a little number crunching, and this is what I can determine about the new boundaries for South Shore-St. Margaret's:

1.  The western tip of the riding (18 polls) were all solid Conservative polls in 2011.  Putting them into West Nova makes logistical sense, as these polls are all under the BOW postal designation, which is serviced out of Yarmouth.  Politically, it looks like someone is trying to help the Conservatives hang onto West Nova, a traditional 'swing' seat, by giving them a slice of solid Conservative support.

2.  The section of Halifax West being switched to S.S.S.M. (11 polls) is a strong NDP section, which helps Gerald Regan fend off the NDP next time.  Looks like someone doesn't want a New Democrat elected there.

3.  While the loss of an overwhelmingly strong Conservative section and the inclusion of a more NDP-friendly section should be good news for the next NDP candidate in S.S.S.M., it looks more to me like an attempt to maintain a Conservative margin of victory here.

Does anyone still think gerrymandering doesn't exist anymore?

Stockholm wrote:

How does it help the Conservatives in SSSM to lose a solidly Conservative area and gain a solidly NDP area - given that any threat to the Conservatives in that riding will come from the NDP?

My way of thinking was that the Cons think that their 2900-vote margin of victory can absorb the loss of the Con-friendly western portion and the inclusion of the NDP-friendly eastern bit.  They probably think that since Gordon Earle won't be the candidate again in 2015, the soft Liberal vote that the NDP has been gaining since 2004 will go Liberal again, ensuring them another victory in S.S.S.M.

I certainly hope not.  I will be very happy if these two changes happen.

It reminds me of the provincial riding of Queens in 2003, which had voted P.C. in every provincial election since 1953.  In that year's redistribution, an NDP-friendly portion of the neighbouring riding of Lunenburg West was added to Queens, which helped the P.C.'s win both seats.  But in 2006, that section provided the 46-vote margin of victory when Vicki Conrad became the first New Democrat ever elected to represent Queens.

I'm really hoping history repeats itself in 2015!!!!

just looking over montreal, there's a lot not to like here.  right off the bat, mulcair's district becomes less friendly, as all the mile end polls are moved into the new plateai-mile end district (have i mentioned lately that lavardière has to go?) and replaced with far less friendly turf sucked out of mount royal.  the new westmount-ndg riding is a pretty good bet never to go ndp again, perfectly gerry-mandered for the bad guys.  ville marie is crazy, but i guess lumping everything from the cartier bridge to verdun makes as much sense as including westmount, though i think the old verdun riding did a good job lumping like with like.  idola saint-jean is a good urban riding, as is hochelaga (which i think probably should have absorbed a certain point of ville marie - maybe from papineau east).  saint leonard actually looks a little better for the good guys, but that's such a stronghold for the plc that the net effect seems to be a shifting of boundaries to even out lpc support in north and west montreal island, with ahuntsic being served up to the good guys on a plate.  really cynical.

looking at these maps, it's almost as if last time around, the liberals overreached, attempting to append cold neighborhoods to their hardcore bases so as to maximize seats, and now, they're playing defense, getting core support hoods back into solid ridings.  these ridings have been cut up so favorably for the liberals, that i can't see how this doesn't cause significant consternation on parc avenue.  mulcair personally ought to be breathing fire over his riding changes.

and i really just don't get why montreal is finally getting the riding name treatment, it's really annoying, especially all the ones they added were anglophones.

I don't see the changes in Montreal as being so bad. Outremont loses some good territory but the small section it gains from Mount Royal is in very working class multicultural Snowdon... The NDP actually won some polls in that area while being a distant third in the riding as a whole. Realistically, unless the bottom falls out of the NDP in Quebec in 2015, Outremont is now such a supersafe NDP seat that even losing mile end hardly matters. I'm not sure that the new Westmount riding "Wilder Penfield" is any worse for the NDP than it was before...it loses downtown Montreal which was a bit of a mixed bag last election with the Liberals winning a lot of high end condos et..., but the riding gains a huge chunk of NDG that voted solidly NDP last year.