Canada's electoral history from 1867 to today
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By provinceHow did we vote in Canada?
(Compiled results by province)

by Maurice Y. Michaud (he/him)

Canada :: Recorded events and races
Jurisdiction Elections Referendums
Juri. Year Assem. General By-Elections
Elec Races Elec Races
Min Max Min Max N Accl. n Acc? N Accl. n Acc? Minis. Q Races
1 CA 1867 2024 1 44 44 11,384 263 11,121 0 646 1,013 366 647 0 145 3 31
The MMP simulator can be run on all the general elections in this jurisdiction.

"Acc?" stands for missing data (namely races entered as having been won by acclamation when in fact the results are unknown), while "Minis." shows the number of ministerial by-elections.

A small handful of by-elections that did not really occur was added to this database to record when someone's election was overturned and the seat was handed over to the challenger who had lost. The results for a few by-elections are missing for this jurisdiction.

Up until the middle of the 20th century, unseating a member was commonplace and the mechanism to challenge someone's election seems to have been very lax when viewed through presentist lens, as many by-elections were held merely because the challenger — often the government or the defeated incumbent — did not like the result. What's more, newly appointed ministers had to resign and run in a ministerial by-election. Therefore, by-elections were far more frequent than they are today.

So far, there have been 44 general elections in Canada from 1867 to 2021. There are two ways of displaying these provincial summaries:

  1. One election year at a time, which shows each province's summary (from east to west) below the national summary, or
  2. By province, to get all the election years, with the heading for each year showing the government that was formed nationally, thus revealing the province's harmony or discordance with the rest of the country.
    • The southern portion of the former North-West Territories, which became the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan in 1905, was represented in the House of Commons from 1887. That area is displayed herein as one "province" for that period.
    • For its part, the Yukon obtained a seat in 1902, but it is included with British Columbia from 1904 to 1949.
    • What remained of the Northwest Territories was only partially represented from 1949, and fully represented from 1962. That area, as well, is presented herein as one "province" from 1949.

 IND . Note on Independents.
"Independent" is not a political party, nor is "Independent Liberal" or "Independent Conservative." Therefore, results for such candidates are treated individually. Furthermore, throughout this website, "Independent" includes candidates whose political allegiance was "No affiliation" or unspecified.

 OTH . Note on Others.
Minor or ephemeral political parties or families, as well as unofficial political banners (e.g., "Independent Liberal"), have been collapsed under "Other."

 LAB . Note on Labour.
Aside from the loosely structured Independent Labour Party, there has never been a formal "Labour Party" in any jurisdiction in Canada. Therefore, the results of candidates who ran as Labour are treated as independents and classified under "Other."
Type of summary
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Chronology

© 2022, 2024 :: PoliCan.ca
Pub.: 17 Feb 2023 03:03
Rev.: 12 May 2023 21:18

© 2019-2024 :: PoliCan.ca
Given that electoral results are by their very nature public information, such data that can be found in PoliCan are considered to be in the public domain. However, unless indicated otherwise, all other elements — the concept of consolidating these data into a single format, the detailed research on each election, legislature and candidate, the organization and searchability of the data, the programming allowing the entry and maintenance of the data, as well as the analyses and explanatory articles found in this website — are the intellectual property of Maurice Y. Michaud.