Despite a larger swing away from the Liberals in the Toronto area, the region remains much friendlier to the Grits than the rest of Ontario, which is a complete Liberal wasteland. Below are some telling stats comparing the 39 ridings entirely within the Toronto CMA to the 67 other Ontario districts.
Seats won
Toronto CMA: 24 C, 8 N, 7 L
Elsewhere: 49 C, 14 N, 4 L
Came in first of second
Toronto CMA: 36 L, 31 C, 11 N
Elsewhere: 66 C, 45 N, 21 L, 1 G, 1 I
[Aside: Without looking up election results, can you guess the only Ontarian riding outside Toronto CMA where the Conservative candidate failed to make the top two?]
Won, or within 15% of winner
Toronto CMA: 31 C, 29 L, 13 N
Elsewhere: 56 C, 19 N, 10 L
Clearly, even though the Liberals won fewer seats than the New Democrats in the Toronto area, they were still the Tories' main opponents. In fact, in every single one of those 39 ridings, a Liberal won, was second, or was within 15% of the winner. (The comparable figures were 31 for the Conservatives and 14 for the NDP.)
Indeed, within the Toronto area, the Liberals caught lots of bad breaks. Looking at the number of wins and the number of losses by less than 10%:
CON: 16-4
NDP: 2-3
LIB: 3-18
[Incidentally, yes, 21 of 39 races within the Toronto CMA were decided by less than 10%. The same statistic was 12/32 for the Atlantic, 21/75 for Québec, 9/67 elsewhere in Ontario, and 18/95 in the West and North. Thus, despite having less than 13% of the ridings, Toronto accounted for almost 26% of the close races nationwide.]
Elsewhere in Ontario, however, the Grits were almost completely out of it. The only ten ridings where a Liberal won or came within 15% were:
- Guelph
- Kingston and the Islands
- Kitchener Centre
- Kitchener--Waterloo
- London North Centre
- Nipissing--Timiskaming
- Ottawa--Orléans
- Ottawa South
- Ottawa--Vanier
- Ottawa West--Nepean
All of these are mainly urban, except for Nipissing-Timiskaming.
2 comments:
the only Ontarian riding outside Toronto CMA where the Conservative candidate failed to make the top two ...
I couldn't do it without looking up the results, but now that I have, it's obvious:
Ottawa-Vanier
Although the Conservatives came third only in (outside the city of Toronto) Ottawa-Vanier where they got 27%, note that they got only 22% in Ottawa Centre and only 26% in Hamilton Centre.
However, your point is certainly valid. A regional MMP model would have let under-represented Liberal voters in the GTA elect six more MPs, but in the rest of Ontario they were cheated of eight MPs:
http://wilfday.blogspot.com/2011/05/what-would-those-2011-election-results.html
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