Where the new electoral map will matter most
The ridings where the re-drawn boundaries will have the biggest impact on who wins and who loses
If the next federal election is called today, it will be fought over the existing 338-seat map. If it is called tomorrow or any day afterwards, it will be the new and expanded 343-seat map that will decide the outcome.
In addition to the five extra seats that are up for grabs, most ridings have also seen their boundaries change. Some haven’t seen any changes and some have changed only a little, but others have seen some significant changes that will have an impact on the results.
So let’s take a look at which ridings have seen the most changes.
Earlier this month, Elections Canada released its transposition of the 2021 federal election results onto the new electoral map. While not an exact science — sometimes the new boundaries cut across polling divisions and there are the special and advance ballots that can be harder to pin down to a specific part of a riding — the transposition is our best estimate of how the last election would have played out had it been contested on the new boundaries.
And these estimates also play an official role, as results in the previous election give parties “the right to provide lists of names of persons suitable to be appointed as election officers” and “in cases where the returning officer receives a number of names from registered parties that is greater than the number of election officers remaining to be appointed, appointment will be made as far as possible in the same proportion as the votes received after the transposition exercise.”
So, it isn’t just of interest to nerds like you and me.
In this analysis, I’ve compared the transposed results on the new map to each riding’s predecessor on the old map. This requires some decision-making on my part as not all ridings have a clear or obvious predecessor. But this is the same exercise that many incumbent MPs will be doing as they assess their chances in the next election, as well as where it would be most advantageous for them to run.