The New Democratic Party of Canada and the Liberal Party of Canada have substantially different party constitutions, relationships with provincial parties, and finances. And, yet, it seems irresistible to make some comparisons between the NDP leadership race of 2011-2012 and the Liberal leadership race of 2012-2013. So let’s do that.
Here is a table which shows the total number of eligible voters in each province. Eligible voters are not actual voters . We will not have a final count of actual voters in the Liberal race until Sunday April 14. We do know that, as of today at around 1 pm, the total number of actual voters in teh Liberal race eclipsed the total number of voters in any one of the four ballots in the NDP race last year.
That said: The Liberal voters are made up of paid-up party members as well as something new — “supporters”, people who are not members, did not pay to join the party, but simply registered their intention to vote. Those who voted in the NDP leadership contest were paid-up members of both their provincial parties and the federal party.
So: With those caveats, here is the voter universe for both leadership races, with the numbers for the most recent population estimate for Canada and the number of seats each region has in the House of Commons. You’ll notice that the NDP had way more voters in Western Canada while the Liberals have way more voters in Atlantic Canada. Quebec — for both parties — had substantially fewer voters relative to its population size. And in Ontario, Liberals signed up substantially more voters than the New Democrats did.
| NDP 2012 | LIBERAL 2013 | POPULATION | HOC SEATS | |||||
| Region | Voters | Pct | Voters | Pct | Pop | Pct | Seats | Pct |
| BC | 38,735 | 30.2% | 16,098 | 12.7% | 4,639,862 | 13.2% | 36 | 11.7% |
| AB | 10,249 | 8.0% | 9,302 | 7.3% | 3,931,341 | 11.2% | 28 | 9.1% |
| SK | 11,264 | 8.8% | 2,700 | 2.1% | 1,089,807 | 3.1% | 14 | 4.5% |
| MB | 12,056 | 9.4% | 4,444 | 3.5% | 1,274,279 | 3.6% | 14 | 4.5% |
| ON | 36,760 | 28.6% | 59,474 | 46.8% | 13,561,034 | 38.7% | 106 | 34.4% |
| QC | 12,266 | 9.6% | 14,577 | 11.5% | 8,084,973 | 23.1% | 75 | 24.4% |
| NB | 955 | 0.7% | 6,889 | 5.4% | 754,698 | 2.2% | 10 | 3.2% |
| NS | 3,844 | 3.0% | 7,426 | 5.8% | 946,759 | 2.7% | 11 | 3.6% |
| PE | 268 | 0.2% | 2,611 | 2.1% | 145,927 | 0.4% | 4 | 1.3% |
| NL | 1,030 | 0.8% | 3,148 | 2.5% | 513,636 | 1.5% | 7 | 2.3% |
| NU | n/a | n/a | 58 | 0.0% | 34,126 | 0.1% | 1 | 0.3% |
| NT | n/a | n/a | 176 | 0.1% | 43,407 | 0.1% | 1 | 0.3% |
| YT | n/a | n/a | 222 | 0.2% | 36,215 | 0.1% | 1 | 0.3% |
| CANADA | 128351 | 100.0% | 127125 | 100.0% | 35,056,064 | 100.0% | 308 | 100.0% |
Sources for this data:
| Sources: | |
| NDP | http://www.punditsguide.ca/2012/02/bc-and-ontario-to-decide-ndp-leadership-outcome/ |
| LPC | http://www.liberal.ca |
| Calculations | David Akin |
| Population: | At Q4 2012, from Statscan: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/130320/dq130320g-eng.pdf |
What’s also interesting is the distribution of voters across Canada. About the same % of Canadians are NDP ‘voters’ as are Liberal ‘voters’. But, the distribution of support (province’s ‘voters’/1,000 of province’s pop) across Canada is much more even (24% more even) for the NDP, with a standard deviation of 3.5 vs 4.7 for the Liberals. The Liberals are still Ontario-centric while the NDP’s ‘voter’ base is spread more evenly across Canada with two power bases, ON and BC.