Glen McGregor does all political junkies a favour by crunching the numbers on the advance poll turnout. The turnout was way up over 2008 and Glen ranks all 308 ridings based on the difference in advance poll turnout in 2008 compared to 2011.
I sliced Glen's chart a little differently and attached a party affiliation based on which party held the riding at dissolution and then sorted the same list based simply on the number of ballots cast at advance polls in 2011.
Here's the top 20 ridings in the country based on that sort.
Just as in 2008, ridings held by the Conservatives appear to rank much higher on this list. That's incumbent Conservative Pierre Poilievre in the top spot.
The Conservatives, by most observers' reckoning, have the best ground game of the major parties, followed by the NDP. A well-organized ground game means you get your supporters to the ballot box at the earliest opportunity. The Conservatives have done that before and appear to be doing that again. Eleven of the 20 highest turnouts are Tory ridings.
I find it notable that Simcoe-Grey, where independent Helena Guergis is trying to hold on has a very high turnout. Her Conservative opponent Kellie Leitch is a long-time Ontario and federal party activist and worker and, presumably, she has inherited a strong GOTV (get out the vote) organization. Or, interestingly enough, did Guergis hold on to some of that GOTV swagger she used to enjoy?
I note also that Bramalea-Gore-Malton has a very high turnout — one of of only three ridings were a Liberal is an incumbent to show up on this top 20. In this riding, Liberal Gurbax Malhi is trying to fight off a fierce assault by the Tories. Does a high advance poll turnout here suggest the Tories are aggressively working the riding and have already locked in a pile of votes?
One could ask the same question about Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca, a riding held by Liberal Keith Martin, but, with his retirement, it's very much up in the air. Same thing in Kingston and the Islands, which the Conservatives are eyeing with the retirement of Peter Milliken.
The only other Liberal-held riding to place in this list is Ottawa South where David McGuinty, one thinks, should hold.
I chalk up Ottawa South's presence on this list to an overall trend that a lot of ridings on the Ontario side in the national capital region are on this list. In fact, four Ottawa ridings are on this top 20 list. Perhaps government workers, journos in Ottawa, etc. are heavy advance poll users because of their jobs?
J-School prof (and former top Hill journo) Christopher Waddell makes an interesting point: If the Liberals, Conservatives, and BQ were able to lock in a pile of votes in advance polls, they shield themselves considerably from this late-campaign surge by the New Democrats. One might infer from these charts, that the Conservatives may have done that — but did the Liberals innoculate themselves against the NDP in time?
Meanwhile, here's the bottom 20 ridings for advance poll ballots:
On this list, we find the countries most northern and some of its most remote ridings. These ridings have small electorates and, it seems to me, this is not surprising where they show on this.
But I am surprised to find that in York West, where Liberal incumbent Judy Sgro seeks re-election, just 2,410 people voted in an advance poll. (And that, as Glen pointed out, was a 33 per cent improvement on 2008!) Similarly, in the populous riding of Calgary East, where Conservative Deepak Obhrai is the incumbent, there just over 2,719 advance ballots.
Great article … until you get to the analysis, Sure, maybe high advance polling indicates “good ground game” but there is no evidence to show that this is anything other than wishful thinking.
If you look at electionprediction.org, you will see that many (most) of the top 20 ridings are listed as “too close to call”, i.e. hotly disputed. The bottom 20 – all super-safe.
It is just as likely then that the highest advance polling is occurring in those ridings where people are determined to “push the bums” out – and don't want to risk missing their change by waiting until election day.
On this theory, your CPC people are looking at a whole lotta hurt and Pierre Poliviere is No.1 because he is the most hated!
Just saying …
It could just be the Easter holidays and a lot of government workers had the day off, so they took advantage of it.
Thanks for the link to your' source. This is pretty important stuff. Of course, any incumbent has a theoretical advantage in the advance polls, and the CPC has an extraordinary advantage inasmuch as they have a centralised voter database that is maintained, and updated frequently. With decent data, in the age of mass emails, GOTV is relatively simple. With the additional supporters identified by an incumbent over the course of their tenure, it is small surprise that the CPC dominates advance poll voting. It is faier to say that 2% of the CPC's vote share was attributable to their GOTV in 2008, what will it be in 2011 I wonder?
This is the sort of thing the other Party's should have been planning for, but they didn't….