What qualifies as an urban riding? Gilles Duceppe and Jack Layton represent what are unquestionably urban ridings. But what about Ralph Goodale? He has a chunk of southeastern Regina and then a lot of Saskatchewan farmland.
I assume there is a definition about what constitutes an urban or rural riding in Canada. If there is, I'd love to hear about it in the comments below.
We're interested in the rural/urban split because, if you ask me, that may now be a more important political cleavage in Canadian politics than what has historically been the most important cleavage, namely, the divide between English and French Canada.
Consider the following
- The average population density in ridings held by Liberal MPs is 2,599 people per square kilometre. The average in ridings held by Conservative MPs? 443 people per square kilometre. The average density in NDP ridings is 1,674 and in BQ ridings its 1,175.
- Here's the breakdown for the 20 ridings in the country with the lowest population density (i.e. most rural):
-
- 10 are held by Conservatives. (Abbott, Merrifield, Hill, Anderson, Warkentin, Jean, Dick Harris, Rickford, Clarke, Aglukkaq)
- 6 are held by the NDP (Hyer, Hughes, Angus, Cullen, Ashton, Bevington
- 2 are held by the Liberals. (Russell, Bagnell)
- 2 are held by the Bloc Quebecois (Asselin, Levesque)
- Here's the breakdown for the 20 ridings with the highest population density:
-
- 11 are held by Liberals (Zarac, Pacetti, Minna, Garneau, Coderre, Kennedy, Bennett, Fry, Silva, Rae, Trudeau)
- 4 are held by the NDP (Layton, Davies, Chow, Mulcair,
- 5 are held by the Bloc Quebecois (Mourani, St-Cyr, Paille, Duceppe, Bigras
- Liberal Justin Trudeau represents the most 'urban' riding in the country. There are 11,200 people in each of the nine square kilometres in his riding of Papineau. Conservative Leona Aglukkaq is at the opposite end of the scale with not even 0.015 people to populate each of the 1.9 million square kilometres in her riding.
- The average population density among all 308 ridings is 1,243 people per kilometre.
I think the urban/rural divide in Canada may very well exceed all others that have occurred in our entire history.
Interesting figures, David. Thanks for posting this. Of course, Aesop knew all about city mice and country mice a coupla hunnert years ago, or so. We got us a pretty mobile population and plenty of country kids end up livin' in the city. Lotsa retirees is movin' out into small towns, hamlets and rural. It'd be interesting to see some figures re average age of voters in rural ridings vs urban ridings.
Also, of the 308 seats, how many can be considered rural, how many urban?
Considering figures you cite combined with the plan to add more MPs, I think we need to be vigilant wrt gerrymandering. Proportional representation would mitigate things some. Fat chance of that, though.
JB
Comparing how many votes it takes to win will quickly show that we do not have representation by population in this country. Results are heavily skewed to rural voters. If we did have an equitable distribution of riding, it would be the Cons who are the third party rather than the NDP
Just catching up on my reading after a trip away, and came across your post David.
I tried to classify ridings using the same measure as you. Formerly, it was the polling stations within ridings which were officially classified as urban vs. rural, and this was based on the method of enumeration and preparation of candidate lists (the former were by street name and number, while the latter were by family name). In fact, different rules even applied to the swearing-in of a voter in election day between urban and rural polls. This distinction went by the wayside with the arrival of databases, and the national list of electors.
Probably the other official way to designate a riding as being “urban” or “rural” (or more one than the other) would be based on the proportion of its population living in an area that is “tracted” in the census, i.e., which is included in a census tract.
Statistics Canada also designates census tracts as “urban core” and “urban fringe”, while it designates other census areas as “rural fringe”. You can see the hierarchy of census categories here:
http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2006/ref/dict/figures/figure20-dict-eng.cfm
The correlation between all these different census geographic categories and classifications on the one hand, and federal ridings and postal codes on the other is sold in a big file by Statistics Canada for several thousands of dollars ($9k for the 2006 census, $3k or so for the earlier one).
This Postal Code Conversion File (PCCF) is the number one request by open data advocates for opening up to the public, as it would facilitate a LOT more analysis in the public domain. It's accessible to students and academic users for free, but in that case probably could not be used in a public web site, for example.
Without that file, all we can use is proxy definitions, and the one you've used is as good as any.
If you look at the poll-by-poll map of Wascana riding, and compare it with its poll-by-poll results, you'd actually see that most of its population is urban. In any event, it's certainly the most urban riding in Saskatchewan at the moment.
For the map, see: http://www.punditsguide.ca/riding_e.php?riding=1186&pane=3
For the poll-by-poll results, see this link, and then click on the Elections Canada icon for the most recent election:
http://www.punditsguide.ca/riding_e.php?riding=1186&pane=4
Cheers.