Politics · Federal General Election 2004 · Canada
Introduction
Polls across Canada were open on 2004-06-28-Monday for a federal general election. The result was a minority victory for the incumbent Liberal government. Until Canada catches up with the world's electoral best practices of the 20th Century (such as proportional representation; see below), a minority is probably the best we could have hoped for.
This outcome was a weak victory for the Liberals; dropping only about 4 percentage points in the popular vote, the government lost 37 seats across the country to three of the four major alternative parties. The Conservatives failed to fully capitalise on their newly-merged party, and slipped a full 8 points in the popular vote, but did pick up an additional 21 seats as the merger did end the loss-making vote-splitting the two pre-merge groups previously suffered in some ridings. The Bloc Québécois gained 16 seats, riding the tide of disappointment (particularly strident in Québec) with Liberal governance, and the NDP picked up only six additional seats, despite improving their popular share by about 7 points. And a strong showing of more than 4 percent of the popular vote secured public funding for the Green Party (each party with more than 2% of the popular vote in the preceding election gets public funding) but was not enough to elect its first representative to the House of Commons.
Actual Results vs. a Proportional Model
Allocation of seats in the House of Commons, based on the election results:
Allocation of seats in the House of Commons as it would be:
The model shown is an assignment of available House of Commons seats per the Sainte-Laguë method with a cut-off of 2%, i.e., parties that received less than 2% of the popular vote are not assigned seats in the House; these fractions of seats (e.g., four hundredths of a seat) that cannot readily be assigned to fringe parties are allocated amongst the major parties. (The 2% cut-off was selected to match the threshold for public funding of political parties.) While Sainte-Laguë method is used by some modern democracies, its use here is simply to illustrate how different the outcome of the election might be in the House, not to suggest that this is necessarily the best method for Canada. Other proportional methodologies may yield slightly different results (see research at Elections Canada or the Canadian Library of Parliament, or an example in New Zealand).
This model highlights the diminished House of Commons clout of a party with limited regional appeal (e.g., the BQ), and the substantial increase in representation for alternative national parties (e.g., the Green Party, elevated to Official Party status) at the expense of non-affiliated representatives.
See also similar illustrations based on the 2000, 2006, 2008, and 2011 elections.
| Party | Colour | Actual Votes | Actual Seats | Actual Seats Fraction | Actual Official Party? | Prop. Seats | Prop. Seats Diff | Prop. Official Party? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bloc Québécois | |
12.39% | 54 | 17.53% | Yes | 39 | -15 | Yes |
| Canadian Action | 0.06% | 0 | 0 | No | 0 | 0 | No | |
| Christian Heritage Party | 0.30% | 0 | 0 | No | 0 | 0 | No | |
| Communist | 0.03% | 0 | 0 | No | 0 | 0 | No | |
| Conservative | |
29.63% | 99 | 32.14% | Yes | 92 | -7 | Yes |
| Green | |
4.29% | 0 | 0 | No | 13 | +13 | Yes |
| Liberal | |
36.73% | 135 | 43.83% | Yes | 115 | -20 | Yes |
| Libertarian | 0.01% | 0 | 0 | No | 0 | 0 | No | |
| Marijuana | 0.25% | 0 | 0 | No | 0 | 0 | No | |
| Marxist-Leninist | 0.06% | 0 | 0 | No | 0 | 0 | No | |
| New Democratic | |
15.68% | 19 | 6.17% | Yes | 49 | +30 | Yes |
| Progressive Canadian | 0.08% | 0 | 0 | No | 0 | 0 | No | |
| No Affiliation | |
0.48% | 1 | 0.32% | No | 0 | -1 | No |
Note: Official party status is granted to parties that secure at least 12 seats. It confers certain standing in parliamentary procedure and funding for parliamentary staff.
Source: Elections Canada Official Results; 13 683 570 ballots cast by the pool of 22 466 621 electors, for a turnout of 60.91%, a decline of roughly a quarter of a point from the previous general election (61.18%).
