Six charts to help you understand the 2021 federal election

TORONTO -

These visualizations help tell the story of Canada’s 44th federal election. CTVNews.ca breaks down the percentage of total votes won by each party, the seat counts in Parliament, what was gained and what was lost, and where in Canada the closest, nail-biter races happened. For context, you can also compare the results against those from 2019.

 

As in 2019, the Conservatives captured the popular vote, but they failed to translate that support into winning the most number of ridings. In Canada’s first-past-the-post voting system it’s winner take all, and the final result can have little relationship to the popular vote. For example, the Conservatives may have won many ridings by large margins – in fact, in this election they won 3 ridings by capturing over 70% of the vote, and 19 ridings by over 60% in Western Canada – but the Liberals won more ridings overall with narrower margins. The Liberals won only 8 ridings across Canada where they garnered more than 60%.

In the chart above, compare the popular vote the top 6 parties received in 2021, compared with 2019.

 

The Liberals captured 159* seats in this election, which is 2 more than what they won in 2019. Flip back and forth by tapping on the years to see the differences (and similarities) between the two parliaments.

*Note: Spadina-Fort York candidate Kevin Vuong won his riding as a Liberal, but he was turfed from the Liberal caucus after a past sexual assault charge against him was revealed. In the next parliament, Vuong will be sitting as an Independent, which will leave the Liberals with 158 seats.

 

The 2021 election saw more than 40 seats flip. You can see in the chart above that the Liberals lost incumbents in 9 ridings, mostly to the Conservatives but also one seat each to the Greens and the Bloc. Meanwhile, the Conservatives gained seven ridings, all at the expense of the Liberals. While they lost nine ridings that they won in 2019, seven to the Liberals and two to the NDP.

(On desktop, hover over each square to see riding names.)

 

The chart above represents the number of ridings won by each party in both 2021 and 2019. It’s another illustration showing at a glance, and on a provincial level, how little things have changed. Shuttle back and forth and you can see what was lost and to who. The Conservatives, for example, saw their support fall in their traditional fortress of Alberta, and they lost a seat each to the Liberals and NDP. But look at the seats they picked up toward the bottom of the chart, in the Atlantic provinces.

 

The cliché that every vote counts is absolutely true in the Manitoba riding of Charleswood-St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, where just 24 votes or 0.05% separated Conservative Marty Morantz and Liberal Doug Eyolfson. More than 44,000 votes were cast in the Winnipeg riding and the final result will trigger an automatic recount, which is done in races where the winning margin is lessn than 1/1000th of the total number of votes case. The recount process could last several weeks.

See what other races were close in 2021 and 2019.

 

We mentioned in our first chart how the relationship between the popular vote and number of ridings won in a first-past-the-post system can have little to do with one another. The table above illustrates just how big a margin the Conservatives won by in a handful of ridings. But then, choose the Liberals in the drop-down menu and see how many more ridings the Liberals won by overall.

The table also show the rise in PPC support. In 2019, the party’s best performance was in Beauce, Que., the home riding of leader Maxime Bernier, but it failed to crack single digits everywhere else. It’s a different story in 2021.

Designed and developed by Jesse Tahirali. Edited by Phil Hahn