2014 Ontario General Election Analysis for Waterloo Region
Posted by Bob Jonkman on March 5th, 2018
There’s another Ontario General Election on the horizon (7 June 2018), so this is a good time to see how things went last time around.
The voting system that Ontario uses is First-Past-The Post, or technically, Single Member Plurality. That means that the candidate who gets more votes than the runner-up gets the single seat for the whole riding. No need for a majority. With five candidates in a riding the “winner” could have as little as 20% of the vote, and so up to 80% of the votes cast wouldn’t serve to elect anyone, and are wasted. It makes no difference if those voters had stayed home; the result would have been the same. In Waterloo Region things weren’t quite as bad as that, but not far off. Overall, 61.2% of votes cast in Waterloo Region were wasted.
No candidate won a riding with a majority. The closest was Diaene Vernile in Kitchener Centre, who received 43.1% of the votes cast in that riding. Kathryn McGarry won the seat in Cambridge with only 38.9%, comparable to Ontario, where the Liberals received 38.6% of the vote, but received 54.6% of the seats (58 out of 107 seats). This is yet another false majority, directly attributable to the single-member seat allocation. The worst showing was in Kitchener–Conestoga, where Michael Harris retained his seat with only 36.4% of the votes. That means 63.6% of the voters voted against Mr. Harris! Even worse, only 17083 of 94886 eligible voters voted for Mr. Harris. He won with the approval of only 18% of the electorate!
With only five parties and four ridings in Waterloo Region it is difficult to assess the how proportional the seat count is compared to the vote count. The Liberals are over-represented with two seats, 50%, with only 36% of the vote. The Progressive Conservatives are under-represented with one seat, 25%, and 30% of the vote. The NDP is properly represented with one seat, 25%, and 26% of the vote. The Greens and Libertarians together received 7.3% of the votes cast, and would not have gained a seat in the Region even with a proportional voting system.
It would not take a large shift in voter preference to significantly change the outcome. Note how small the plurality for each of the winners is, only a few thousand votes. Kitchener–Conestoga is especially fragile, where Michael Harris won by only 1419 votes. Even a small increase in voter turnout would add more votes than that. An increase from 49.5% to 51.0% would add 1423 votes, more than enough to topple the Progressive Conservative seat in favour of the Liberals.
Region-wide, voter turnout was abysmal at 50.9% of eligible voters casting a ballot. No wonder 49.1% of the voters stayed home, when there is such a high number of wasted votes. It is said that a system with proportional representation will improve voter turnout, because almost all votes cast contribute towards some representation in the legislature. I sure hope to see that for the next election!
Here are the results for the four electoral districts in Waterloo Region:
| Cambridge | Kitchener Centre | Kitchener–Conestoga | Kitchener–Waterloo | Totals | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Liberal | * Kathryn McGarry * | * Diaene Vernile * | Wayne Wright | Jamie Burton | 50.0% seats | Liberal | |||||
| 18763 | 38.9% | 18472 | 43.1% | 15664 | 33.3% | 16534 | 30.1% | 69433 | 36.0% votes | ||
| Progressive-Conservative | Rob Leone (Incumbent) | Wayne Wettlaufer | * Michael Harris * (Incumbent) | Tracey Weiler | 25.0% seats | Progressive- Conservative | |||||
| 15694 | 32.6% | 11550 | 27.0% | 17083 | 36.4% | 14450 | 26.3% | 58777 | 30.5% votes | ||
| NDP | Bobbi Stewart | Margaret Johnston | James Villeneuve | * Catherine Fife * (Incumbent) | 25.0% seats | NDP | |||||
| 10413 | 21.6% | 9765 | 22.8% | 9958 | 21.2% | 20536 | 37.4% | 50672 | 26.3% votes | ||
| Green | Temara Brown | Ronnie Smith | David Weber | Stacey Danckert | 0.0% seats | Green | |||||
| 2726 | 5.7% | 2472 | 5.8% | 3277 | 7.0% | 2859 | 5.2% | 11334 | 5.9% votes | ||
| Libertarian | Allan R. Detweiler | Patrick Bernier | David Schumm | James Schulz | 0.0% seats | Libertarian | |||||
| 605 | 1.3% | 557 | 1.3% | 1001 | 2.1% | 481 | 0.9% | 2644 | 1.4% votes | ||
| Votes Cast | Turnout | 48201 | 48.1% | 42816 | 51.5% | 46983 | 49.5% | 54860 | 54.3% | 192860 | 50.9% | Votes Cast | Turnout |
| Eligible Voters | 100130 | 83170 | 94886 | 100972 | 379158 | Eligible Voters | |||||
| Approval (Winning votes / Eligble Voters) | 18.7% | 22.2% | 18.0% | 20.3% | 19.7% | Approval (Winning votes / Eligble Voters) | |||||
| Plurality | % votes cast | 3069 | 6.4% | 6922 | 16.2% | 1419 | 3.0% | 4002 | 7.3% | 15412 | 8.0% | Plurality | % votes cast |
| Wasted Votes | 29438 | 61.1% | 24344 | 56.9% | 29900 | 63.6% | 34324 | 62.6% | 118006 | 61.2% | Wasted Votes |
And that’s how it was in 2014. I hope to have an analysis of the 2018 Ontario General Election once the excitement has worn off a little…
–Bob Jonkman is the Co-Chair for the Fair Vote Canada Waterloo Region Chapter.