Highlighting the unheard voices and distorted results created by Canada's electoral system

Wasted Vote: A vote cast in an election that has no effect whatsoever on the result of that election

40,040,029 Canadian votes wasted and counting

That's the total number of Canadian votes that were wasted just in the elections tracked on the site. Almost 51 % of the total votes cast.

Votes are the bricks on which democratic systems are built. The means by which citizens participate in their governments.

But does every vote cast in Canada actually make a difference? Surprisingly no, in the First Past the Post (FPTP) system that we inherited from Britain in 1792 most Canadian votes today have no affect whatsoever on election results.

Finding this out came as a great shock to me. I have voted in every election I have been able to and I was surprised when a friend of mine said to me that I was wasting my time as my vote wouldn't make any difference anyway. I was even more surprised to find out that he was right.

In FPTP the amount of support a party gets has no effect on how many seats it gets in parliament. It did not make sense to me how a party could win 60% of the seats and gain complete majority power even though it got only 40% of the votes until I realized that in FPTP all the votes a party gets are not important; all that matters are the votes that win a riding. All other votes are wasted which means that in many Canadian elections more than half of the votes cast are wasted.

The purpose of this site is to track all those wasted votes. The votes for Liberals in Alberta, Conservatives in large urban areas, the Green party in Calgary, the NDP in Quebec and many more besides. These are the voices that FPTP suppresses and need to be heard to create a better Canada, a Canada in which every voice matters.

Most Wasted Votes

Most of the time in our current system more than half of the votes cast in a district are wasted. The following table shows the worst of these from all the elections tracked on the site.

ElectionDistrictPercent Votes Wasted
2008 Election for the Federal Government of CanadaGatineau-Que.70.85 %
1990 Election for the Government of OntarioHalton North-Ont.69.06 %
2011 Election for the Federal Government of CanadaVancouver Centre-B.C.68.97 %
1990 Election for the Government of OntarioLambton-Ont.68.6 %
2011 Election for the Federal Government of CanadaAhuntsic-Que.68.2 %
Overall more than half of the votes cast in 1183 districts were wasted. Almost 57 % of all districts

The 2011 Election, a return to 'majority' government

While the 2011 election was historic in many ways one way in which it was not historic at all was in the form the 'majority' government has taken. Less than 40% of Canadians voted for the Conservatives and while they more than deserve to be the leading party they should not have the full power which the antiquated FPTP system has given them. Two ridings from the last election have vaulted into the top 5 of the most wasted votes that this site tracks. More than 68% of the voters in Vancouver-Centre, B.C and Ahuntsic, Quebec are not represented in parliament. How is this democratic?

Ontario 2007 election, way more coming this year

So with a Federal Election underway and an Ontario election coming up later this year I finally went back and added in the 2007 results (Hard to do when Elections Ontario only provides pdf files to previous election results!). To no surprise more than 2 million Ontarians are currently being 'represented' by people they did not even vote for. It's pretty funny to see the media talking about how parties are close to a 'majority' when none of them are even close to being supported by half of Canadians. The definition of majority in the Canadian system is incredibly screwed up.

BC2009 election results

Finally managed to put up the 2009 election results for BC. Just another false majority. FPTP is barely adequate in a two party system but with multiple parties becomes completely unworkable. The Greens should have won seven seats in the last BC election and there is no good argument as to why they didn't.

Nova Scotia elections

With the drumbeats to yet another federal election giving the lie to the myth that FPTP somehow creates stable governments I have put up the 2009 Nova Scotia elections. Another false majority that is the most common result of a First Past the Post election.

More election results to come

While the referendum results in B.C were disappointing, the struggle for a better electoral system continues. I'll be working on putting up the results of the recent B.C and Nova Scotia Elections in the next little while.

Final official results

Small update with the official results for the 2008 federal election. The instability in Canadian federal politics can be directly tied to the absurd situation of the Bloc Quebecois holding the balance of power due to FPTP exaggerating the power of regional parties. The Bloc have the support of less than 10% of Canadians and thus should have only about 30 seats. Not the *75* that they hold. Federalist parties in Quebec have more than 61% support but only 33% of the representation. How does *that* make any sense?

Interim results for the 2008 Federal Election

After a longer than expected hiatus I have updated the site with the *interim* results of the 2008 Federal elections held on the 14th of October. Not only did more than half of the votes cast not elect anyone again but we also have two new ridings in the top 5 most undemocratically elected ridings of all the ridings tracked on the site. With a Brand new Champion in Gatineau in Quebec where the winner won with LESS THAN 30% of the voters in the riding actually voting for him. Coming in at the fourth spot overall is Guelph Ontario where far less than a third of the voters voted for the person who for some reason is considered to be representing the whole riding.

It was an extremly strong showing by the Green party that led to the very undemocratic result in Guelph and it was strong level of support for the New Democratic Party that led to the extremely absurd result in Gatineau. It is only in a fundamentally flawed system that more competitive races and *more* options for voters would lead to such ridiculous results.

Keep in mind that these are based on interim results as of October 17th 2008. I will update the results as soon as the final official tally is released by Elections Canada.

New Data from British Columbia

The 2005 BC provincial elections have been added to the site. A false majority government is the typically distorted result of this election. The Green Party received more than 9% of the vote and yet there is nobody at all in the BC parliament representing these voters. What kind of electoral system would allow all these citizens to go unrepresented? An antiquated one whose time has passed.

Huge update

It took a while but I have added all the elections from Ontario 1981 till 2003 onto the site. That brings the grand total of election results on this site to eight which leads to more than 21.5 million votes which did not gain representation in parliament.

The 'Most Wasted Votes' booby prize has also changed hands from the last federal election to the 1990 Ontario election. The top 5 districts with the most wasted votes all come from this election. With members of legislative assembly that claim to 'represent' a constituency in which barely 30% of the people voted for them, and a stunning 100 districts that had sole representation from a person who had the support of less than half of the voters this was an election that saddled Ontario with an unready governing party that had full majority power even though it got less than 38% of the votes in an election. All thanks to the unrepresentative results of FPTP. Take a browse through this and the other new elections to see how poorly Canada is being served by this antiquated electoral system.

Any and all comments are more than welcome. I've gone through the results on the site with a fine tooth comb but if any issues have slipped by me then please don't hesitate to drop me a line.

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