The message from Carbonear–Harbour Grace

Taking the swing from Tuesday's by-election in Carbonear–Harbour Grace, and applying it, for fun's sake, province-wide, yields a notional election result that looks like this (click to enlarge):

Pale colours indicate pickups for the opposition, or narrow holds for the outgoing PCs. There is only one in that latter category: Humber East, where the incumbent has already made it clear he's on his way to Pensionville.

The handful of gray districts are those where the forecast models disagree on the outcome, given the input assumptions. Of the ten tossup districts, only five are tossups where the PC party is still in play. In either case, the largest "universe" of PC seats, where one or the other model has them winning or in contention, is six districts.

Just six.

The forecast model does not take into account changes in affiliation (Osborne) or The Big Snit (the entire NDP and Dissident caucus). Recall that, despite The Big Snit, the NDP vote in the late by-election was essentially unchanged from the general election of 2011 in that district.

So, when does floor-crossing season begin, again?

Math is hard

Nearly 47% of Danny Dumaresque and the two Bennetts' supporters in the NL Liberal leadership vote, failed to mark the second and third preferences on their ballots which would have given them a say on the final count.

Many excuses have been offered, before voting was finished and since, as to why this would be so, but the basic reason seems to be: math is hard. A segment of voters seem to think, entirely wrongly, that marking a second and subsequent preference somehow hurts the chances of their first choice candidate. (It does not.)

Basic dumbosity such as this newspaper column doesn't help. Spot the glaring error.

Of 6539 ballots cast for the three runners-up, 3047 were incomplete after the first or second count. While mostly academic in the present instance, in a tighter leadership race, the incomplete ballot rate could help determine the eventual winner. For some reason, the incompleteness rate was especially high in Baie Verte and Burin–Placentia West.

Contrary to some privately-expressed concerns about the willingness of rural voters to complete their multiple choices, most of the districts with the lowest rates of ballot-incompleteness were in rural Newfoundland.

Play by play

With the full district-by-district Liberal leadership numbers now out, you can do fun things like this. (Click any map to enlarge it.)

First Count

Ball carried 28 districts on the first count, evenly divided between getting a majority of the vote and a plurality. Antle carried fifteen, and Cathy Bennett five, both with pluralities. Neither Dumaresque nor Jim Bennett carried any. Ball took a plurality of the vote in J. Bennett's own, and strongest district, St. Barbe, where J. Bennett was only able to muster 22.08 points. Dumaresque's strongest showing was 27.02 points in his native Cartwright–L'Anse au Clair.

Second Count

As to be expected with so few re-allocations up for grabs, the second count made little difference to the big picture. St. Barbe turned into a Ball majority, Trinity–Bay de Verde into an Antle majority, and St. John's North flipped from the Antle to the Ball column.

Third Count

With Cathy Bennett eliminated, and only two candidates remaining, every district became either a Ball or Antle majority. (There were no ties.) Bennett's re-allocations put Antle back on top in St. John's North, and also turned Cape St. Francis and Mount Pearl South into his column. Bennett's second choice votes gave Ball majorities in Terra Nova, Isles of Notre Dame, and Virginia Waters.

[Updated to correct colour key in third map.]

Synopsis

Count-by-count summary of the Newfoundland and Labrador Liberal leadership vote (in points):

First count:

	Points	%
Dwight	2130.05	44.4%
Cathy	1089.05	22.7%
Jim	128.05	2.7%
Danny	131.69	2.7%
Paul	1321.15	27.5%

Second count:

	Points	%
Dwight	2257.15	47.0%
Cathy	1144.99	23.9%
Jim
Danny
Paul	1397.86	29.1%

Third count:

	Points	%
Dwight	2832.29	59.0%
Cathy
Jim
Danny
Paul	1967.71	41.0%

Reallocation of points:

	1 to 2	2 to 3
Dwight	127.1	575.14
Catty	55.94
Jim
Danny
Paul	76.71	569.85

Grassroots

To put the truly astonishing Newfoundland and Labrador Liberal leadership vote into perspective, here is a table of "open" party leadership contests in Canada, both federal and provincial, since the Parti Québécois leadership race of 1985.

These include party leaderships decided by open, one-member-one-vote member- or supporter-based voting, or conventions which were open to all party members. It also includes party leaderships which were geographically weighted one-member-one-vote, but excludes internal party votes for delegated leadership conventions.

Colours follow the traditional partisan colour scheme, with the addition of purple for Quebec sovereigntist parties, and green for non-"Conservative" right-of-centre parties.

The "votes" figure takes the total number of valid votes on the largest ballot (or count, in the cast of preferential ballots.) The per-capita figure expresses the total number of leadership votes in the largest ballot as a percentage of the voters list in the province (or Canada) at the chronologically nearest federal election. (One exception: the 1990 Ontario PC leadership is expressed as a percentage of the 1990 Ontario provincial voters list.)

Since 1985, the average open provincial party leadership has attracted about 1.5% of that province's electors. At 5.8%, as a pure exercise in voter-mobilization, the NL Liberal leadership is a runaway success.

Additions and corrections are welcome.

Despite the wrinkles and gremlins, the NL Liberal Party, and the teams behind the five candidates, deserve full credit for driving this leadership process, which, adjusted for population, is one of the biggest exercises of grassroots party democracy in recent Canadian history.

Party	Jurisdiction	Year	Votes	Per-capita
PC	AB	2006	144,289	6.2%
Liberal	NL	2013	23,873	5.8%
Liberal	PEI	1996	4,329	4.4%
PC	AB	1992	78,251	4.2%
Liberal	PEI	2003	3,969	3.6%
PC	AB	2011	78,176	3.1%
NDP	SK	2001	19,465	2.8%
Liberal	NB	2012	14,672	2.5%
Parti Québécois	QC	1985	96,974	2.1%
Parti Québécois	QC	2005	105,259	1.8%
Liberal	BC	2011	54,879	1.8%
NDP	SK	2009	9,444	1.3%
NDP	SK	2013	8,719	1.2%
PC	MB	2006	9,143	1.1%
Liberal	NS	1992	6,998	1.0%
Bloc Québécois	QC	1997	48,437	0.9%
Wild Rose	AB	2009	16,400	0.7%
PC	NB	2008	4,029	0.7%
NDP	BC	2011	20,016	0.6%
Social Credit	BC	1993	14,833	0.6%
Liberal	AB	1994	11,004	0.6%
PC	ON	2002	44,188	0.6%
Canadian Alliance	Can	2000	120,557	0.6%
Saskatchewan	SK	1998	3,344	0.5%
PC	SK	1994	3,298	0.5%
PC	NS	1995	2,985	0.4%
Conservative	Can	2004	97,397	0.4%
Liberal	Can	2013	104,552	0.4%
Liberal	AB	1998	7,636	0.4%
Canadian Alliance	Can	2002	88,228	0.4%
PC	ON	2004	32,390	0.4%
Liberal	AB	2011	8,640	0.3%
PC	ON	2009	25,429	0.3%
NDP	Can	2002	58,202	0.3%
Liberal	BC	1993	6,540	0.3%
NDP	Can	2012	65,108	0.3%
PC	ON	1990	15,850	0.3%
Bloc Québécois	QC	2011	12,846	0.2%
Liberal	AB	2008	4,860	0.2%
PC	Can	1998	30,100	0.2%
NDP	ON	2009	11,150	0.1%
Liberal	AB	2004	2,733	0.1%
ADQ	QC	2009	3,912	0.1%
Wild Rose	AB	2005	1,128	0.1%