From the NDP website...

[c9]

Election by the numbers:

NDP
Vote change in 2004 from
2000 election:
+1,024,092
Percentage difference:
+94%

Liberal Party
Vote change in 2004 from
2000 election:
-296,981
Percentage difference:
-5.6%

Conservative Party
Vote change in 2004 from
2000 election
(combined PC & Canadian Alliance):
- 847,092
Percentage difference:
-17.4%

Comments

[ratonil.livejournal.com]

I don't understand... If the conservatives got less votes why did they got more seats?. Did they win in small districts?

[c9.livejournal.com]

In Canada, we don't have one election, we actually have 308 little ones. In each district ("riding"), the candidate with the most votes wins, despite having sometimes only 30% or so of the riding's votes.

The Tories got less votes partly because they merged two other parties together, and the fringe elements of each original party (very conservative, or very liberal) bled off to other parties.

But their support was more broad this time around, meaning they covered more ridings. This is also the problem the NDP faced: even with almost double the vote, they didn't do as well as they wanted because their support was too broad, but not strong enough in many ridings to be the best there.

Horrifying Examples of Problem
Year, Percentage of vote, # of seats, % of seats (all for NDP as an example):
2004, 15.6%, 19, 6.2%
2000, 8.5%, 13, 4.3%
1997, 11%, 21, 7%
1993, 6.9%, 9, 3.1%
1988, 20.4%, 43, 14.6%

Great website: http://www.sfu.ca/~aheard/elections/1867-2000.html

[ratonil.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the URL and for the explanation. Now I understand better. I bought a book related with the Canadian elections called "Fights of our lives". It's well written and very graphic. Try to get it @ Chapters.

Federal and parliament Systems are so complicated :) Thanks God I live in a presidential and unitarian country ;)