ABOUT NEWFOUNDLAND VOTES - HISTORICAL STATISTICS

As a comprehensive elections results database, Newfoundland Votes has a huge amount of data, from district-level results, down to individual ballot box results dating as far back as 1972. As a result, we are able to present this data in various different ways. One such way, is through the historical voting results of the many communities across our province.

WHAT ARE THE HISTORICAL ELECTIONS RESULTS SUMMARIES?

When entering a town page, you will be greeted with a summary of the federal and provincial election results for said community. These stats are based off of the poll-by-poll results for the community, and are broken down into 4 distinct categories.

1. The Historical Average

The big one. For each community, the total number of votes cast for each party over the lifetime of the datasets we have are counted. Think of it like every election that has ever happened for your town all crammed into one. The total vote percentage is calculated for each party; the party with the most votes over all elections is listed, and its margin over the party with the second most votes is listed.

​Data file showing election results for Adeytown-Deep Bight. Columns B-J are individually added to get total vote shares for each party. Raw vote then converted to vote %, and margin is calculated between two parties with highest vote %.

2. The Last 3 Elections Average

A lot can happen over time. How a town voted in 1979 may not be (er...most likely is not) indicative of how a community may vote today. So, we perform the same calculation as in the Historical Average seen above, but only taking into account the last 3 elections. This should ideally give somewhere between a 5- and 10-year average and give a much more accurate indication of how that town might ​vote today.

3. Last Election

This one's pretty self-explanatory. Which party received the most votes in your community during the last election? And by what percentage point margin? There is more detailed data from the last election available on the town page, including a bar chart outlining vote share for all parties.

4. Current Designation

Based off the vote share total of the winning party, what would you consider your town? Current Designation is essentially a strength of victory indicator. Depending on the margin of victory for the winning party in the last election, a town can be designated as follows:

MARGIN OF VICTORY	DESIGNATION
>= 20%	"Reliable"
>10; <20	"Safe"
>=5; <=10	"Lean"
<5	"Toss-up/swing"