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Editor's Note: Since the publishing of this article, Christian Doe has been given a Congress Mask for his victory in Scotland. The article has been updated to reflect this, as well as the changes to various statistics.

Yet another election has finished here in Canada. This is the 7th time that I have sat in the IRC watching numbers roll in. The 25th can be a very fun day, but it can also be very stressful, as many a Party President has learned the hard way. A dweebish reference instantly jumps to mind -
Keep Hope Alive. For more than one reason I find that quote applicable today.


Muglack and I both think this guy is pretty cool.

Canada's population is up considerably compared to last month. Our vote count, however, dropped slightly - to 688. This reduced our Voter Turnout to a paltry 29.14%. Our trend of dropping turnouts continues despite our gain in population - last month we managed to rake in nearly 10% more.

Once again all of the Top 7 parties fielded candidates for Congress. As you are probably aware, rapid shufflings in the Party Ranks moved the DAL down 2 ranks and out of the Top 5 this month, with the UN taking their place in 4th. All other parties ended in the same position they were in a month ago, with some minor shifts in numbers.

With so many parties running candidates and as many as 4 parties running under a single banner, below are the distribution of votes for Congress:


Click to make me big!
Note: Not all candidates ran in the party they are affiliated with. Candidate votes are counted to their parent party, not their election party.

These numbers are, unsurprisingly, very close together. They also generally follow the rankings of the parties. EPIC, MDP, and CPP all fell within 20 votes of one another. MOO, the most stable of the low-ranking parties and also a group that did very well for votes last term, is also over the 100-vote mark. It might appear surprising that the UN has only managed to achieve 12% of the popular vote. The manner in which the UN entered the Top 5, matched with their increase in voter support (up 7😵, however, shows that this result is nothing to scoff at. For a rushed 1 Day's warning the UN has done very well this month.

A brief note on Scotlan😛
Originally, Scotland's 5 votes were nullified when the UK conquered the region some time after Day Change. A successful ticket from Christian Doe, one of the candidates there, has gotten him into Congress. At the closing of the polls, Yddub Emwolb of the UN led with 2 votes, followed by Christian Doe at 1. The two MDP candidates trailed due to experience at 1 vote apiece. These numbers, along with Christian Doe's place as our 41st Congressman, are now reflected in the statistics shown here.

How, then, did each party fare for seats? Below is the distribution of the May 2011 Congress. This Congress, unlike April's, carries the full weight of 41 members (up 5 from last month):



For such an even distribution of votes, the Vote-to-Seat ratio is obviously all over the map. Only the CPP received a proportional number of Congressmen. While all parties fell within 7% of their share of the vote, quite a few parties weren't able to stay par for Seats. The divide is almost entirely parallel to each party's size: EPIC and MDP, who benefited from high turnouts, are both Top 3 parties. CPP, while sliding in numbers, breaks even, and every party remaining fell at least 3% short. nCPF, who ran only 2 candidates, failed to secure either of their Minnesota seats.

The party charted with the fewest seats is the "Ignatieffed" DAL. Gradually decreasing activity, along with intense inter-party rivalries, have culminated in this 6th-place finish. Perhaps what is most responsible for the discrepancy in Seats, however, is where the DAL candidates ran. As with MOO last month, DAL votes were concentrated in high-population regions, which require far more votes to earn a seat. Nunavut (which is, incidentally, home for many DALers) was the only "minor" region to elect its candidate with more votes than the Q5 regions.

With all of the sliding numbers - total population, party size, votes on election day, and seat counts, it can be hard to tell how each party performed. To that end, below is a graph charting how many votes each party gained or lost, as compared to April:



As mentioned earlier, despite their low representation in Congress the UN continues to improve their standing as compared to 1 month earlier. More remarkable, however, is the shift in MDP support. The MDP gained both seats and votes as compared to their performance last month, gaining just over 8% the seats in Congress and picking up an additional 32 votes.

MOO drops considerably here, erasing almost all of their momentum gained from last month. The DAL's drop has already been addressed and is not surprising given their short number of candidates, while the nCPF drop of 5 votes is barely worth mentioning. Despite a visibly sharp slide in votes, EPIC managed to increase their seat holdings by 2, and in so doing boost their share of Congress by 1.49%. Moreover, EPIC's leading voter turnout has also translated into the most efficient Vote-to-Seat ratio this month.

Map Time! With all of these shifts and adjustments, perhaps most interesting is the radical change in the regional support for each party. Curious readers are welcome to take a look at last month's map when viewing the May Results:



In this representation, congress seats are charted by region on the bar graphs above each province. Ontario, for example, saw 7 Congressmen elected. Each region is coloured based on which political party received the highest percentage of votes. Colour intensity increases as representation rises.

So what's up with the Skittles Map?
- Comparison to last month shows near-total change. Only 2 regions (Nunavut and New Brunswick) favoured the same parties as last month, and both of these saw a more balanced distribution. All other Canadian regions shifted their support to different parties.
- The odd situation with Scotland puts 10 Congressmen into office as Wildcards. Unlike some past elections, all of our Wildcard Seats went to the Q5 regions. Most of these seats (and most votes) went to Ontario.
- While this map tends to favour parties who dominate in the Vote Count, there are two notable exceptions this month. MOO, despite their downward trend in votes, managed to snare 4 regions, second only to EPIC (who earned 6). MDPs support was surprisingly balanced across the country - so much so that they only led the votes in 1 region.
- Party Presidents tend to do well in elections. They are familiar faces, and most of them directly influence the ever-important SVTs. This month, however, only 1 Party President was elected, and even then, only in a Wildcard slot.

That's that. The new Congress has already begun their search for a new Speaker, and for at least 10 more days, Canada can take a rest from the craze of elections. Not that politics will take a break.

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See you next month;
Sperry