Census Data and Election Results

Pundits Guide has created the ability to look at all 308 ridings in BC based on the data from the 2006 census.   There are some interesting results:

Mother Tongue:
Of the 27 ridings in Canada where the majority of people did not have English or French as a first language, the Liberals won 20 of them.   Conservatives four and NDP three.   Of these 27 ridings one is Nunavut, two are in Quebec, six in BC and 18 in Ontario.   More than 1/4 of the Liberal seats were among these 27.

Meanwhile 34 ridings have 25 or less with a mother tongue other than English or French.   13 Conservatives, 11 Bloc, 7 Liberal, 2 NDP and 1 independent.  20 of the ridings are in Quebec, 5 in Newfoundland, 4 in New Brunswick, 3 in Nova Scotia, and 2 in PEI.

Of the 43 ridings with 85% or more French as the mother tongue, 33 were won by the Bloc, 9 by the Conservatives and 1 independent.   If we go to 50% or more French, there are 69 ridings, 65 in Quebec, 3 in New Brunswick and one in Ontario.   49 Bloc, 11 Conservatives, 8 Liberals and 1 independent, all of the Bloc seats.

Religion:
The 27 ridings with more than 1/3 of the people stating they had no religion were all in BC.   The split between parties fairly even between the parties

The 60 ridings with the highest percentage Catholic population are all in Francophone Canada.   44 Bloc, 10 Conservative, 4 Liberals, 1 New Democrat and 1 independent.  93 ridings in Canada have a Catholic majority.

There are 45 ridings with a protestant majority.   36 Conservatives, 7 Liberals ( 5 of which are in Newfoundland) 1 New Democrat and 1 independent.

Top 11 ridings in Muslim population all elected Liberals.  9 Ridings had zero Muslims.

Unemployment
Of the 100 ridings with the lowest unemployment, the Conservatives won 75 of them, more than half the Conservative MPs. Of the 100 with the highest unemployment the Conservatives won 21.

Public Transit:
Of the 50 ridings with the highest public transit use, two were won by the Conservatives.   The Liberals won 33, 3/7s of all the their seats.   Of the 50 lowest transit use the Conservatives won 39 of them.  Interestingly, four of the five ridings the Greens came second are in the 104 ridings with the lowest transit use.

When it comes to being a driver driving to work, 10 of the highest rates are in ridings won by the BQ

I will look around for some other interesting co-relations within the data later