Figures!

[bjarvis]

I follow Canadian elections like some people follow baseball or football.

This week was a double-header: provincial elections in Newfoundland & Labrador Monday and Ontario tonight. Woo hoo!

The numbers were streaming in after the polls closed at 9 PM and TVOntario had continuous coverage. The Liberals appear to be re-elected with another large majority. The Conservative leader was losing in his own riding. But just as they were covering my parents' area --the riding of Temiskaming-Cochrane in north-eastern Ontario-- longtime Liberal MPP Jim Ramsay was 500 votes behind the NDP candidate, it happened: we lost the satellite signal. DAMN!

The universe has a twisted sense of humour.

Comments

[mrdreamjeans.livejournal.com]

Is a "riding" in Canada equivalent to a district, county or precinct in the states? I've not heard the term before, but like it very much.

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

Yup, kinda: a riding is a district or constituency on the electoral map. It doesn't necessarily correspond to particular counties or municipal boundaries but would be restricted by provincial borders. For example, the above mentioned riding of Timiskaming-Cochrane largely covers the regional district of Timiskaming where I grew up, some of the regional district to the north and I think a chunk of Nippissing, the district to the south but it absolutely respects the Ontario/Quebec border.

Federal parliamentary ridings don't necessarily correspond to federal parliamentary ridings; each body defines their own borders. Still, some provinces have opted to simply adopt the federal map for ease of comprehension.

And the riding names are so gosh-darn colourful! :-) The Speaker of the House has to memorize all parliamentarians' names, and the names of their ridings in both official languages. That must be great fun.

[trawnapanda.livejournal.com]

as Brian says, "riding" = "electoral district" = "constituency", although the word "riding" doesn't appear in the legislation, it's the most common term used in speech.

none of the federal ridings cross provincial or territorial boundaries. I don't know about other provinces, but one of the (very few) changes that I agree with that previous Ontario premier Mike Harris made was to use federal riding boundaries for provincial elections. That meant that the Ontario house went from 103 in the last legislature to 107 in the new legislature, since the number of ridings as assigned under the Canada Elections Act increased with our population.

One thing we don't generally suffer from here is gerrymandering. A commission of non-politicians re-draws the map after each census, and parliament approves it - and very very rarely do the parliamentarians get their pencils out to change the map as drawn by the commissions. The districts often follow civil boundaries, but getting approximately equal populations is more important than running the boundary down city limits road.

like Brian, I like living in a named constituency, as opposed to "fifth parliamentary district".

[abqdan.livejournal.com]

And ridings came from the Danes, who created them in England back in the 9th century. Yorkshire is the only county left in England that still has ridings. A riding was a third of a county - hence the East, West, and North ridings of Yorkshire. (A common question from outsiders... "where's the South Riding?" elicits giggles from Yorkshire locals-in-the-know.

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

I didn't know ridings were originally defined as 1/3 of a county. Having learned something new today, I've determined that life is worth clinging to after all, at least for the next 24 hours. :-)

Re: ridings

[weekilter.livejournal.com]

When I was visiting a friend in West Yorks we went to a shopping centre in the area called "The Ridings." (Or if you believe in Brit punctuation "Ridings".)