I heard that you might be interested in a map of the last Conservative Party leadership race.
Erin O’Toole resigned this week as leader of the Conservative Party of Canada after losing a caucus vote invoked under the Reform Act. Thirty-five members of the Conservative Parliamentary caucus signed a letter to remove O’Toole as leader, sparking a subsequent vote that O’Toole lost 73-45.
Followers of the blog will remember that I launched a project during the 2021 Canadian federal election that mapped out seven previous federal elections riding-by-riding and poll-by-poll.
Now that a leadership race for the Conservative Party of Canada is about to get underway, I thought it would be a good time to review the results of the 2020 Conservative Party leadership race and map them by riding and throughout each round of voting.
Erin O’Toole’s faced three competitors in that leadership race, Peter MacKay, Leslyn Lewis, and Derek Sloan.
Derek Sloan was removed from caucus and was barred from running as a Conservative in the election that would follow.
Leslyn Lewis and Peter MacKay may again be contenders in the upcoming leadership race. MacKay published an op-ed in the Toronto Sun outlining the need for unity in the party, while Leslyn Lewis is said to be considering a run.
From this map, we can see that Lewis was particulary popular in the Praisies and in northern British Columbia, while Peter MacKay racked up votes in Eastern Canada and parts of Quebec. Erin O’Toole, however, won the race by delivering a strong ground game in la belle province.
The relative strength of each candidate is graphed for each riding through each round of voting.
These maps should be useful to campaign managers to candidates in the upcoming race and should also be interesting to observers of partisan politics, no matter their party.
I’d like to map out previous leadership races for each political party. If you’re holding on to this data and would like to see it mapped out, please get in touch!