Calculations on Seat Redistribution

The word on the street today is that the Conservatives are set to introduce legislation to add seats in the House of Commons with the objective of creating a fairer distribution according to population. This is said to be needed because some ridings are too big and thus constituents in these ridings get lower quality service from their elected representative.

If you take total number of seats in a province and divide it by total population, then you get:

Alberta 131,704
Ontario 124,469
British Columbia 123,756
Quebec 104,385
Manitoba 87,286
New Brunswick 74,950
Saskatchewan 73,579
Newfoundland 72,700
Nova Scotia 55,188
PEI 35,250
Arctic 35,200

That is to say that the average PEI MP represents 35,250 constituents, while the average Alberta MP represents 131,704. Representing that many more people means that MPs have to answer that many more phone calls, e-mails, and other requests. The 131,704 are receiving less service from their representative than the 35,250. It is interesting that there were more total votes per riding in Quebec in 2008 than in Alberta. However 46% of the population of Quebec voted, while only 34% of Albertans registered a vote. There are likely a number of concurrent explanations for this disparity.

When I ranked ridings by total votes recorded in 2008 I got; Popular vote in 30 ridings with the most total voters:

Tories 36.8%
Liberals 28.4%
NDP 16.8%
Greens 8.6%

2008 Popular vote in 30 ridings with the fewest total voters:

Tories 40%
Liberals 27.3%
NDP 23.4%
Greens 4.9%

Clearly the NDP has the greatest chance of winning in the lower population ridings, while the gap between them and the Liberals increases as the population increases. This does not imply that adding seats will narrow the gap between the NDP and the Liberals, just that the NDP does better in places like Northern Ontario or rural Manitoba where you have large territories with scattered populations. The Greens do better in larger ridings.

To forecast the probability of a majority I would first have to see exactly where they intend to draw the lines. Personally I would prefer to eliminate seats to change the distribution rather than adding new ones, but I understand that your constitution doesn't permit that.