Canadian Federal Elections from 1867 to the Present (Library of Parliament)

The purpose of this repository is to provide the public with candidate-level federal election results from the Canadian Library of Parliament in formats that are easy for researchers, and other interested parties, to access and analyze.

The Raw Data

The data in this repository all come from Canada's Library of Parliament (LOP). The original dataset is available through Parlinfo under Elections and Candidates. From here users can filter and export data in excel format.

Data from the LOP consists of candidate-level vote totals for all individuals who ran for federal office since 1867.

Note: The Government of Canada's (GOC) website hosts a similar data set titled "History of the Federal Electoral Ridings, 1867-2010". This data set, however, does not appear to be maintained while the LOP's data set is regularly updated. The GOC's data also does not have a complete record of candidate's gender while the LOP's data does.

Cleaned Data

This repository processes the excel formatted data from the LOP into formats that are more convenient for social scientific research. More specifically, the cleaned data wrangles candidate-level election results into long-formatted .csv files and a master .Rds file for R-users. The cleaned data also features modified variables that help facilitate data exploration and analysis. You will find the modified data and more information on the variables in this folder.

The scripts used to process the raw data can be found in the folder, R.

What is different?

The cleaned data differs from the original LOP data set in the following ways:

• All data are presented in long format.
• Data are exported as .csv and .Rds files and organized across multiple folders rather than a single excel spreadsheet.
• A variable called Parliament was created from the original data set to record the session of Parliament in long form.
• Additional variables, namely Election_Date and Election_Type, were created from the original data set to record the date (i.e., Election_Date as yyyy-mm-dd) of each general and by-election (i.e., Election_Type) in long form.
• New variables (i.e., Last_Name, First_Name, and Middle_Names) were created to identify each candidate's first, middle, and last names.
• The variable Candidate, which records the full name of each candidate, was modified to address inconsistent use of uppercase in candidates' last names. Punctuation marks inserted in error were also removed from candidates' names.

Supplementary Data

This repository also contains a supplementary folder that contains multiple files of interest to researchers based on the LOP's data. The folder includes a data set on federal ridings that records the names, start dates, and end dates of every federal riding since 1867. Additional data sets summarize various fields of interest at the national and constituency-level of analysis. Summary variables include fields such as the number of candidates running, the number of registered parties, the number of seats contested, etc. Summary data are available in .csv as well as .Rds formats.

Credit and Copyright

Canada's Library of Parliament (LOP) is the source of all data in this repository. Data are, therefore, subject to the same Copyright Act as the LOP and is subject to change. The data in this repository are released for personal and non-commercial use in accordance with the Copyright Act (R.S.C., 1985, c. C-42).

Disclaimer

This repository makes no warranties regarding the accuracy of this information and disclaims any liability for damages resulting from its use. The data contained herein are subject to the Library of Parliament's terms of use and may be subject to change.