The Front Lines of Ontario - Battleground Clusters

Number crunching and statistical analysis can get you some pretty strange things.

You've probably heard of the idea of "battleground ridings". But in this entry, we're going to take a look at battleground clusters, a name we've just made up for different k-means clusters of Ontario electoral districts.

How We Did It

We told our statistical software program to divvy up all Ontario ridings by party votes in 2011, as a percentage of electors. This puts a party's relative attractiveness into the context of how well it was able to get out the vote on election day.

We might think of these Battleground Clusters as battle fronts on a map. A battle that I must sadly view from the sidelines (for now!), as I don't work in any paid capacity for a political party, consultancy, etc. I will let the professionals be my judge.

(I am also pleased to finally be able to offer some insight into Northern Ontario ridings, because this data doesn't depend on inconsistent, well-dated census data).