As the next Federal General Election gets closer, we're turning our analytical attention to how the election might play out in Toronto. The first step, of course, is to gather data on prior elections. So, we've updated our toVotes data package to include the results of the 2008 and 2011 federal elections for electoral districts in Toronto.
This dataset includes the votes received by each candidate in each district and poll in Toronto. We also include the party affiliation of the candidate and whether they are an incumbent. These data are currently stored in a separate dataset from the mayoral results, since the geography of the electoral districts and wards aren't directly comparable. We'll work on integrating these datasets more closely and adding in further election results over the coming weeks.
Hopefully the general availability of cleaned and integrated datasets, such as this one, will help generate more analytically-based discussions of the upcoming election.