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You are now entering the PoliCan Forest!

by Maurice Y. Michaud (he/him)

As I explained in my opening article of how PoliCan came into being, it can be difficult and time-consuming to find the detailed results of an election that was held only a few years ago, let alone one that happened 100 years ago. In fact, this seemingly simple task, namely to find some public information, can be so opaque that most people who try simply give up after a few minutes of trying. That’s especially true if, in their case, the information they are seeking is only a “nice to have” instead of a “have to know.”

At least, that was before PoliCan.

With PoliCan, anyone can quickly find as much or as little information as they want, and they have multiple ways of unearthing it. But then, once they will have found that bit of info, they are likely to start looking for more details on some people they weren’t necessarily thinking about when they started their search. Quickly, one thing can lead to another, as they say.

As indicated on the table in the introduction to this section (reproduced here), since 1841 in the 16 jurisdictions tracked by PoliCan, there have been 506 general elections and 41,093 riding-level events (general elections, by-elections or plebiscites). All of these are accessible from the the submenu on the right, by jurisdiction, and you can choose to focus on detailed results, statistics, or lists of candidates. Most of the results for the Province of Canada are missing as of 2026, but the infrastructure is in place to add them should they be found from microfiche archives that are not online.

Number of electoral events and races in PoliCan

Jurisdiction						Elections
Juri.		Year		Assem.		General					By-Elections						Referendums
						Elec	Races				Elec	Races
		Min	Max	Min	Max		N	Accl.	n	Inc.		N	Accl.	n	Minis.	Inc.	Q	Races
1	CA	1867	2026	1	45	45	11,604	263	11,341	0	649	1,011	367	644	146	0	3	31
8	BC	1871	2024	1	43	43	1,970	24	1,946	0	164	204	59	145	67	0	15	806
9	AB	1905	2025	1	31	31	2,066	29	2,037	0	90	115	19	96	17	0	5	769
10	SK	1905	2024	1	30	30	1,670	24	1,646	0	104	130	31	99	20	0	0	0
11	MB	1870	2026	1	43	43	2,036	114	1,922	0	144	185	52	133	40	1	4	236
6	ON	1867	2025	1	44	44	4,613	93	4,520	0	295	406	95	311	57	5	1	107
5	QC	1867	2026	1	43	43	4,089	294	3,795	0	278	431	90	341	53	0	5	377
3	NB	1865	2025	20	61	42	1,233	48	1,185	1	192	230	91	139	57	0	1	12
2	NS	1867	2026	24	65	42	1,437	25	1,412	0	119	175	56	119	24	0	0	0
4	PE	1873	2026	26	67	42	1,164	41	1,123	1	102	154	40	114	35	41	3	70
7	NL	1855	2025	6	51	46	1,409	149	1,260	0	119	191	60	131	26	7	4	150
12	YT	1970	2025	22	36	15	248	0	248	0	11	13	0	13	0	0	1	21
14	NT	1951	2023	1	20	20	309	72	237	0	15	17	4	13	0	2	3	47
13	NU	1999	2025	1	7	7	145	13	132	0	12	15	2	13	0	0	0	0
15	NW	1888	1903	1	5	5	139	36	103	0	13	21	9	12	7	0	0	0
16	PC	1841	1866	1	8	8	834	152	682	669	186	203	64	139	81	133	0	0
ΣElec+Q = 3,044  ΣN = 41,093						506	34,966	1,377	33,589	671	2,493	3,501	1,039	2,462	630	189	45	2,626
The jurisdiction numbers are arbitrary and only hold significance for the maintenance of the data. Future-dated events are excluded from these tallies. The MMP simulator can be run on 439 of the 506 general elections. “Inc.” stands for missing or inexact data (such as races entered as having been won by acclamation when in fact the results are unknown), while “Minis.” shows the number of ministerial by-elections. A small handful of by-elections that did not really occur was added to this database to record when someone’s election was overturned and the seat was handed over to the challenger who had lost. Because it was a two-pronged question, the 2018 referendum in British Columbia on electoral reform had to be recorded as two separate events but is counted as a single event. What’s more, at this time, only the aggregate results by provinces and territories are available for the 1992 Canada/Québec referendum on the Charlottetown Accord, although efforts are underway to obtain the results by riding. Up until the middle of the 20th century, unseating a member was commonplace and the mechanism to challenge someone’s election seems to have been very lax when viewed through presentist lens, as many by-elections were held merely because the challenger — often the government or the defeated incumbent — did not like the result. What’s more, newly appointed ministers had to resign and run in a ministerial by-election. Therefore, by-elections were far more frequent than they are today.

So, the PoliCan Forest contains all you could possibly want to know about the results of 97.91% of all the federal, provincial or territorial electoral events ever held since Confederation!