November 21, 2022
Redistribution is the process of Canadian electoral districts changing their appearance and names. This event happens every 10 years after the decennial census. The last one happened in 2012 when the House of Commons went from 308 to 338 seats. This redistribution is less dramatic with the House of Commons only going from 338 to 343.
Nova Scotia's population/electoral district is around 88,000 but often varies greatly with rural seats being around 77,000 and urban seats being closer to 100,000 which can cause some weirdly large seats in some areas. The commission in charge of changing the electoral districts didn't do very much to reduce this though.
Proposal
Nova Scotia's original proposal had some pretty minor changes in most areas. The biggest changes were between Acadian Shore-Shelburne (replaces West Nova) and South Shore-St. Margaret's where Acadian Shore-Shelburne took Shelburne County.
The other very significant change is in Halifax. The ridings currently cover some less populated areas and tend to somewhat sprawl out. The proposal fixed this and made much smaller, urban ridings in Halifax which helped with the population differences I touched on earlier.
Report
The Report stage of redistribution saw a lot of switching back to the current borders. When looking at the changes between the current seats and the Final Report a lot of them are extremely minor. The switch of Shelburne County was reversed and Halifax ridings also became much larger like their current borders.
The big change was in the Sydney area where the currently large Sydney-Victoria was massively shrunk and became much smaller and urban.
Current Riding | Proposal | Report |
Cape Breton-Canso | Cape Breton-Antigonish | Cape Breton-Canso-Antigonish |
Central Nova | Pictou-Eastern Shore-Preston | Pictou-Eastern Shore |
Cumberland-Colchester | Cumberland-Colchester | Cumberland-Colchester |
Dartmouth-Cole Harbour | Dartmouth-Cole Harbour | Dartmouth-Cole Harbour |
Halifax | Halifax | Halifax |
Halifax West | Halifax West | Halifax West |
Kings-Hants | Kings-Hants | Kings-Hants |
Sackville-Preston-Chezzetcook | Shubenacadie-Bedford Basin | Sackville-Bedford-Preston |
South Shore-St. Margarets | South Shore-St. Margarets | South Shore-St. Margarets |
Sydney-Victoria | Sydney-Victoria | Sydney-Glace Bay |
West Nova | Acadian Shore-Shelburne | Acadie-Annapolis |
Political Impact
Since this map didn't have many border changes no ridings change hands. The following chart represents what % the winner would get in each seat with the borders from the original proposal and the final report
I plan on doing more of these as more provinces release their reports. The next step after this will be rejections from MPs. When it comes to Nova Scotia I highly doubt there will be any objections and if there are I imagine they will be very minor so it's very possible we're looking at the final map of Nova Scotia. If you want to request full results for an individual riding or have questions you can contact me anywhere here:
Discord (CanadaPolling#4020)
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