More Elections, Same Effects? Boundary Responsiveness Across Five Canadian Federal Elections

Canadian Political Science Association Conference (2026)


Abstract

While previous work demonstrated that alternative allowable boundary configurations could yield different governments from the same vote distribution in a single election (Cochrane & Cowan, 2026), this paper extends the Markov Riding Position Sampler (MaRiPoSa) algorithm to analyze multiple Canadian federal elections (2011–2025).


We find that there are alternative, allowable configurations of electoral district boundaries that would return different party outcomes and different governments for Canadians, without changing the votes or locations of any voters across each election. We highlight specific boundaries of these alternative districts in locales across Canada. We conclude by discussing what computational analysis of district boundaries can contribute to Canadian political science and the democratic process at both the federal and provincial levels.

Authors

Mike Cowan, Chris Greenaway, Christopher Cochrane

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