That urban/rural split, in full

In 2004, it was the "values voter." Now, it's the "urban-rural split." Media myths get spun about election results almost before the votes have been counted. Rempelia has been fuming about this, as have other bloggers. But Alert Reader Mark Collins has done the heavy number-crunching. Here's what he finds:

The media have been touting a supposed great urban/rural divide revealed in this election, with the Liberals dominating urban Canada and the Conservatives controlling the rural part of the country. It is true that the Conservatives predominate in rural areas. However it is a myth that the Liberals represent urban Canada. Elections Canada posts the election results for eleven major urban centres on its website: Calgary, Edmonton, Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, Quebec City, Regina, St. John's, Toronto, Vancover and Winnipeg. In these cities the Liberals won 42 seats and the Conservatives 36 (NDP 10, BQ 9). This slim Liberal lead is hardly an indicator of urban dominance. Even more striking is the popular vote count in these cities: Liberals 1,620,000, Conservatives 1,580,000. Almost the same. What does stand out is that the Liberals won 35 seats in the three largest cities -- which I would call metropolises -- Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. The Conservatives won none of these "metro" seats. Clearly there is no urban/rural divide in Canada. There is, on the other hand, a clear metro/Canada divide; the three metropolises are severely out of step with the rest of the country, urban and rural. Why might this be? I suspect a clue may lie in the fact that that some three-quarters of immigrants settle in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. The populations of Toronto and Vancouver are especially distinctive in comparison with other Canadian cities. The foreign-born percentage of the population in these two metropolises is 43.7 and 37.5 respectively according to the 2001 census (and will be even higher now). No other large Canadian city had a foreign-born percentage above 24.

He may or may not be right to attribute the difference to the immigrant vote. I'd say that was a subset of a larger phenomenon of cosmopolitanism. Big-city diversity has many faces: ethnicity, language, class, sexual orientation, etc. Tories have got to show they get this. (In particular, the sooner they put the gay marriage issue behind them the better.) But metro/Canada, rather than urban/rural: that's a meme that sticks. FURTHERMORE: A check of that Elections Canada page confirms that the Tories outpolled the Liberals in Quebec City, Ottawa, Regina, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton, and St. John's and won more seats than the Liberals in Halifax (the popular vote is a near-tie). Outside the three metropolises, the Tories won 33 seats to the Liberals 7. In our cities. In Canada. MAPQUEST: Elections Canada has a sensational election map (warning: 4.5MB pdf) to assist you in your obsessive microanalysis.