Data Sources & Usage

VoteTracker doesn't produce any election result itself — every number shown comes from open data published by Élections Québec, Elections Canada, Elections Alberta, or Elections BC. This page documents exactly where each piece of data comes from, and what it actually means.

Live election night (Quebec)

Live results for a Quebec general election come from Élections Québec's own open-data feed (donnees.electionsquebec.qc.ca), polled roughly every two minutes during the 48-hour window around election day.

Seats shown as "Elected" or "Leading" reflect the count so far only — that's our own projection (see the "Projected" / "Leaning" badges on each district), not an official result. Results aren't official until counting is complete and validated by Élections Québec.

Past Quebec elections and referendums

General elections from 1973 through 2022, plus the 1980 and 1995 referendums, come from Élections Québec's own historical statistics (by district, by candidate). A handful of older years and the 2012 vote needed a one-time conversion from a different source format than today's live feed, but the totals match what Élections Québec itself published.

District boundaries have changed several times since 1973. The lineage shown on each district (created from, split into, renamed…) is reconstructed from official names and a short list of known renames — it's a reconstruction, not data Élections Québec publishes as such itself.

Canadian federal elections

VoteTracker now covers every federal general election from 2006 through 2025 (2006, 2008, 2011, 2015, 2019, 2021, 2025), built from Elections Canada's own open poll-by-poll results — one file per riding. For each election, the winning candidate our own tally computes from those files was checked against Elections Canada's own "Elected Candidate Indicator" for every single riding before going live: the two agree everywhere.

Federal riding boundaries also come from Elections Canada — the 2003 map (in force for 2006, 2008 and 2011), the 2013 map (2015, 2019, 2021) and the 2023 map (2025) — simplified for the web and clipped to the coastline using Statistics Canada's own province/territory boundaries, so the coast stays consistent map to map.

Alberta general election and referendum

The May 29, 2023 general election comes from Elections Alberta's own open results (officialresults.elections.ab.ca): one file per electoral division giving each candidate's name and their count by voting location, cross-checked against the province-wide composite file (party totals) before going live. The three by-elections held since (December 2024, June 2025, September 2026) come from the same source.

Alberta's ten-question referendum on October 19, 2026 is tracked live from Elections Alberta's own results API (results.elections.ab.ca), polled on every update for all ten questions and all 87 electoral divisions at once. Elections Alberta doesn't publish a per-division "official result" indicator during the night (unlike Élections Québec) — the "Elected" / "Leading" statuses shown stay entirely our own projection until final validation.

The electoral map used (2019, in force since Bill 33 of 2017) comes from Elections Alberta's own boundary files.

British Columbia general elections

The October 19, 2024 general election comes from Elections BC's own open results-by-voting- place file (provincial_voting_results_by_voting_place.csv). The October 24, 2026 general election is tracked live from Elections BC's own election-night results site ("Event Night Reporting", results.elections.bc.ca), a page Elections BC itself regenerates and that's polled on the same cadence (roughly every three minutes). As with Alberta, the "Elected" / "Leading" statuses shown on election night are our own projection, not an official Elections BC result.

The electoral map used (2023, 93 districts) comes from the BC Data Catalogue.

Maps & regions

• 2026 provincial district boundaries (Quebec): Élections Québec's own boundary file.
• Quebec administrative regions: the BDAt dataset (Base de données administratives et topographiques), Ministère de l'Énergie et des Ressources naturelles.
• Federal riding boundaries: Elections Canada's own boundary files (see above).
• Alberta electoral divisions (2019): Elections Alberta's own boundary files.
• British Columbia electoral districts (2023): the BC Data Catalogue.
• British Columbia regions: the 8 official "Development Regions", grouping the BC Data Catalogue's own regional districts.
• Quebec, Canada, Alberta and British Columbia outlines, land/water mask: Statistics Canada's own province/territory boundaries.

What VoteTracker adds on top

Seat projections, majority math, swing-vs-previous-election figures, and the analysis views (turnout, swing, referendum alignment) are VoteTracker's own computation on top of the raw count — never published as such by the source electoral body (Élections Québec, Elections Canada, Elections Alberta, or Elections BC) — and are always labelled as our own projection, not an official result.

Licence

Contains open data granted under the Chief Electoral Officer's Open Data User Licence available at dgeq.org/en. The fact of granting the licence in no way implies that the Chief Electoral Officer approves the use made of the open data.

Accuracy

This data is provided for informational purposes. VoteTracker makes a reasonable effort to keep it accurate and current but doesn't guarantee it — see our terms of service. For an official result, always check directly with the electoral body for that jurisdiction (Élections Québec, Elections Canada, Elections Alberta, or Elections BC).

Contact

Questions about a source or figure: via paulcote.net.