Data & sources
Everything here is rebuilt from public files by a handful of Python scripts (standard library only). This page lists the files, their licences, and the judgment calls.
Municipal results
| Years | Source | Covers | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1996–2025 | City of Vancouver Open Data — Municipal election results | Official results by voting division / place for every general election, the 2017 and 2025 by-elections, the 2003 Olympic and 2004 wards plebiscites, and capital-plan questions. The 1996 file has no party column; parties for 1996 were joined by name from the sources below. | Open Government Licence – Vancouver |
| 1886–1993 | Canadian Municipal Elections Database (Lucas et al., Canadian Municipal Barometer) | Mayor and council candidates, votes, elected flags and party labels (1936→), digitised from Wayne Madden’s Vancouver’s Elected Representatives and the City of Vancouver Archives’ election scrapbooks (Series S37). Ward-level for 1886–1935. | CC0 1.0 |
| 1980–1993 | Wikipedia: 1990 and 1993 Vancouver municipal election, Vancouver School Board | Park board and school board results for 1990 and 1993; school board composition 1980–1988 (including the 1985 dismissal and 1986 special election). | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
| 1886–2011 | City of Vancouver, City of Vancouver Councils dating back to 1886 (PDF) | Who actually sat on each council. Used for council composition before 1966, when half the seats were elected each year. | City of Vancouver |
| 1886–2026 | Wikipedia: List of mayors of Vancouver, Vancouver City Council, Vancouver Park Board, 2026 Vancouver municipal election | Mayoral terms and early mayors’ provincial-party leanings; post-election changes of affiliation; 2026 declared candidates. | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
| 2026 | City of Vancouver — 2026 candidates and the 18 September ballot-order release, as transcribed by Daily Hive | The final list of 130 candidates with official ballot numbers. The mayoral list is verified against the City’s own page (12 September capture) and the park board list against a 15 September capture of the City page; the City’s councillor and trustee pages block archiving, so those two rest on the transcription. Biographies from Wikipedia. | City of Vancouver; Daily Hive |
| 1968–1993 | Paul Tennant, “Vancouver Civic Politics, 1929–1980”, BC Studies 46 (1980); Wikipedia infoboxes | Turnout figures for 1968, 1972, 1974, 1978 and 1993, shown as reported. | Quoted figures |
| 1891–2021 | Statistics Canada censuses | City of Vancouver population, interpolated between censuses for the participation proxy. | Statistics Canada Open Licence |
Provincial and federal
| Years | Source | Covers | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2005–2024 | Elections BC — Provincial Voting Results (BC Data Catalogue) | Every candidate in every Vancouver riding, general elections and by-elections, aggregated from voting areas / voting places. | Elections BC Open Data Licence |
| 2004–2025 | Elections Canada — official voting results, tables 11 & 12 | Every candidate, electors, ballots and turnout for ridings named “Vancouver …”, 38th–45th general elections. | Elections Canada open data |
Parties and colours
Labels are normalised across sources (the City wrote “VV”, “Vision”, and “Vision Vancouver” in different years). Colours are assigned per party and never change with rank; the set was checked with a colour-vision-deficiency validator for the party pairs that actually sit next to each other in each era. Two amber parties never overlap in time (TEAM, 1968–1986, and TEAM for a Livable Vancouver, 2021–), nor do the two purple ones (the Civic Voters Association of the 1940s–50s and the civic NDP).
- NPA Non-Partisan Association · 1937–
- CVA Civic Voters Association · 1940–1955
- CCF Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (civic) · 1933–1961
- CAA Civic Action Association · 1965–1968
- TEAM The Electors' Action Movement · 1968–1986
- Vision Vision Vancouver · 2005–2024
- Green Green Party of Vancouver · 1984–
- OneCity OneCity Vancouver · 2014–
- Civic NDP Civic New Democrats / NDP · 1961–
- COPE Coalition of Progressive Electors · 1968–
- TEAM (2021) TEAM for a Livable Vancouver · 2021–
- ABC ABC Vancouver · 2021–
- Vote Vancouver Vote Vancouver · 2025–
- Vancouver Liberals Vancouver Liberals · 2025–
- Forward Together Forward Together · 2022–2024
- Progress Progress Vancouver (formerly YES Vancouver) · 2018–2023
- Coalition Coalition Vancouver · 2018–2018
- Vancouver 1st Vancouver 1st · 2013–2018
- NSV Neighbourhoods for a Sustainable Vancouver · 2007–2021
- Bright Future Bright Future Vancouver · 2026–
- TrueBlue TrueBlue Vancouver · 2026–
- Independent Parks Vancouver Independent Parks Party · 2026–
- Labour Labour / Independent Labour · 1900–1970
- Independent Independent
- Other Other
Judgment calls
- People are matched by first and last name across elections for the “who ran” index. Middle names, initials and accents are ignored. A shared name can merge two people; a change of name can split one.
- Council composition before 1966 is the roster of who sat (City PDF), with each member’s party taken from their most recent election in the database. Nineteen members in 1937–1965 could not be matched and are shown as independents.
- From 1966 the timeline shows the slate elected at each general election, then adjusted for the 1992, 2017 and 2025 by-elections and for documented changes of affiliation (dates from Wikipedia’s council and park board articles).
- 1996 park and school board affiliations are not in the City file and no digitised source lists them; the NPA’s clean sweep of both boards is labelled from the board composition tables and the other candidates are left unlabelled.
- Turnout is ballots cast over registered voters, using the City’s stated figure where one exists. Where only ballots are known, the site shows ballots per hundred residents instead and says so.
- Early mayors who ran as Liberals or Conservatives in the provincial sense are shown as “Other” with that label; the first civic party proper is the CCF in the 1930s.
Known gaps
- Park board results before 1990 and school board results before 1980 (available on paper at the City Archives).
- Registered-voter counts before 1999, hence official turnout.
- Per-voting-place maps (the 1996→ data is kept and ready), candidate spending, and provincial results before 2005.
Corrections welcome — jessecrayston.com. The code and data live in the vancouverstats-elections repository; see the overview for the other sections.