What I did was take the population of Canada, which is 33,476,688 according to the 2011 census, the number of Canadians who actually voted, which was around 14,823,408 according to Elections Canada, and the percent of those who voted for the Conservative Party (39.6%).
The result, out of all the population in Canada in 2011, only about 17.5% of them casted their ballot for the Conservative Party of Canada. Now, a lot of the residents in Canada don’t have the right to vote, so they’re not traditionally counted – only those on the electors list do, which comes in at 24,257,592 for 2011 according to Elections Canada.
But why not count all of those in Canada? Indeed, they don’t have the franchise, but they’re affected nonetheless by the government in power.
And, the figure of 17.5% of the population getting to decide the direction of the country for the 100% is a little bit daunting. Though, I have a feeling “democracy” being controlled by a minority has always been the case.
The figures:
33,476,688 population of Canada according to the 2011 census
24,257,592 electors of Canada – which is 72.4 percent of the population
14,823,408 electors who voted – which is 52.8 or 61.1 as Elections Canada claims
39.6 percent voted for Conservatives – which means 5,870,069 Canadians voted for them.
5,870,069 divided by 33,476,688 times 100 equals, roughly, 17.5%