We will be live-blogging the 2006 New Brunswick Election as results come in tonight. New Brunswick does not provide poll-by-poll results, nor up-to-the-minute results but provides results in 20-minute increments after the votes within a given district begin to be tallied. Stay tuned for coverage beginning at (we think) 8pm Atlantic time…

What to Watch For…
Several key ridings out of the 55 will determine the outcome of this tight election.
1. Bathurst
2. Fredericton-Lincoln
3. Fundy-River Valley
4. Miramichi-Bay du Vin
5. Moncton West
6. Quispamsis
7. Restigouche-la-Vallée
8. Southwest Miramichi
9. Tracadie-Sheila
10. Woodstock

Keep an eye on these ridings…

RESULTS
8:20pm
The first results are beginning to come in Fredericton and Miramichi.
PC leads in 3.
Liberals lead in 2.

8:29pm
Overall:
PC - 49%, leading 7
LIB - 44%, leading 6
NDP - 6%, leading 0

Fredericton:
PC - 64%, leading 3
LIB - 27%, leading 1
NDP - 9%, leading 0

Miramichi:
LIB - 48%, leading 1
PC - 31%, leading 0
NDP - 21%, leading 0

Moncton:
PC - 46%, leading 2
LIB - 45%, leading 1
NDP - 9%, leading 0

Saint John:
LIB - 49%, leading 1
PC - 41%, leading 1
NDP - 8%, leading 0

(more…)

UPDATE:
We regret to inform our readers that we will not be covering the 2006 New Brunswick Election after all. For the past two weeks, we have tried to get from the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer a transposition of the 2003 results in their current riding configuration (the electoral districts have changed since 2003). Unfortunately, it appears that New Brunswick did not make that calculation when they changed their ridings (unlike, for example, Ontario, which has published such a transposition of votes (104 kb XLS file) since they are moving from 103 to 107 ridings for their upcoming election). As a result, any projection model that uses the old riding configurations would not accurately reflect the current state of affairs. We apologize for inconvenience. We would suggest that readers contact the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer to request that they publish a transposition of votes when making future changes to the ridings.

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In light of Bernard Lord’s election call in New Brunswick on Thursday (set for September 18), over the next week, DemocraticSPACE will launch its New Brunswick 2006 election coverage. So stay tuned here for riding-by-riding forums, polls and seat projections.