How to Read a Voting Record: Divisions, Party Discipline and Attendance
A member's voting record looks like the most direct evidence of what they stand for. It is useful, but only if you know what it records and what it leaves out. This article explains how votes happen in the House of Commons, what our data shows about party discipline in the current Parliament, and how to read the voting section of any profile.
Most decisions are never recorded by name
When the Speaker puts a question to the House, members first respond by voice. If there is no objection, the question is decided without anyone's name being attached. A recorded division only happens when enough members rise to demand one. The House then records each member's yea or nay by name, and those names are published in the Journals and on the House's open data.
So a voting record is not a record of every decision. It covers only the questions that were contested enough to force a division, which are usually second and third readings of significant bills, opposition day motions, budget and supply votes, and confidence matters. Many bills pass stages without a single recorded vote.
What the 45th Parliament's record shows
Our database holds 164 recorded divisions in the House of Commons between May 29, 2025 and June 18, 2026. Across them, members cast about 53,000 yea or nay ballots. For each division, we compared each member's ballot with the majority of their party caucus.
| Caucus | Yea/nay ballots | Ballots against own caucus majority | Divisions with any split |
|---|---|---|---|
| Liberal | 27,197 | 195 | 77 |
| Conservative | 21,680 | 18 | 5 |
| Bloc Québécois | 3,119 | 0 | 0 |
| NDP | 779 | 0 | 0 |
| Green | 161 | 0 | 0 |
Put together, at most 213 of roughly 53,000 party ballots, about 0.4 percent, went against the member's own caucus. The Bloc Québécois and NDP caucuses voted as blocs in every one of the 164 divisions.
One caveat matters here. We group ballots by each member's current party. A member who crossed the floor during the Parliament has their earlier votes, cast with their old party, compared with their new caucus, and those count as splits. So the Liberal figures in particular overstate dissent, and 0.4 percent is an upper bound. The real rate of MPs voting against their own party is lower.
Why party discipline is so strong in Canada
In a Westminster system, the government must keep the confidence of the House. Losing a vote on a budget or an explicit confidence motion can bring the government down, so the governing party treats many votes as tests of cohesion. Party whips tell members how the caucus is voting. Party leaders also have real leverage: they decide committee assignments and critic roles, and a leader can remove a member from caucus. Free votes, where members are released to vote their conscience, do happen, but they are uncommon and usually limited to moral questions.
The practical consequence for readers: for most MPs, an individual voting record mostly tells you which party they belong to. The informative entries are the exceptions, the rare divisions where a member broke from their caucus, and those are worth reading carefully.
Reading attendance fairly
Across those same 164 divisions, about 96 percent of the ballots we expected from members were cast. The remaining 4 percent were recorded as "didn't vote" or "paired." Our integrity score counts both as not taking part, and it is important to know why that is only a partial measure:
- Pairing is a formal agreement between two members on opposite sides not to vote, so that one can be away without changing the outcome. It is a courtesy the House relies on, not a dereliction.
- The Speaker does not vote except to break a tie, so the Speaker's attendance will always look near zero.
- Ministers travel for government business, and any member can be away for illness, family leave or constituency emergencies.
Low attendance is worth a question. It is not, on its own, an answer. When we calculate attendance for the score, we divide by every division held in the member's session only once we hold at least 20 of their ballots, so a partly loaded record is not mistaken for absenteeism.
How to read a profile's voting section
- Start with the divisions, not the totals. Each row names the question that was voted on and links to the bill where there is one. A "nay" on a motion to amend is very different from a "nay" on third reading.
- Look for splits. Divisions where the member voted differently from most of their caucus are rare and usually the most revealing entries.
- Check the question's wording. Opposition motions are often written to put members on the record on a specific phrasing. A vote against the motion is not always a vote against its apparent goal.
- Compare within a party. Use Compare to put two members of the same caucus side by side. Differences in attendance and splits mean more there than differences between parties.
Where the data comes from
Federal divisions come from the House of Commons' published division records, which we ingest in structured form through openparliament.ca, and each division carries a link to its source. Provincial legislatures publish in very different formats. Some, like Saskatchewan's, record divisions only as lists of names in the daily minutes. We parse each legislature's records separately and describe the gaps on our data coverage page. For how one of those parsers was built, see What Saskatchewan's 35 Recorded Divisions Show.