Riveting Canadian election discussion.

Whilst I'm completely interested in this thread, I can't help but wonder two little things. Is voting compulsory in Canada? And according to a site mentioned earlier in this thread, Conservatives got 40% of the votes. How did they even get more than half ot the seats with that result?
Sorry, I don't know too much about foreign voting systems.

To the first - no, it's not compulsory. ~61% voted.
To the second - the seat goes to the majority of votes in that area. So for example (hits close to home, I voted in this riding)
Conservatives - 36%
Liberals - 33%
NDP - 26%
Green - 5%
This seat goes to the Conservative MP.


And what you can look at is the trend from last time, too.
Conservatives - (33%>36%) +3%
Liberals - (39%>33%) -6%
NDP - (18%>26%) +8%
Green - (10%>5%) -5%
The NDP picked up a lot of votes from Liberals and Green, but not enough to beat the conservatives.