Teaching Yellow Dogs New Tricks

This is an interesting point by Stewart Prest at the Ottawa Citizen: Here’s an argument for Proportional Representation – the yellow dog effect. A yellow dog riding is what some call a ‘safe riding’ where the same party always wins the same seat election after election. More proportional voting would make most of these seats more competitive or at least give citizens multiple representatives.

I wonder if there is voter participation data on a per riding level that could let us see how much of the lack of low voter turnout is due to yellow dog ridings? I would assume voter turnout is much lower in a riding everyone knows won’t change hands. So nationally, how many of the people are sitting out of voting altogether are in those ridings?