OTTAWA—The Council of Canadians released polling data Tuesday that it claimed shows a “sophisticated, orchestrated” vote suppression effort in last spring’s federal election on behalf of the Conservative Party of Canada.

The group commissioned the polling firm EKOS Research Associates to survey ridings across Canada and to compare those where there were many calls that allegedly harassed or falsely directed people to the wrong voting station to ridings were there were no such reports.

Frank Graves, president of EKOS Research, said there appeared to be robo-calling “activity” across the country, but he compared 106 ridings where there were no reports of suspicious activity to seven ridings where there was a lot.

He said in those seven ridings — all won by Conservative candidates — his data show about 10 to 15 per cent of voters or about 30,000 to 50,000 people received deliberately misleading calls aimed at suppressing non-Conservative votes. The percentage of people who identified as non-Conservative voters rose sharply, up to 90 per cent, he said.

Graves said about 1.5 per cent of the voters targeted said they did not cast a vote as a result of the calls.

The Council of Canadians submitted the data as evidence in a Federal Court lawsuit calling for new elections, claiming that the outcome in three to seven ridings would have been different had the calls not occurred.

“The results are conclusive and shocking,” said Gary Neil, executive director of the council. “The fraudulent calling was widespread; tens of thousands of deceptive calls were made. It was targeted at individuals who were not supporting the Conservative Party and it had the desired effect…supporters of the Liberals, NDP and Greens were less likely to vote.”

The left-leaning citizen advocacy group, which says it is non-partisan and includes members who are Conservative supporters, believes the “vote suppression” effort was not the result of rogue Conservative activists, or inadvertent mistakes.

“It had to be approved by a senior campaign official, with access to a central database and authority to spend money,” said Neil. “We believe in all seven ridings there is sufficient …data to indicate that elections were stolen in those ridings.”

In response, the Conservative Party of Canada continued to cast the court challenge as “a transparent attempt to overturn certified election results simply because this activist group doesn’t like them.”

Fred DeLorey, spokesman for the Conservative Party of Canada, said the Council of Canadians has used NDP supporters in its efforts, and he dismissed pollster Graves as a Liberal supporter and an unreliable analyst.

“Frank Graves, who uses robo-calls to poll, is the same pollster who predicted an NDP government last year. And he is a Liberal-donor who advised his Grit friends that ‘they should invoke a culture war.’ I can’t believe anyone would ever take him seriously. But, as you know, we don’t comment on polls so I won’t say more.”

Graves shrugged off the accusations of partisanship at a news conference. He also admitted there are difficulties in trying to quantify and analyze data based on year-old memories of voters, or drawing conclusions about the “causal connection” between robo-calls and voting behaviour and electoral outcomes.

But he said the findings were statistically “significant” in all seven ridings and cannot be dismissed.

The Council of Canadians has asked the Federal Court to void the results of Conservative victories in the ridings of Don Valley East, Elmwood-Transcona, Nipissing-Tamiskaming, Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar, Vancouver Island North, Winnipeg South Centre and Yukon.

But Neil said he believes it is “absolutely possible” that there were more ridings where suspicious, harassing or deceptive calls affected the result.

Their list does not include Guelph where Liberal Frank Valeriote won but Elections Canada is investigating a complex scheme of “robo-calls” where voters were falsely misdirected, or Etobicoke Centre where the defeated Liberal candidate Borys Wrzesnewskyj is alleging political dirty tricks also led to his loss to Conservative MP Ted Opitz.