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Most analyses of electoral support of third parties consider the correlates of this support at election time. Existing explanations of support for smaller third parties focus on voter distrust of/alienation from major parties, lack of/declining identification with a major party and the strategic calculations voters who fail to vote sincerely. The focus on election time support of third parties can mask theoretically interesting and important dynamics that may characterize trends in support for such parties between elections. This paper develops a dynamic model of electoral support for the New Democratic Party (NDP): a small, ideological third party in Canada. Espousing a social democratic ethos, the NDP serves as a classic example of a small, ideologically-committed third party.The analysis considers the extent to which two types of factors explain trends in electoral support for the NDP: economic conditions and strategic calculations. The economic voting literature finds that incumbent support is influenced by economic conditions in a reward-punishment fashion. While deteriorating economic conditions may undermine incumbent support, it may also be the case that these same conditions strengthen support for small, non-governing parties such as the NDP. In particular, because the NDP is a left-wing party, it is expected that support will be prominently influenced by changes in the unemployment rate. Secondly, a variation of the strategic vote theorem is considered. Specifically, the hypothesis is that NDP support is a function of time elapsed from the previous federal election and expected time to the next federal election. As a result, it is expected that NDP support will be greatest at the projected midpoint between federal elections because the costs of expressing a sincere electoral preference are lowest at this point.The proposed paper develops a time series analysis using quarterly economic and vote intention data from 1977-2001. Results indicate support for both of the central propositions of the paper. Findings will be discussed in light of contributions to comparatively understanding electoral support for third parties. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early studies of Canadian partisanship argued that the concept of partisan identification, as understood in the U.S., does not apply to the study of Canada. This began a debate about whether partisan identification in Canada was similar to the type of attachment held by Americans. Throughout this debate, the role of political parties in influencing the nature of their partisans has been only modestly studied. Other than arguing that weak partisanship is the result of institutional arrangements or the brokerage style of the parties, studies of partisanship have not considered whether the nature of the identification varies between the parties. In other words, do some parties encourage American-style partisanship and others something else? The connection between parties and partisans is of particular interest given the changes that occurred in the Canadian party system since 1993. Not only do the current parties vary in age, reputation and focus, but they also differ in terms of their ideological intensity. This paper addresses the characteristics of partisanship in the various parties of the Canadian party system since 1993. Is Canadian partisanship uniform, or does it vary by party? Are certain partisans more loyal, more intense, and more stable? Do these characteristics vary systematically by party? This paper tackles these questions using data from the Canadian Election Studies of 1988-2006. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existence of economic effects on the vote is a commonplace, but the stability of the effect across space and time is not. Particularly intriguing is the possibility that a major effect of campaigns is to prime the economy, and so increase its salience as election day approaches. The body of evidence for this claim is small, only weakly specified, and is already controverted. The paper approaches this question by examing the ten rolling cross-sectional election surveys conducted in Canada, Great Britain, New Zealand and the United States since 1988. The basic approach centres on an examination of over-time changes in the impact of economic retrospections on vote choice over the course of each election, The theoretical stakes in the analysis are considerable. Economic priming is presented as a case in point for elections as mainly enlightening events, so the paper will assess the generality of the enlightenment claim. Microfoundations for economic voting remain understudied in general, a shortfall that this paper addresses by introducing real time. This attention to over-time dynamics combined with the variety in electoral settings should also help elucidate the institutional conditions for economic voting. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines attitudes toward policies intended to enhance the political rights and representation of indigenous populations. The analysis is based on a parallel set of questions about the under-representation and the expansion of rights for minority groups that were asked of populations in three countries. Election studies administered in Australia, Canada and New Zealand asked respondents a series of questions regarding support for government assistance for aborigines, self-government, and guaranteed representation. We examine several explanations for variations in the support of majority populations for these policies. Specifically, we examine how perceptions of threat, values such as post-materialism and personal identity structure preferences for the expansion of rights. The paper ends with a discussion of the implications of the results for building support for expansion of political rights for indigenes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I provide an initial descriptive account of the characteristics and policy attitudes of the supporters and swing voters of the major federal political parties and the position taking of the parties with respect to these groups. In particular, I ask: (1) who are these core supporters and swing voters? (2) what kinds of policies do they want? and (3) what policy positions do the parties take relative to these groups? Drawing on a pooled dataset of the 2004, 2006, and 2008 Canadian Election Studies and the voting records of the party leaders in House of Commons roll calls over the same period, I find that while swing voters in general (as well as the swing voters associated with each party) tend to largely reflect the characteristics of the broader adult population, the core supports of each party often differ substantially from the mass public. I also find that, on several selected salient policy debates during this period, the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party, and the Bloc Québécois often faced tension between the policy preferences of their respective core supporters and swing voters, although these differences - with the partial exception of the Conservative Party - were typically modest in scope. In virtually all situations in which a party's core supporters and its swing voters noticeably differed, I find that party's leader favored the aggregate position of its core supports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Conservative majority government produced by the 2011 federal election came as something of a surprise, although the potential for such as outcome was always present. Achieved with just 39.6% of the total vote (the second smallest in Canadian history), the Conservative victory was nevertheless a convincing one. Adding a net gain of 21 seats in Ontario to its strong base in the West, the Harper Conservatives benefitted both from the collapse of the Liberals and the splitting of votes between opposition parties as the NDP surged. Only in Quebec, where they lost four seats (including three Cabinet ministers) and saw their total vote reduced to 16.5% did the Conservatives experience any decline from the vote share that the party had obtained in the two previous elections (Table 1). The question therefore to be addressed in this paper is whether the 2011 outcome represents merely another election victory for the Harper Conservatives or the establishment of a "Harper Dynasty." We will argue that the conditions for the latter interpretation have already been met. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a research paper which focuses on the impact of individual candidates on the results of the general elections and the formation of government in Canada. It focuses on the impact of constituency campaigns on the outcome of elections, and how a candidate affects the campaign and his party's fundraising abilities in his constituency.

This paper develops a theory of strategic issue framing in electoral campaigns. Unlike issue priming theory, our theory argues that in many elections parties face pressures to address the same issues. As a consequence, parties battle during campaigns to increase the popular appeal of their preferred frames. These mediated frames, in certain circumstances, contribute to modify voters' perceptions of party leaders and voting decision. The theory is tested with data from the 2000 Canadian federal election. Content analyses of party campaign material and media coverage demonstrate how the incumbent Liberals successfully framed the healthcare issue to undermine the credibility of the official opposition. Statistical analyses show that the Liberal framing strategy contributed to significantly alter the election results. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACTThe paper examines Canadians' views about minority governments, using the 2006 Canadian Election Study. A plurality of Canadian voters thinks that minority governments are a good thing, a substantial change of mind compared to the 60s and 70s. As expected Liberal and Conservative identifiers are more prone to dislike minority governments while NDP and Bloc partisans are more inclined to like them. The better informed are more likely to have an opinion but being more informed does not lead in one particular direction. Liking or disliking minority governments does not seem to have any independent effect on vote choice. Satisfaction with democracy increased slightly more after the election among those who like minority governments. The effect is weak and confined to the most sophisticated fraction of the electorate. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a notable secular decline in turnout in Canada in recent elections, but there has been little research to date on the partisan consequences of that decline. In this paper, we simulate various turnout rates in the 1997 Canadian national election in Quebec and the rest of Canada based on probabilities derived from multinomial logit estimates. In Quebec, higher turnout is associated with greater support for the Bloc Quebecois and weaker support for the Liberals. In the rest of Canada, higher turnout is associated with greater support for the Liberals and weaker support for Reform. Support for the NDP and the Progressive Conservatives is not significantly affected across broad ranges in turnout rates. We interpret these results as support for the conventional wisdom of turnout’s effects on partisan outcomes, and believe that our methodology offers the opportunity to investigate the probable effect of turnout on partisan outcomes in a variety of electoral contexts where survey data are available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses data from the Canadian Election Studies to analyze the evolution of gender gaps in vote choice since 1965. It shows that a ‘modern gender gap’ has emerged in Canada, not because women have been moving to the left, but because women have been less likely than men to move away from the left. It then goes on to determine whether the changing nature of the gender gap in NDP voting can be explained by structural and situational changes in women’s–and men’s–lives. It concludes that these changes can provide only a very partial explanation of the process of gender realignment in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the patterns of voting of respondents in Canada according to the importance they give to voting in four different kinds of elections including federal elections, provincial elections and local elections. It states that the pattern of voting behavior over elections shows the predominance of those who are consistent in their behaviour.

This research is mostly interested in issue effect on vote choice. The same-sex marriage issue is used as a key element for both the 2004 and 2006 Canadian Elections, and we answer principally to three empirical questions: how many voted because of this issue? What has been the impact of this issue on parties? Do other issues were more important? In order to demonstrate the effect of same-sex marriage on Canadian vote choice, we use the Canadian electoral study data for 2004 and 2006. Multinomial analyses allow us to conclude that even if same-sex marriage has influenced vote choice, the result of the election would have been unchanged without this issue. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine voters' perceptions and evaluations of the Prime Minister's role in a major scandal, the "sponsorship scandal" that erupted in Canada in February 2004. We use the campaign waves of the 2004 and 2006 Canadian Election Studies (CES) and we focus on panel respondents who were interviewed in both waves. We analyze their perceptions of the Prime Minister's knowledge of the affair and their assessments of his handling of the issue and we ascertain how predispositions and level of information affected voters' reactions. We show that party identification strongly shaped voters' evaluations, and that the effect endured over two elections and was mostly direct, that is, largely unmediated by perceptions. There was little difference between the better and the less informed in 2004 but by 2006 the better informed were more prone to revisit their initial harsh judgments and to believe that the PM might have been unaware of the wrongdoing and had done a good job of dealing with the issue. Evaluations of the PM's performance were strongly influenced by perceptions of his awareness of the affair. Finally the verdict of the Commission of inquiry (that the PM should be exonerated from any blame) had only a marginal impact on voters' perceptions and judgments. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a proposal of a simple and direct test of the Receive-Accept-Sample (RAS) model. It deals with the 1988 Canadian election, which was fought over one central issue, which is the Free Trade Accord with the U.S. It focuses on the influential theory of opinion formation, formulated by John Zaller in 1992.

The article examines the reactions of voters to a corruption scandal that emerged just before the 2004 election in Canada. It summarizes the Canadian sponsorship scandal that emerged in February 2004. It discusses the results of the 2004 Canadian Election Study (CES). It explores the views on the amount of corruption to the level of political awareness, party identification, cynicism and socio-demographic characteristics.

We analyze the occurrence and frequency of election night corruption by examining the victory margins of races in Japan, Canada, and the United States. If election night corruption (the adjusting of vote totals late on election night when it is known how many votes are enought to secure a victory) occurs, we expect to see anomalous numbers of ultra close races. Our hypothesis is that election night corruption will be less likely in Canada and Japan because of the lesser levels of overall political corruption in Canada and the centralization and independence of the election bureaucracy in Japan. However, we find statistically significant evidence of election night corrution in both the United States and Canada. We also find that the net effect of the corruption benefits the Liberal Party in Canada and the Democratic Party in the United States. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the 1997 Canadian Election Study, we illustrate four different ways that a rolling cross-section can be used to assess the impact of media coverage on leader evaluations: first, a simple graphical analysis that compares trends in the balance of media coverage and average ratings of the leaders; secondly, a panel analysis and an end-of-campaign analysis of the impact of media attention on leader evaluations; third, a time-series analysis of the relationship between the tone of media coverage and mean leader evaluations; and, fourthly, individual-level analyses of the same relationship during the campaign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The study identifies the factors associated with the nomination and election prospects of white ethnic and visible minority candidates in three Canadian elections held between 1993 and 2000. Bivariate and multivariate statistical analyses identified how party affiliation, the geographic location of a riding, incumbency, local party competitiveness, riding cultural heterogeneity, campaign spending, minority competition, and a candidate’s racial or ethnic background influenced electoral outcomes for 3,634 candidates. Interviews were also conducted with minority politicians representing the five main parties, in order to delineate how party gatekeepers, access to campaign funds and volunteers and media coverage of their local campaigns, influenced their prospects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of polls on perceptions of the race, preferences, and vote choice under three different electoral systems: pure plurality (Canada), pure PR (the Netherlands), and a mixed member proportional system with a threshold (New Zealand). We test the hypothesis that poll effects are greatest in Canada, where the incentives for strategic voting are strongest, and smallest in the Netherlands, where the incentives are weakest. The data come from the 1997 Canadian Election Study (CES), the 1998 Dutch Election Study (DES), and the 1999 New Zealand Election Study (NZES). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the performances of political parties in the 2008 general elections in Canada, and analyzes the election results. It focuses on the victory of the governing Conservative Party, led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and how the election of Stephane Dion as leader of the Liberal Party at the end of 2006 helped in the victory of Harper. It focuses on the changes in the vote share and seat counts of different parties including Conservative, Liberal and New Democratic Party.