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This paper examines public opinion towards the restriction or expansion of immigration in Canada, using data from the 2000 Canadian Election Study (CES). The paper is largely modeled on Citrin, et al (1997)’s "Public Opinion Towards Immigration Reform: The Role of Economic Motivations," although we make a methodological improvement that increases both the confidence of our results and our understanding of what drives not only opposition to immigration, but also for more immigration. In addition, we find that the variables explaining restrictionist opinions in the United States do not hold cross-nationally. Our methodological improvement is simple. Rather than using an ordered probit, we choose to use a multinomial logit. Because our three choices are exhaustive, we do not have to consider the irrelevance of independent alternatives. Thus, we can harness the principal advantage of the multinomial logit; namely, the independent measurement of the effect of each variable on each outcome. The model we use includes approximately 1200 respondents. Our initial results find that both personal and national economic evaluations are the principal factors causing opposition to immigration. This last significant result contradicts the American findings of Citrin et al. according to which personal economic circumstances play little role in opinion formation. In addition to challenging their main finding in regards to restriction, we generate a number of new findings on the factors influencing support for increased immigration. Most importantly, we demonstrate that these factors are not entirely symmetrical with the factors influencing support for decrease in immigration levels. Indeed, we find that national economic evaluations have much effect on support for decreased immigration, whereas it does not bear on support for increased immigration. Therefore our results demonstrate the value of employing a multinomial logit instead of an ordered probit in understanding public opinion towards immigration expansion or restriction. Moreover, the differences in significance of predictor variables between support for increase and decrease demonstrates that there can be various simultaneous processes at work in opinion formation on a single issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large and growing body of research demonstrates a correspondence between public opinion and policy behavior. Almost all of this research has focused on the US, however. Do similar patterns obtain in other countries? Or is the US unique? This paper represents one step towards answering these questions. We extend previous research on the dynamics of spending preferences and budgetary policy in the US, using comparable longitudinal measures of public preferences and government spending in the US, UK, and Canada. The nature and magnitude of opinion-policy connections vary across both policy functions and countries. We explore this variance here, and suggest several possible explanations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines homogeneity and heterogeneity in preferences for public policy, across income and education levels and party identification, and across policy domains in the US, UK and Canada. Do preferences differ across segments of the public at particular points in time? What about over time - do we observe a uniform swing across different groups (parallel publics), or does the flow of opinion differ across party, income, and education? Our data on public preferences for government spending show cross-sectional heterogeneity across sub-aggregates, but very high levels of over-time homogeneity in trends across subgroups. The structure of preference change across subgroups is fairly similar; most notably, thermostatic responsiveness to policy holds generally across the subgroups. This is especially true for broad domestic aggregates of opinion and policy. There still are some differences in feedback, particularly across education levels, as the highly educated are significantly more responsive to spending change over time. People with low and middling levels of education still do change their preferences for spending in response to what policymakers do, just to a lesser extent, at least in certain policy domains. This fits with the large and growing literature that demonstrates real differences owing to information levels. There also are significant differences across partisan subgroupings in various domains. The implications of these findings are considered in the concluding section. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines homogeneity and heterogeneity in preferences for public policy, across income and education levels, and party identification, and across policy domains in the US, UK and Canada. Do preferences differ across segments of the public at particular points in time? What about over time - do we observe a uniform swing across different groups (parallel publics), or does the flow of opinion differ across party, income, and education? Our data on public preferences for government spending show systematic cross-sectional differences across sub-aggregates, but a fair degree of homogeneity in trends over time. Some longitudinal heterogeneity does exist, however, and we exploit these differences in dynamic models of the effects of public preferences - across income levels - on government spending in the US and Canada. Results point to some interesting, seemingly important differences in the representation of income groups across policy domains and countries. Perhaps most importantly, in contrast with the existing literature, we find that policymakers do not consistently follow the preferences of wealthiest citizens. If anything, the preferences of the middle class matter most, though there are differences across policy domains. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines relationships between constituency characteristics and individual legislators' behavior in a parliamentary system, drawing on an exhaustive dataset of over 43,000 oral questions in the Canadian House of Commons (from 1983 to 2004), combined with data on constituency-level demographics and electoral outcomes. In doing so, it applies some of the theories developed in the US roll call voting literature to another country, and another policy venue (Question Period). Analyses use both demographics and voting as proxies for constituency policy preferences. Both approaches yield evidence of dyadic representation, an important finding given the party-focused tone of the existing Canadian literature. Models using electoral results also provide evidence that 'electoral pressure' increases MPs' representation of constituency preferences. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

The article investigates the opinion-policy relationship in Canada using the qualitative method. Surveys in Canada are increasingly consciously written for public release, results are invoked rhetorically to suggest that the public is on-side with a given direction, and are used internally as part of the argumentation to further particular agenda.