Realistic Group Conflict and Voting for the 2002 Aboriginal Treaty Negotiations Referendum in British Columbia.

Although Indigenous peoples constitute one of the most socially, economically, and politically marginalized groups in the world, relatively few quantitative social scientists have studied the broader public's views of this ethnicity globally or in Canada. To help isolate the roots of such attitudes, this research note investigates why ordinary British Columbians decided 1. to vote in; and 2. to vote "yes" on the controversial 2002 Aboriginal Treaty Negotiations Referendum. The essay examines the theoretical literature on attitudes toward ethnic minorities in the abstract, which suggests that support for the measure might have been rooted in various forms of realistic group conflict. To evaluate this theory, the research note next examines data from the April 2002 BC Reid Express Poll as well as official census and voting results. Cross-tabulations of the Reid Poll and Gary King-method ecological-inference analysis of the election statistics indicate that regional and ethnic differences but not individual economic circumstances seem to have motivated much of the conflict over this measure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]