“Reckless, cavalier, dismissive, petty and vengeful”?: The impact of municipal constituency change on candidate diversity

Abstract

The demographic composition of electoral districts has an important influence on the identities of candidates because they affect the political opportunity structures of ethnic minorities and other marginalized groups. The 2018 municipal election in Toronto, Canada provides a unique opportunity to examine how changes to electoral districts impacted the participation of visible minority candidates. At the end of the initial nomination period, the right-wing populist provincial government of Doug Ford reduced the number of city council wards from 47 to 25, which also affected the boundaries of school board districts. Candidates and aspirants then had the opportunity to re-register in the new constituencies. This change constitutes a natural experiment that allows us to isolate the impact of district structure on the relationship between demographics and candidate ethnicity. Using logistic and Poisson regression modeling, we compare the proportion and number of Visible Minority and White candidates before and after consolidation. Contra expectations, we did not find any effect on minority candidates, but show some evidence that consolidation reduced opportunities for Whites. We trace this unexpected finding to the geographic patterns of ethnic settlement.