Canadian Federal Election Research Articles

Is Incumbency Advantage Gendered?

Do incumbents have an electoral advantage and if so, do these advantages differ across gender? In this study, I estimate the electoral advantages enjoyed by incumbents in 10 Canadian federal elections, across 3059 ridings, from 1990 to 2021. Using a regression discontinuity design, I compare men and women who have very narrowly won or lost elections on three different indicators: propensity to run again, probability of winning the next election, and vote share. I find that women incumbents are just as likely to run again in subsequent elections as men incumbents. However, women who lose an election appear to be more likely to quit politics compared to men who lose an election. I do not find clear incumbency effects for probability of winning at the next election and vote share.

How Much of Electoral Politics Is in the District? Measuring District Effects on Party Support

AbstractThe electoral district is the fundamental unit of representation in single- and multi-member electoral systems, yet most research shows little interest in district effects on election outcomes, focusing instead on national and individual factors. This is problematic as parties and candidates often put a great deal of effort into district-based campaigns. How, then, can we best capture district effects on party support? We propose a new method using official election returns and geospatial techniques. The result is a measure of how much of a party's vote share is explained by district effects. Using data from the 2006–2019 Canadian federal elections, we find that, on average, 6 to 10 per cent of the variation in a party's vote in Canada is explained by district effects. While district effects on party support are trivial for some districts, in others they account for more than 80 per cent of the variance in party vote shares. The effect of districts on party support is composed, in part, of electoral context, province, socio-economic factors and district campaign intensity. Importantly, the size and sources of district effects on party support vary across parties, suggesting heterogeneity. The benefits of our approach are threefold: (1) it is cost-effective, (2) it can be easily replicated in any setting—past or present—where districts are relevant electoral units and where districting is nonpartisan, and (3) it is responsive to differences in district composition and parties’ campaign effort.

“Les gens qui vous ressemblent”: Discursive Negotiation of Identity and Construction of Affiliation in the 2019 Canadian Federal Election Party Leader Debates

In the weeks leading up to the Canadian federal election, federal party leaders seek to appeal to a crucial part of the electorate - Québec voters, most of whom are of French-Canadian background - through a series of televised debates. As party leaders engage in discourse aimed at creating proximity with and enacting an affiliative stance toward these voters, the debates become a platform for discursive negotiation of Québec identity, in which identity stances and narratives are reflected, reproduced, and challenged. This study examines a corpus of party leaders’ discourse as these political actors interactively negotiate Québec identity during three party leader debates in the 2019 federal election. Following the theoretical framework of Critical Discourse Analysis, the inquiry discusses the following aspects of the party leaders’ discourse: discursive representation of Quebecers’ group identity and self-positioning with respect to that identity, use of symbolic lexis and references that signal attachment to the French-Canadian majority’s collective memory, and self-positioning with respect to the French language. In addition, the discussion addresses implications of the bilingual nature of political discourse in the Canadian context, focusing on party leaders’ use of code-switching and metapragmatic commentary. Crucially, the study’s conclusions suggest that a shared vision of Québec identity has not yet been widely ratified. While the party leaders’ discourse appears largely felicitous with the inclusive, civic vision of Québec identity, the study’s findings point to continued primacy of the French-Canadian fact in its current conceptualization.

Political Crowdfunding and Campaigning on GoFundMe

Background: What does the Canadian use of GoFundMe tell us about the role of non-party campaigners in contemporary election campaigning? Analysis: Within the context of the 2019 Canadian federal election, this article examines how GoFundMe has been used as a platform for fundraising by fringe and populist political voices online. Conclusion and implications: The crowdfunding platform GoFundMe has been leveraged to meet political goals both within and outside of traditional, party-centred, political fundraising setups. The mobilization of GoFundMe’s crowdfunding tools in the 2019 federal election presented an opportune space for the financialization of political goals reflecting right-wing populist ideas.

The Urban-Rural Divide in Canadian Federal Elections, 1896–2019

AbstractUsing a new measure of urbanity for every federal electoral district in Canada from 1896 to the present, this article describes the long-term development of the urban-rural divide in Canadian federal elections. We focus on three questions: (1)whenthe urban-rural divide has existed in Canada, identifying three main periods—the 1920s, the 1960s and 1993–present—in which the urban-rural cleavage has been especially important in federal elections; (2)wherethe urban-rural divide has existed, finding that in the postwar period the urban-rural cleavage is a pan-Canadian phenomenon; and (3)how wellurbanity predicts district-level election outcomes. We argue that the urban-rural divide is important for understanding election outcomes during several periods of Canadian political development, and never more so than in recent decades. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for research on urban-rural cleavages, Canadian electoral politics and Canadian political development.

Demand without Supply: Populist Attitudes without Salient Supply-Side Factors of Populism

AbstractPopulism's electoral success has been linked to socio-economic crises and to inflammatory political discourse. However, little is known of populist attitudes in contexts in which these supply-side factors are not salient. The present article diverges from the conception of populism that sees it as being activated or fuelled by contextual factors and, rather, conceives populism as an ideological attitudinal dimension that can have an impact on vote choice when supply-side factors are not salient. Using the particular context of the 2015 Canadian federal election as a case to test this theory, empirical analyses support this conception of populism by demonstrating that populist attitudes can be relatively prominent and even impact vote choice in a setting in which the traditional supply-side factors to activate or fuel populism are not salient. Ultimately, populism is shown to be an important demand-side attitudinal dimension even when there is little or no fertile ground for it.

Review 1 of "Information Trolls vs Democracy: An examination of disinformation content delivered during the 2019 Canadian Federal Election"

Review 1 of "Information Trolls vs Democracy: An examination of disinformation content delivered during the 2019 Canadian Federal Election"

Review 2 of "Information Trolls vs Democracy: An examination of disinformation content delivered during the 2019 Canadian Federal Election"

Review 2 of "Information Trolls vs Democracy: An examination of disinformation content delivered during the 2019 Canadian Federal Election"

Review 3 of "Information Trolls vs Democracy: An examination of disinformation content delivered during the 2019 Canadian Federal Election"

Review 3 of "Information Trolls vs Democracy: An examination of disinformation content delivered during the 2019 Canadian Federal Election"

Digital nativism: Twitter, migration discourse and the 2019 election

Given its significance for society’s character, future and identity, migration has dominated media discourse. At present, the ascendance of digital platforms which broaden opportunities to produce, share and access content online has ignited debates about migration’s discursive construction. Often approached as promoting tolerance and inclusivity, social media are also believed to unleash xenophobia and intergroup antagonism. Working with a cross-section of tweets from the 2019 Canadian Federal election, this article asks how was migration framed, which users influenced the flow and substance of discourse and did Twitter diverge from conventional media space? It finds, while chains of citizen-users overwhelmingly employed Twitter to distribute original content, anti-immigration communications and actors were disproportionately featured. Considering these results, this article introduces the concept of digital nativism to clarify how technical affordances, user intentions and wider socio-political conditions intersect to produce emergent patterns of anti-immigration discourse and mobilization that are participatory, interactive and broadly distributed.

A New Dataset on the Demographics of Canadian Federal Election Candidates

AbstractThis research note reports on a new effort to track candidate diversity in Canadian elections. The dataset covers 4,516 candidates who ran in the 2008, 2011, 2015 and 2019 federal elections and includes novel data on their race, Indigenous background and age, alongside information on gender, occupation, prior electoral experience and electoral outcome. We outline the process for collecting and systematizing these data, which relied on genealogical methods and the principle of triangulation. The data can be used to track diversity among electoral candidates over time or merged with other sources to answer district-level questions about representational diversity, electoral dynamics, vote choice and political communications. The method could also be replicated and applied to other levels of government.

Are voters' views about proportional outcomes shaped by partisan preferences? A survey experiment in the context of a real election

AbstractWe examine citizens' evaluations of majoritarian and proportional electoral outcomes through an innovative experimental design. We ask respondents to react to six possible electoral outcomes during the 2019 Canadian federal election campaign. There are two treatments: the performance of the party and the proportionality of electoral outcomes. There are three performance conditions: the preferred party's vote share corresponds to vote intentions as reported in the polls at the time of the survey (the reference), or it gets 6 percentage points more (fewer) votes. There are two electoral outcome conditions: disproportional and proportional. We find that proportional outcomes are slightly preferred and that these preferences are partly conditional on partisan considerations. In the end, however, people focus on the ultimate outcome, that is, who is likely to form the government. People are happy when their party has a plurality of seats and is therefore likely to form the government, and relatively unhappy otherwise. We end with a discussion of the merits and limits of our research design.

Memes, scenes and #ELXN2019s: How partisans make memes during elections

Our article analyses partisan, user-generated Facebook pages and groups to understand the articulation of political identity and party identification. Adapting the concept of scenes usually found in music studies, these Facebook pages and groups act as partisan scenes that maintain identities and sentiments through participatory practices, principally by making and sharing memes. Using a mixed methods approach that combines social media data and interviews during the 2019 Canadian federal election, we find that these partisan scenes are an active part of elections and the overall political information cycle in Canada but endure beyond election cycles. Rather than trying to sway voters of different political affiliation and influence the election outcome, Facebook users employ memes to hang-out and build community, thereby reinforcing partisanship.

Climate Change in the 2019 Canadian Federal Election

In the weeks before the 2019 federal election, climate change strikes occurred in Canada and across the globe, which may have increased the salience of this policy issue. We use two data sources to examine the role of climate change in the 2019 federal election: a representative survey of 1500 Canadians and 2109 Facebook posts from the five major party leaders. After accounting for political ideology and region, we find that concern about climate change was a strong positive predictor of liberal support. We triangulate these findings by analyzing Facebook posts. We find that left-wing politicians were more likely to post about climate change and that posts about climate change received more likes, comments, and shares than other posts. This higher level of user engagement did not differ depending on which political party posted the climate change message. The combination of sources offers news insights into citizen-elite interactions and electoral outcomes. Climate change was important in the election, whether this importance was measured through survey data or user engagement with leaders’ climate change posts.

Digital media and international migration: Twitter discourse during the Canadian federal election

AbstractAs a contentious, multidimensional issue, migration attracts significant media attention in affluent societies. While analysts have assessed coverage in traditional outlets, less is known about social media – digital platforms that facilitate the creation and sharing of content online. Working with a unique dataset of tweets from the 2019 Canadian federal election, this study analyses migration's representation within visible digital spaces. Employing content analytic methods, it offers new insight into the patterns of participation, claims‐making and engagement associated with the topic's online depiction. Alongside documenting significant lay involvement and creativity, it reveals communications were slightly negative and, reflecting the contemporary political climate, significantly more likely to feature identity‐based issues than economic and redistributive concerns. Messages from professional broadcasters, as well as, those featuring negative sentiments and referencing cultural matters generated greater engagement. The implications of these results and recommendations for future research are considered.

Deceptive accusations and concealed identities as misinformation campaign strategies

This paper presents a new social media phenomenon that sees users lying about their deceptive motivations by either dishonestly claiming that they are not bots or by asserting that real news is actually fake news. We analyzed the use of the #FakeNews and #NotABot hashtags in Twitter data collected on the 2019 Canadian federal elections. Our findings show that the #FakeNews hashtag was most likely to be connected to an established news source rather than an actual fake news site and that users of the #NotABot hashtag were no more likely to be human than other users in our data set. This phenomenon of lying about lying has been used to discredit well-known news organizations and amplify political misinformation, showing how online influence campaigns continue to evolve to manipulate social media users even as people have become more aware of the dangers of online misinformation.

Who Runs? Canadian Federal and Ontario Provincial Candidates from 1867 to 2019

AbstractWho runs and is elected is one of the most fundamental questions in political science as it pertains to the issue of descriptive representation. Despite the importance of this issue, until recently there were no longitudinal datasets on candidates in Canadian elections. This article presents two novel datasets including information on all candidates who ran in Canadian federal and Ontario provincial elections from 1867 to 2019. I present how these data were collected and how they can be used to gain new insights. I expect these data will be a valuable resource to Canadian political scientists for both research and teaching purposes.

Unwanted and Uninvited: Canadian Exceptionalism in Migration and the 2017-2020 Irregular Border Crossings

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on the irregular migration flow from the United States to Canada from 2017 to 2020. This irregular migration, defined as unauthorized border crossings, challenges a central tenet of the perceived exceptionalism of Canadian immigration policy by illustrating that while legal migration remains publicly popular and receives political support, the public rejects unwanted, irregular, or illegal migration, demanding strong response from the Canadian government. The 2017–2020 irregular migration of refugee claimants from the United States generated discord in a number of public and political settings. Debates existed over the terminology for unauthorized border crossings, public opinion was divided, and prior to the 2019 Canadian federal election, political parties developed different and opposing positions. Disagreement over costs and funding for the settlement of irregular migrants emerged at city, provincial, and federal levels. The federal government subsequently amended immigration legislation and increased budgets for border control activities.

A Radical Right-Wing Failure in Canada

This article is a quantitative investigation into why Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada (PPC), a radical right-wing party (RRP), failed to succeed in the 2019 Canadian federal election. Canada has not witnessed the electoral breakthrough of such a party. I argue the failure of the PPC was the result of a mixture of the stabilization of immigrant inflows and the softening of anti-immigrant sentiment. More favourable conditions for the PPC, including extensive media coverage and increasing support for populist and mildly authoritarian sentiment, may have been necessary, but were not sufficient alone to allow for an RRP breakthrough. RRPs are unlikely to succeed in Canada as long as the immigration rate remains predictable and Canadians continue to hold favourable views towards immigrants.

Voter Privacy and Big-Data Elections

Big data and analytics have changed politics, with serious implications for the protection of personal privacy and for democracy. Political parties now hold large amounts of personal information about the individuals from whom they seek political contributions and, at election time, votes. This voter data is used for a variety of purposes, including voter contact and turnout, fundraising, honing of political messaging, and microtargeted communications designed specifically to appeal to small subsets of voters. Yet both privacy laws and election laws in Canada have failed to keep up with these developments in political campaigning and are in need of reform to protect voter privacy. We provide an overview of big data campaign practices, analyze the gaps in Canadian federal privacy and election law that enable such practices, and offer recommendations to amend federal laws to address the threats to voter privacy posed by big data election campaigns.