Exploring How Canadian Voters Evaluate Leader Character in Three Cases: Justin Trudeau, Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump

Abstract

In exploratory research, we investigate whether a recently developed framework of leader character, grounded in the business administration literature, has any utility for understanding how citizens value the character of modern political leaders. We are interested in whether the entire leader character framework, or only a subset of its dimensions, are valued by Canadians in political leaders. An opinion poll of 506 Canadians in the fall of 2016 examines how they responded to the framework, which dimensions of leader character they value highly, and how they employed it to evaluate three well-known politicians who were then in the media spotlight: Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau; and American presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. The results suggest Canadians possess a clear, distinct set of preferences with respect to the ideal shape of leader character. This finding is salient toward understanding the modern political culture of Canada, as well as addressing speculation that the rise of populism in many countries suggests voters might embrace a leader in the mould of American president Donald Trump.

Character and Trust in Crisis Leadership: Probing the Relationships Among Character, Identification-Based Trust, and Perceptions of Effectiveness in Political Leadership During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…The respondents—Canadians of voting age—were sourced from a well-established online market research panel community (e.g., de Clercy et al, 2020 ; Seijts et al, 2018 ). We sampled only respondents to an English-language survey across Canada.…”

Trust as a mediator of the relationship between character and perceptions of leader effectiveness during the COVID-19 crisis.

“…The response options ranged from not at all (1) to a great extent (5); the midpoint of the scale was somewhat (3). These measures are similar to those used by Seijts and de Clercy (2020); Seijts et al (2018). All items we used in this study are shown in supplemental .…”

“…Studies have found that competence-related impressions of political candidates contribute to voting behavior (Kinder, 1986;Laustsen & Bor, 2017). Competencies reflect what a leader can do (e.g., think strategically, communicate persuasively, and build high-performance teams) as a result of natural talent, developedskill,orboth (Seijts et al, 2018).Incontrast,character arises from habitual behaviors anchored in virtues, personality traits, and values. Character influences not only how competencies are activated, but whether they are exercised at all (Sturm et al, 2017).…”

The Winning Political Campaign of the Digital Age: Justin Trudeau's Social Media-Oriented Politics

“…This statement not only suggests that Justin Trudeau's win is significantly influenced by his identifiable personality for the young generation, but is also exposing the lack of identification felt by the voters towards the opposing parties. Moreover, Seijts. De Clercy, and Nguyen(2018) who used the method of surveying voters of all ages in order to study how Canadian voters evaluate their leaders' characters, found that "voters rate the extent to which the candidate's personal attributes score relatively close to their own" (2018), which agrees with Bastedo's findings about the significance of relatability for all Canadian voters, including the older populations as well.…”