Racial Spillover in Political Attitudes: Generalizing to a New Leader and Context

Racial Attitudes and Vote Choice in National Canadian Elections

“…These results are particularly notable given that, unlike some prior studies, the analysis here is not limited to white voters. This article's findings on the interplay between racial attitudes and voter support for the NDP since 2019 join previous studies’ findings by Bouchard (2022) and Besco and Matthews (2022) on the policy and public opinion ramifications of Singh's leadership.…”

“…Recent research on Canadian politics has sought to analyze public attitudes toward racial minorities and immigrants. In the aggregate, at least one-third of Canadians have clearly negative views of diversity, immigration, multiculturalism and racial minorities—a figure echoed in public polling data (Besco and Matthews, 2022). Breton (2015) finds in a survey experiment that, in contrast to the Netherlands, priming Canadians to national identity does not decrease their support for immigration—suggesting that immigration and multiculturalism may be positively associated with national identity in the Canadian context.…”

“…The 2019 and 2021 Canadian federal elections provide an ideal test, with NDP leader Jagmeet Singh making history as the first non-white national party leader of a party competitive throughout the country. In addition to his historical candidacy, Singh, as both a provincial and national party leader, vocally advocated for racial minorities (Besco and Matthews, 2022). This article's focus on party leadership, rather than the race of individual candidates for the House of Commons, aligns both with research on Obama in the United States and with research finding that Canadian voters, when deciding how to vote, tend to focus substantially more on a leader's image than on candidates in their riding (Blais et al, 2003; Gidengil et al, 2006; Clarke et al, 2019; Stevens et al, 2019; O'Neill, 1998).…”

“…There have been revelations in recent years about the mistreatment of Indigenous peoples in Canada, which Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission has dubbed a “cultural genocide,” ( BBC News , 2021), and anti-immigrant politics have gained new traction (Magesan, 2019; Newbold, 2020). In the 2019 election campaign, Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's use of blackface in his younger days was a highly publicized scandal (Besco and Matthews, 2022; Dobrowolsky and Leal-Iyoupe, 2022). In addition, a body of research has emerged examining multiple dimensions of race in Canadian politics, including electoral support for minority candidates (for example, Besco, 2015; Bird et al, 2016; Black and Erickson, 2006) and public support for permissive immigration policy (for example, Soroka and Roberton, 2010; Harell et al, 2012; Stolle et al, 2016).…”

“…Bouchard (2022) finds that coethnic Sikh Canadians were relatively more favourable toward Singh (though other voters of colour were not) and that Singh was viewed relatively unfavourably in Quebec 3 . Besco and Matthews (2022) find that non-racial policies have acquired racial valence by dint of their association with Singh—a “racial spillover” effect. While research by Bouchard (2022) and Besco and Matthews (2022) provides vital lessons about the role of race in policy and leader evaluations, I seek to expand on this nascent body of work by interrogating the relationship between racial attitudes and support for the NDP under Singh's leadership.…”