The Challenge of Municipal Voting: Vancouver 2002

Abstract

Abstract.As compared with federal and provincial elections, municipal elections in Canada present voters with challenges of informational quantity and quality. These unique challenges have implications for the psychological structure of citizens' voting calculus. Using a survey of voters conducted after the city of Vancouver civic election of 2002, we estimate a model of vote choice for mayor. We show that voters respond to the different context in predictable ways: their choices are determined largely by ideological orientations and provincial partisanship, with local economic evaluations and local issues playing only a very small role.Résumé.Si on les compare aux élections fédérales et provinciales, les élections municipales au Canada posent, pour les électeurs, des problèmes d'accès à une information de qualité en quantité suffisante. Ces défis particuliers ont un impact sur la structure psychologique de leurs stratégies de vote. Nous estimerons ici un modèle de choix d'un candidat au poste de maire à l'aide des données d'un sondage effectué après les élections municipales de Vancouver de 2002. Nous démontrerons que les électeurs répondent à ce contexte différent de manière prévisible : leurs choix sont déterminés principalement par leur orientation idéologique et leur soutien partisan au niveau provincial, alors que l'évaluation de l'état de l'économie locale et les questions de politique locale ne jouent qu'un rôle limité.

Turnout in Local Elections: Evidence from Canadian Cities, 2004–2014

“…A considerable body of research has explored different forms of participation and citizen expression in local public life. Nevertheless, the most fundamental expression of citizen preferences-voting-remains a phenomenon that is often overlooked (but see Caruna et al, 2015;Cutler and Matthews, 2005;McGregor and Spicer, 2016;Moore et al, forthcoming). 1 One result of this lack of study is that the factors that influence voter turnout in Canadian local elections remain largely unexplored.…”

Political Attitudes and Behaviour in a Non-Partisan Environment: Toronto 2014

“…14 The Pearson correlation between these indices is 0.255. 15 Note that candidate evaluations are also absent in the model used by Cutler and Matthews (2005), although in that case the explanation is related to the availability of data. 16 For the sake of parsimony, we exclude those individuals who voted for minor candidates (this represents 3.2% of TES respondents).…”

Gender, Race and Political Ambition: The Case of Ontario School Board Elections

“…Keywords: school board elections, political candidates, gender, race, representation Mots-clés: élections des conseils scolaires, candidats et candidates politique, genre, minorités raciales, représentation A considerable body of literature has identified a diversity gap related to the limited proportion of women and racial minorities among elected officials in Canada (Andrew et al, 2008;Bashevkin, 2009;Black, 2008;Black, 2011;Siemiatycki, 2016). Given the centrality of provincial and federal legislative bodies in the Canadian federal system, political scientists have tended to focus their attention on these institutions when investigating trends in political representation (Cutler and Matthews, 2005;Taylor and Eidelman, 2010). However, these elected bodies make up a small minority of elected positions within Canada.…”