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Some Aspects of National Party Support in Canada*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

S. Peter Regenstreif
S. Peter Regenstreif*
Affiliation:
University of Rochester
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Extract

Political parties have come to be accepted as at least a partial solution to the problem posed for the political system by the gap between society on the one hand and the state, the locus of decision-making authority, on the other. Generally, such questions as the social basis of party affiliation and the extent of participation of party supporters have been approached, at least by the major and best known studies of popular political participation in the United States, from the electoral side: a sample survey of a single community or a national electorate is made while an election campaign is in progress. Through such surveys, a substantial amount of information has been accumulated. In Canada few surveys have been conducted, and apart from the efforts of the Gallup poll no national sampling of the political community has been attempted for public consumption.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , February 1963 , pp. 59 - 74
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1963

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Footnotes

*

This is a slightly revised version of a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association in Hamilton, June 8, 1962.

References

1 For example, Lazarsfeld, P. F., Berelson, B. R., and Gaudet, H., The People's Choice (New York, 1948)Google Scholar; Berelson, B. R., Lazarsfeld, P. F., and McPhee, W. N., Voting (Chicago, 1954)Google Scholar; and Campbell, A., Gurin, G., and Miller, W. E., The Voter Decides (Evanston, Ill., 1954).Google Scholar

2 When the sample was taken, there were approximately 150,000 names on the Conservative list; 120,000 on the Liberal list; and 40,000 on the CCF list.

3 The author is indebted to Professors Edgar F. Borgatta of the University of Wisconsin, Andrew Hacker and Wayne E. Thompson of Cornell University, and Saul J. Frankel of McGill University for their advice in designing the questionnaire. He also wishes to express his gratitude to the Social Science Research Center and the Ford Foundation Public Affairs Research Committee both of Cornell University and to the Canada Council whose generous financial assistance helped to make the study possible. Finally, he wishes to thank the parties involved as well as the respondents for their co-operation.

4 Duverger, Maurice, Political Parties (London, 1954), 90–1.Google Scholar

5 Ibid., 101.

6 See Lipset, S. M., Political Man (Garden City, N.Y., 1960), 184–5Google Scholar; also Lane, Robert E., Political Life (Glencoe, Ill., 1959), 46–52.Google Scholar It may be pointed out in this connection that one study puts forward the proposition that voting itself is not equivalent to participation but is a separate form of behaviour lying somewhere between active and passive forms of political involvement. (Lester Milbrath, “Personality and Political Participation,” paper delivered at the annual meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, Gatlinburg, Tenn., Nov. 9, 1956, referred to in Lane, , Political Life, 94.Google Scholar) Nevertheless, in the absence of widespread comparative data on participation, these correlates of high turnout seem applicable here.

In one study of political activity in the United States, J. L. Woodward and Elmo Roper, after setting up their own index, report that 69 per cent of upper income people compared with 12 per cent of those in the lower income segment of the population are politically active. As well, a person with a college education is five times as likely to be “very active” as one with a grade school education only. See “Political Activity of American Citizens,” American Political Science Review, XLIV, 12, 1950, 877.Google Scholar See also Milbrath, Lester W., “Predispositions Toward Political Contention,” Western Political Quarterly, XIII, 03, 1960, 5–18.Google Scholar

7 Berelson, , et al., Voting, 25.Google Scholar

8 Lipset, , Political Man, 205–6.Google Scholar

9 Ibid., 206.

10 See his “Religious Affiliation and Electoral Behaviour: A Case Study,” this Journal, XXII, no. 4, 11, 1956, 481–96.Google Scholar

11 The correlation of economic and occupational levels with participation in formally organized associations has been demonstrated in a large number of studies in the United States. See, for example, Warner, W. L. and Lunt, P. S., The Social Life of a Modern Community (New Haven, 1941), 329 Google Scholar; Komarovsky, M., “The Voluntary Association of Urban Dwellers,” American Sociological Review, XI, 12, 1946, 686–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Williams, R. M., American Society (New York, 1959), 94 Google Scholar; and Wright, C. R. and Hyman, H. H., “Voluntary Association Memberships of American Adults: Evidence from National Sample Surveys,” American Sociological Review, XXIII, 06, 1958, 284–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Maddick, H., “A Midland Borough Constituency,” in Butler, D. E., The British General Election of 1951 (London, 1952), 173.Google Scholar

13 Berelson, , et al., Voting, 25.Google Scholar

14 Campbell, , et al., The Voter Decides, 187–94.Google Scholar

15 The length of the questionnaire had to be kept within reasonable bounds. As it was, the fact that it was four pages in length seriously cut down the number of responses. And, anyway, the absence of personal contact with respondents would lessen the usefulness of results arising from the type of questions necessary to measure some of the components of “political efficacy.”

16 Given what is known about socialization of the young, these figures are not especially noteworthy. See Campbell, A., Converse, P. E., Miller, W. E., Stokes, D. E., The American Voter (New York, 1960), 146–9.Google Scholar

17 For example, Clark, S. D., “Class, Religion and Ethnic Affiliation in Canadian Politics,” paper delivered at the Institute of Canadian Studies Interdisciplinary Seminar on “Class in Canada,” Carleton University, Ottawa, 03 17, 1962.Google Scholar

18 See Campbell, , et al., The Voter Decides, 136–44Google Scholar, where the authors discuss the “candidate orientation” of the American electorate during the 1952 Presidential campaign; also Kelley, Stanley, Professional Public Relations and Political Power (Baltimore, 1956), 144–201 Google Scholar, which describes the Republican party strategy designed to lure the “stay-at-home” vote to the polls during that same campaign.

19 McKenzie, R. T., British Political Parties (London, 1955), 146–7, 164.Google Scholar

20 For a history of the franchise see Ward, Norman, The Canadian House of Commons: Representation (Toronto, 1950), 211–32.Google Scholar

21 Political Parties, 63–7.