Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T08:22:05.809Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Challenge of Municipal Voting: Vancouver 2002

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2005

Fred Cutler  and
J. Scott Matthews
Fred Cutler
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia
J. Scott Matthews
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , June 2005 , pp. 359 - 382
Copyright
© 2005 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Atkeson, Lonna Rae and Randall W Partin. 1995. “Economic and Referendum Voting: a Comparison of Gubernatorial and Senatorial Elections.” The American Political Science Review 89: 99–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berinsky, Adam. 1999. “The Two Faces of Public Opinion.” American Journal of Political Science 43(4): 1209–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blais, André, Richard Nadeau, Elisabeth Gidengil and Neil Nevitte. 2002. Anatomy of a Liberal Victory: Making Sense of the Vote in The 2000 Canadian Election. Peterborough: Broadview Press.
British Columbia Ministry of Management Services, BC Stats. 2001. “2001 Fast Facts: Mobility and Migration,” available at the Web site http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/data/cen01/facts/cff0104.PDF, site last accessed August 19, 2004.
Blake, Donald. 1982. “The Consistency of Inconsistency: Party Identification in Provincial and Federal Politics.” Canadian Journal of Political Science 15: 691–710.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, Angus, Philip Converse, Warren E. Millerand Donald E. Stokes. 1960. The American Voter. New York: Wiley & Sons.
Campbell, Charles. 2002. “What an odd, angry and ugly campaign.” Vancouver Sun, Thursday November 14, 2002. A4.
Clarke, Harold D., Jane Jenson, Lawrence LeDuc and Jon H. Pammett. 1991. Absent Mandate. 2nd ed. Toronto: Gage.
Cutler, Fred. Forthcoming. “Government Responsibility and Electoral Accountability in Federations.” Publius: The Journal of Federalism.
Cutler, Fred and Matthew Mendelsohn. 2004. “Unnatural Loyalties? The Governments and Citizens of Canadian Federalism.” In Insiders and Outsiders: Alan Cairns and the Reshaping of Canadian Citizenship, ed. Gerald Kernerman and Philip Resnick. Vancouver: UBC Press.
Fiorina, Morris P. 1981. Retrospective Voting in American National Elections. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Garr, Allen. 2002. “COPE in for fight with entrenched NPA” The Vancouver Courier, September 23, 2002.
Gidengil, Elisabeth, André Blais, Richard Nadeau and Neil Nevitte. 2003. “Women to the Left? Gender Differences in Political Beliefs and Policy Differences.” In Women and Electoral Politics in Canada, eds. Manon Tremblay and Linda Trimble. Toronto: Oxford University Press.
Graham, K. A. and Susan D. Phillips. 1998. Urban Governance in Canada: Representation, Resources, and Restructuring. Toronto: Harcourt Brace.
Greater Vancouver Regional District Planning Department. May,, 1998. “Demographic Bulletin.” Available at the department's Web site, http://www.gvrd.bc.ca/publications/file.asp?ID=506, site last accessed on August 24, 2004.
Green, Donald, Bradley Palmquist and Eric Schickler. 2002. Partisan Hearts and Minds: Political Parties and the Social Identities of Voters. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Hagen, Michael, Richard Johnston and Kathleen Hall Jamieson. 2002. “Effects of the 2000 Campaign.” Paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston.
Hinich, Melvin J. and Michael C. Munger. 1994. Ideology and the Theory of Political Choice. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Inglehart, Ronald. 1997. Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic, and Political Change in 43 Societies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Jackman, Simon and Paul Sniderman. 2002. “Institutional Organization of Choice Spaces: A Political Conception of Political Psychology.” In Political Psychology, ed. K. Monroe. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.
Johnston, Richard. 1999. “Divided Government in Canada.” Paper presented to the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Atlanta.
Johnston, Richard, André Blais, Henry Brady and Jean Crête. 1992. Letting the People Decide: Dynamics of a Canadian Election. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.
Johnston, Richard, Michael Hagen and Kathleen Hall Jamieson. 2001. “Dynamics of the 2000 Presidential Campaign: Evidence from the Annenberg Survey.” Paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco.
Kramer, Gerald H. 1971. “Short-Term Fluctuations in US Voting Behavior, 1896–1964.” American Political Science Review 65: 131–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kushner, Joseph, David Siegel and Hannah Stanwick. 1997. “Ontario Municipal Elections: Voting Trends and Determinants of Electoral Success in a Canadian Province” Canadian Journal of Political Science 30: 3, 539–553.Google Scholar
Lewis-Beck, Michael. 1988. Economics and Elections: The Major Western Democracies. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Lupia, Arthur and Matthew McCubbins. 1998. The Democratic Dilemma: Can Citizens Learn What They Need to Know? New York: Cambridge University Press.
McMartin, Pete. 2002. “‘Interesting’ election just more cheerleading.” Vancouver Sun, October 12, 2002.
Miller, Warren and J. Merrill Shanks. 1996. The New American Voter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Miller, William. 1988. Irrelevant Elections? The Quality of Local Democracy in Britain. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Nevitte, Neil, André Blais, Elisabeth Gidengil and Richard Nadeau. 2000. Unsteady State: The 1997 Canadian Federal Election. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nevitte, Neil. 1996. The Decline Of Deference: Canadian Value Change In Cross-National Perspective. Peterborough: Broadview Press.
Norris, Pippa. 1997. “Second-order elections revisited.” European Journal of Political Research 31: 109–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rallings, Colin and Michael Thrasher. 1997. Local Elections in Britain. London: Routledge.
Reif, K. 1997. “European Elections as Member-State Second-Order Elections Revisited.” European Journal of Political Research 31: 115–124.Google Scholar
Reif, K. and H. Schmitt. 1980. “Nine Second-Order National Elections: A Conceptual Framework for the Analysis of European Election Results.” European Journal of Political Research 8 (1): 3–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sigelman, Lee. 1982. “The Nonvoting Voter in Voting Research.” American Journal of Political Science 26: 47–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smiley, Donald V. 1987. The Federal Condition in Canada. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson.
Sniderman, Paul M., Richard A. Brody and Philip E. Tetlock. 1991. Reasoning and Choice: Explorations in Political Psychology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Stewart, Marianne and Harold Clarke. 1998. “The Dynamics of Party Identification in Federal Systems: The Canadian Case.” American Journal of Political Science 42–1: 97–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stewart, Kennedy. N.d. Think Democracy: Options for Local Democratic Reform in Vancouver. Vancouver: Institute of Governance Studies, Simon Fraser University.
Whitaker, Reginald. 1983. Federalism and Democratic Theory. Kingston: Institute of Intergovernmental Relations.
Winn, Conrad and John McMenemy. 1973. “Political Alignment in a Polarized City: Electoral Cleavages in Kitchener, Ontario.” Canadian Journal of Political Science VI: 230–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar