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Evaluations and Evolution: Public Attitudes toward Canada's Federal Political Parties, 1965–1991

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

Harold D. Clarke  and
Allan Kornberg
Harold D. Clarke
Affiliation:
University of North Texas
Allan Kornberg
Affiliation:
Duke University
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Abstract

This article employs national survey data gathered over the past quarter century to analyze the evolution and present state of public attitudes toward Canada's federal political parties. A 1991 survey employing new questions on evaluations of party performance reveals that these evaluations are structured in terms of two dimensions, and that negative judgments on both dimensions are pervasive. The significance of the current negativism is assessed using 1965–1991 data on Canadians' feelings about and identifications with the federal parties. Although for a long time party affect has been lukewarm at best, and partisanship has been weak and unstable, negative trends have magnified the disaffection and dealignment. The discontent has accelerated in recent years, as the percentage of Liberal and Progressive Conservative identifiers has plummeted, and the non-identifier group has swelled to record levels, particularly in Quebec. The article concludes by considering the implications of these findings for the future of the federal party system.

Résumé

Cette étude utilise les données de sondages nationaux recueillies pendant les 25 dernières années afin d'analyser l'évolution et l'état actuel des attitudes du public envers les partis politiques fédéraux du Canada. Une enquête de 1991 utilisant de nouvelles questions sur l'évaluation de la performance des partis révèle que ces évaluations s'expriment en fonction de deux dimensions qui toutes deux comportent à l'évidence des jugements négatifs. L'importance du négativisme actuel est évaluée en utilisant de données couvrant les années 1965 à 1991, sur les sentiments d'identifications des Canadiens envers les partis fédéraux. Bien que le sentiment envers les partis ait été marqué depuis longtemps, au mieux, par l'indifférence, et que l'adhésion partisane ait été faible et instable, les tendances négatives ont accru la désaffection et le désengagement. Le mécontentement s'est agravé dans les années récentes, le pourcentage de ceux qui s'identifient aux Libéraux ou aux Progressistes-Conservateurs a dégringolé, et le groupe des non-alignés a atteint un seuil record, particulièrement au Québec. L'étude conclut en dégageant les conséquences de ces données pour l'avenir du système des partis fédéraux.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , June 1993 , pp. 287 - 311
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1993

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References

1 Irving, John A., The Social Credit Movement in Alberta (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1959)Google Scholar; Lipset, Seymour Martin, Agrarian Socialism: The Cooperative Commonwealth Federation in Saskatchewan (New York: Doubleday, 1968)Google Scholar; Macpherson, C. B., Democracy in Alberta: The Theory and Practice of a Quasi-Party System (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1953)Google Scholar; Pinard, Maurice, The Rise of a Third Party: A Study in Crisis Politics (Toronto: Prentice-Hall, 1971)Google Scholar; Quinn, Herbert F., The Union Nationale: A Study in Quebec Nationalism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963)Google Scholar; Stein, Michael B., The Dynamics of Right-Wing Protest: A Political Analysis of Social Credit in Quebec (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973)Google Scholar; Young, Walter D., The Anatomy of a Party: The National CCF 1932–1961 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969)Google Scholar; and Zakuta, Leo, A Protest Movement Becalmed: A Study of Change in the CCF (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964).Google Scholar

2 The principal investigators for the 1965 study were Philip Converse, John Meisel, Maurice Pinard, Peter Regenstreif and Mildred Schwartz. Meisel was the principal investigator for the 1968 study.

3 See, among others, Clarke, Harold D., Jenson, Jane, LeDuc, Lawrence and Pammett, Jon H., Political Choice in Canada (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1979)Google Scholar; Clarke, Harold D., Jenson, Jane, LeDuc, Lawrence and Pammett, Jon H., Absent Mandate: Interpreting Change in Canadian Elections (2nd ed.; Agincourt: Gage, 1991)Google Scholar; Clarke, Harold D. and Stewart, Marianne C., “Partisan Inconsistency and Partisan Change in Federal States: The Case of Canada,” American Journal of Political Science 31 (1987), 383–407CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kornberg, Allan, Mishler, William and Smith, Joel, “Political Elite and Mass Perceptions of Party Locations in Issue Space: Some Test of Two Positions,” British Journal of Political Science 5 (1975), 161–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lambert, Ronald D., Curtis, James E., Brown, Steven D. and Kay, Barry J., “Social Class, Left/Right Political Orientations, and Subjective Class Voting in Provincial and Federal Elections,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 24 (1987), 526–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; LeDuc, Lawrence, Clarke, Harold D., Jenson, Jane and Pammett, Jon H., “Partisan Instability in Canada: Evidence from a New Panel Study,” American Political Science Review 78 (1984), 470–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Meisel, John, Working Papers on Canadian Politics (2nd ed.; Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1975)Google Scholar; and Pammett, Jon H., “Class Voting and Class Consciousness in Canada,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 24 (1987), 269–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Meisel's original essay on this topic was inspired by his analyses of the 1965 and 1968 CNES data. See Meisel, John, “Howe, Hubris and ′72: An Essay on Political Elitism,” in Meisel, ed., Working PapersGoogle Scholar, chap. 5. See also Meisel, John, “Decline of Party in Canada,” in Thorburn, Hugh, ed., Party Politics in Canada (6th ed.; Scarborough: Prentice-Hall, 1991)Google Scholar, chap. 15; and “The Dysfunctions of Canadian Parties: An Exploratory Mapping,” in Thorburn, ed., Party Politics in Canada, chap. 18.Google Scholar

5 Meisel lists the following functions: “(1) the structuring of the vote; (2) the integration and mobilization of the mass public; (3) the recruitment of political leaders; (4) organize a government; (5) the formation of public policy; and (6) the aggregation of interests” (“The Dysfunctions of Canadian Parties,” 235).

6 See, for example, Clarke, et al. , Absent MandateGoogle Scholar, chaps. 1, 8; and Gagnon, Alain G. and Tanguay, Brian, eds., Canadian Parties in Transition (Scarborough: Nelson Canada, 1989)Google Scholar. Aspects of the thesis of party decline are disputed by Bickerton, James, in “The Party System and the Representation of Periphery Interests: The Case of the Maritimes,”Google Scholar and Paltiel, Khayyam Z., “Financing Federal Political Parties in Canada, 1974–1986,”Google Scholar in chaps. 20 and 14, respectively, of the Gagnon and Tanguay volume.

7 To avoid response set problems, three different orderings of the 11 statements were administered to random subsets of respondents.

8 See Converse, Philip E., “The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics,” in Apter, David, ed., Ideology and Discontent (Gléncoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1964)Google Scholar, chap. 6. A useful review of the literature on mass belief systems is Kinder, Donald R., “Diversity and Complexity in American Public Opinion,” in Finifter, Ada W., ed., Political Science: The State of the Discipline (Washington, D.C.: American Political Science Association, 1983), chap. 13.Google Scholar

9 In this and subsequent analyses, persons offering a positive assessment of party performance in response to a particular statement are scored 2; those offering a negative assessment are scored 0; and those who don't know or are unsure are scored 1.

10 The sequence of questions used to measure federal party identification is: (a) “Thinking of federal politics, do you usually think of yourself as Liberal, Conservative, NDP, Social Credit, or what?” (b) “How strongly [party named in (a)] do you feel, very strongly, fairly strongly, or not very strongly?” (c) [If “refused,” “don't know,” “independent” or “none” in (a)] “Still thinking of federal politics, do you generally think of yourself as being a little closer to one of the parties than to the others?” (d) [If “yes” in (c)] “Which party is that?” All respondents supplying a party label in questions (a) or (c) were considered to have some degree of party identification. Persons declining to provide a party label in (a) but doing so in (c) were classified as “not very strong” identifiers.

11 Bollen, Kenneth, Structural Equations with Latent Variables (New York: Wiley Interscience, 1989), chaps. 6 and 7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Joreskog, Karl and Sorbom, Dag, LISREL 7: A Guide to the Program and Applications (Chicago: SPSS Inc., 1988).Google Scholar

13 In assessing the goodness-of-fit of a CFA model, large Χ2 values indicate a poor fit, and small values, a good fit. The model's degrees of freedom serve as the standard for determining if Χ2 is large or small (see Joreskog, and Sorbrom, , LISREL 7, 42).Google Scholar

14 Since there are substantial numbers of “don't know” responses to some of the party evaluation questions, these responses were scored as an intermediate category in the CFA analyses to maintain sample integrity (see note 9 above). However, the two-factor model also had an excellent fit (Χ229 = 38.13, p = .119) for the 937 respondents who gave “agree” or “disagree” responses to all questions, and a single-factor model has a bad fit (Χ235 = 176.16, p = .000). Once more, the two-factor analysis indicates the level of constraint in party performance evaluations is modest. The percentages of item variance explained by the two factors ranged from 13 per cent to 62 per cent, and in eight cases it is less than 50 per cent. The inter-factor correlation, although stronger than that for the analysis reported in Table 2 (.47 v. .28) indicates that only 22 per cent of the variance in one factor can be explained by the other one. Note also that two-factor models (with and without correlated error terms) designed strictly in terms of whether a respondent agrees or disagrees with a particular item has an inadequate fit (Χ234 = 89.17, p = .000; Χ231 =70.81, p = .000), thereby suggesting responses are being driven by the content of the items rather than by combination of generalized “acquiescence” and “resistance” factors.

15 Bollen, , Structural Equations, chap. 8.Google Scholar

16 Region-ethnicity is a set of dummy variables with Ontario as the reference category. Age is measured in years; annual family income has nine categories ranging from under $10,000 per year=1 to $80,000 a year or more = 9; gender is women = 1, men= 0; formal education is elementary or less= 1, some secondary = 2, completed secondary or technical, community college = 3, some university = 4, completed university (B.A., B.Sc, or more) = 5.

17 See, for example, Dahl, Robert, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971)Google Scholar; Hofstadter, Richard, The Idea of a Party System (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969)Google Scholar, chaps. 1, 2; Ostrogorski, M. I., Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties, translated by Clark, Frederick (New York: Macmillan, 1902)Google Scholar; Ranney, Austin, Curing the Mischiefs of Faction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975)Google Scholar, chap. 2; and Ranney, Austin and Kendall, Willmoore, Democracy and the American Party System (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1956), chaps. 5 and 6.Google Scholar

18 See the works by Irving, Lipset and Macpherson cited in note 1 above.

19 In addition to the 1965, 1968, 1974, 1979, 1980 and 1988 Canadian national election study (CNES) data, data from a national survey conducted in 1981 as part of Social Change in Canada project are utilized. The authors are solely responsible for the analyses and interpretations of these several data sets presented here. Also employed are data gathered by the authors in several national cross-sectional surveys (1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988 [pre- and post-election], 1989, 1990 and 1991) as part of their Political Support in Canada study. These surveys also include interlocking panels (1980–1983, 1983–1984, 1984–1988, 1988 pre- and post-election and 1988–1990), with the 1980–1983 panel being based on reinterviews with respondents in the 1980 CNES. Fieldwork for the Political Support surveys was conducted by Canadian Facts Ltd., with major funding being provided by the National Science Foundation (grants # SES 831–1077 and SES 882–1628). For additional information concerning these surveys see Kornberg, Allan and Clarke, Harold D., Citizens and Community: Political Support in a Representative Democracy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), Appendix.Google Scholar

20 The feeling thermometer question wording has varied slightly in various surveys. That used in the 1983–1990 political support surveys is: “Think for a moment about a thermometer scale which runs from 1 to 100 degrees. 50 is the neutral point. If your feelings are warm toward something, give it a score higher than 50, the warmer your feelings, the higher the score. If your feelings are cool toward something, give it a score less than 50. The cooler your feelings, the lower the score. If you don't know too much about any of the items mentioned, just say so and we will go on to the next one.”

21 For the regression analyses reported here we employ the 1988 CNES party thermometer scores. Since these scores are lower than those in the 1988 Political Support Study survey (see Figure 1), and the wording of the thermometer questions in the two surveys is slightly different, we replicated the analyses using the latter data for the 1988 time point. All results are essentially unchanged.

22 The calculation is trend coefficient × number of years = −.40 × 22 = −8.8%.

23 Other early contributions to the debate include Jenson, Jane, “Party Loyalty in Canada: The Question of Party Identification,” this Journal 8 (1975), 543–53Google Scholar; and Sniderman, Paul, Forbes, Hugh D. and Melzer, Ian, “Party Loyalty and Electoral Volatility: A Study of the Canadian Party System,” this Journal 7 (1974), 268–88.Google Scholar

24 See, for example, Clarke, et al. , Political Choice in CanadaGoogle Scholar, chap. 5; Clarke, et al. , Absent Mandate, chap 3Google Scholar; Clarke, and Stewart, , “Partisan Inconsistency and Partisan Change”Google Scholar; LeDuc, et al. , “Partisan Instability in Canada”Google Scholar; and MacDermid, Robert H., “The Recall of Past Partisanship: Feeble Memories or Frail Concepts?” this Journal 22 (1989), 363–75Google Scholar. The 1977–1979–1981 Social Change in Canada panels also show high levels of partisan instability (see Stevenson, H. Michael, “Ideology and Unstable Party Identification in Canada: Limited Rationality in a Brokerage Party System,” this Journal 20 [1987], 813–50).Google Scholar

25 Since the federal party identification questions were changed in the 1988 CNES, these data are not employed in the analyses presented here. Note also that no provincial party identification sequence was asked in this study. The distributions of federal party identifiers in the 1988 CNES and 1988 political support surveys are compared in the Appendix.

26 The term “inconsistency” simply denotes that people do not identify with the same federal and provincial parties. As Blake has noted, such inconsistent partisan attachments may have a rational basis (Blake, Donald E., “The Consistency of In consistency: Party Identification in Federal and Provincial Politics,” this Journal 15 [1982], 691–710Google Scholar). In the 1974, 1979, 1980, 1984 CNES, and the several political support surveys, provincial party identification was measured using a sequence of questions similar to that for federal party identification described in note 10 above. In the 1965 and 1968 surveys, an integrated sequence was used to measure party identification at the two levels of government. Questions about provincial party identification were not included in the 1981 Social Change in Canada survey.

27 See Clarke, and Stewart, , “Partisan Inconsistency and Partisan ChangeGoogle Scholar, and Martinez, Michael D., “Partisan Reinforcement in Context and Cognition: Canadian Federal Partisanships, 1974–79,” American Journal of Political Science 34 (1990), 822–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 The variable is scored 1 in 1986 and 1991, and 0 for other years.

29 Epstein, Leon D., “A Comparative Study of Canadian Parties,” American Political Science Review 58 (1964), 46–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar