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The Perception and Impact of Issues in the 1974 Federal Election*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

Jon H. Pammett ,
Lawrence LeDuc ,
Jane Jenson  and
Harold D. Clarke
Jon H. Pammett
Affiliation:
Carleton University
Lawrence LeDuc
Affiliation:
University of Windsor
Jane Jenson
Affiliation:
Carleton University
Harold D. Clarke
Affiliation:
University of Windsor
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Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , March 1977 , pp. 93 - 126
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1977

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References

1 In Canada, much of the work of John Meisel has been in this tradition. See his The Canadian General Election of 1957 (Toronto, 1962); Papers on the 1962 Election (Toronto, 1964); and his essay on the 1972 election, “Howe, Hubris and 72” in Working Papers on Canadian Politics (Montreal, 1973). Other Canadian works which have focused heavily on single elections are Regenstreif, Peter, The Diefenbaker Interlude (Toronto, 1965)Google Scholar; Laponce, Jean, People Vs. Politics (Toronto, 1969)Google Scholar; and Lemieux, Vincent, Gilbert, Marcel, and Blais, André, Une Election de Realignment (Montreal, 1970).Google Scholar A long tradition of this type of analysis also exists in Britain. Perhaps the best known of the many British studies of single elections are the Nuffield Studies. See, among others in the series, Butler, David and King, Anthony, The British General Election of 1964 (London, 1965).CrossRefGoogle Scholar In the United States, there has been a strong tradition of attempting to employ survey data in the explanation of individual elections, particularly in the case of Presidential elections. See Campbell, Angus, Converse, Philip, Miller, Warren, and Stokes, Donald, “Stability and Change in 1960: A Reinstating Election,” American Political Science Review 55 (1961), 269–80Google Scholar; Converse, Philip, Clausen, Aage, and Miller, Warren, “Electoral Myth and Reality: the 1964 Election,” American Political Science Review 59 (1965), 321–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Converse, Philip, Miller, Warren, Rusk, Jerrold, and Wolfe, Arthur, “Continuity and Change in American Politics; Parties and Issues in the 1968 Election,” American Political Science Review, 68 (1969), 1083–1105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 For a discussion of sampling error and some additional information on the construction and design of the sample, see Appendix A.

3 For an overview of the 1974 election and a discussion of the campaign strategy of each of the parties, see Penniman, Howard (ed.), Canada at the Polls (Washington: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1975).Google Scholar

4 Butler, David and Stokes, Donald, Political Change in Britain (New York: St. Martin's, 1971), 166–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Broh, C. A., Toward an Issue Theory of Voting, (Sage Professional Papers in American Politics, No. 04–011, 1973).Google Scholar

5 Butler and Stokes, Political Change in Britain, 175.

6 Ibid., 177.

7 Ibid., 177–78. The importance of the perceptions of parties' positions on issues as a condition essential to their having an effect on electoral choice has also been discussed in the context of American politics by Repass and by Pomper. See Repass, David, “Issue Salience and Party Choice,” American Political Science Review 65 (1971), 389–400CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Pomper, Gerald, “From Confusion to Clarity: Issues and American Voters, 1956–68,” American Political Science Review 66 (1972), 415–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 See the discussion of reliability and vote report in Weir, Blair T., “The Distortion of Voter Recall,” American Journal of Political Science 59 (1975), 53–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Clausen, Aage R., “Response Validity and Vote Report,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 32 (1968/1969), 588–606.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Weir argues on the basis of secondary analysis of American panel data that distortion will be of two types—a “bandwagon effect” favouring the winner, and a “party effect” toward current party preference among voters who have changed their partisanship over a given period. The distortion cited by Weir, however, occurs over a period of years, while we are dealing in our analysis with a recall period of only a few weeks in the case of the 1974 report and twenty months in the case of 1972 vote recall. Nevertheless, both types of distortion found by Weir would lead us to expect some overreporting of Liberal vote in our data. While this does occur, there is no reason to believe that the respondents whom we define in our analysis as “switchers” are not a valid subset of persons who actually did switch their vote from 1972 to 1974. Or, stated differently, we would expect that reports of a consistent Liberal vote, or of a move toward the Liberals from nonvoting, might be a greater source of recall distortion than the responses of those who report switching from another party. While we, therefore, have a reasonable amount of confidence in the vote recall items, the analysis should not be pushed beyond the natural limits of the data, and, in particular, small differences should not be overemphasized in instances where a recall effect might exist. The reader is cautioned not to view our use of 1972 recall as the equivalent of the first wave of a panel study, or as a valid sample of the 1972 electorate, neither of which are possible to reconstruct from cross-sectional data.

9 The analysis undertaken here is confined primarily to a summary of the national patterns. A more extensive analysis of individual provincial patterns may be found in Pammett, Jon, LeDuc, Lawrence, Jenson, Jane, and Clarke, Harold, The 1974 Federal Election: A Preliminary Report, Carleton Occational Papers Series, No. 4, 1975.Google Scholar

10 Ibid., 5–13.

11 In Ontario, the net Liberal gain from the Conservatives and NDP was 1.1 per cent. The net gain from non-voters in 1972 and those previously not eligible was 5.7 per cent of the 1974 electorate. Ibid., 8.

12 The question asked was: “What was the most important issue to you personally in that election?” The follow-up question in the survey was: “Was there any other issue that was important to you in the election?” This question allows a second issue mention.

13 Table 4 also shows the very low number (3 per cent) of NDP to Liberal switchers who mentioned wage and price controls as an important issue in the election.

14 The questions asked were: “What do you usually think of when inflation is mentioned?” “How much were you personally affected by inflation over the past year or so, a great deal, some or not much at all?” and, “In what way were you most affected?”

15 None of the differences between switchers and nonswitchers is significant at the .05 level.

16 With findings as undifferentiated as these, one might be led to hypothesize that inflation was not a motivating factor at all. Rather, it was the answer given to the pestering interviewer by those who knew or cared little about politics. In other words, because of the pervasive attention it received during the campaign, respondents grasping for an answer provided “inflation.” This would imply that its influence was much less than the number of mentions it received on the open-ended issue questions might lead one to expect. To test this, individuals were divided into two groups, those who mentioned inflation as the most important issue and those who mentioned something else. These two groups were then examined with respect to a series of variables measuring attention to politics, interest in politics and media consumption. There were no meaningful differences between the group that mentioned inflation and the one that mentioned another issue over any of the variables measuring interest in and attention to politics. From these results, there is little evidence that inflation had any less potential for impact than any other issue.

17 According to this argument, it can be said that the Progressive Conservatives made a major strategic error when they tried, unsuccessfully, to transform the valence issue of inflation into a question of the imposition of a wage and price freeze. There is not the same skewed distribution with regard to that specific proposal. There is a distribution of opinion ranging from support to opposition and when the Conservatives adopted one position they necessarily risked alienating opponents of such controls. As was noted above, however, much less attention was paid to that specific policy than to the general question of inflation.

18 For a discussion of valence issues, see Butler and Stokes, Political Change in Britain, 189.

19 N = 606 for those mentioning “non-inflation” issues and 710 for those ranking inflation as “most important.” See Pammett et al., The 1974 Federal Election: A Preliminary Report, 14–24.

20 There are nevertheless some interesting inter-party differences regarding perceived distance from the respondents. The Liberal party differs from other parties in the extent to which inflation was perceived as an important issue, Liberals being less likely to mention inflation as the most important issue. At the same time the Liberals were perceived more often by their own supporters as closest to their own position on both inflation and non-inflation issues. On both types of issues, the Liberal voters appeared more convinced that their party choice was the correct one, given their particular issue concerns. There is, thus, some evidence that party differences on the handling of inflation and other issues were perceived within particular groups of partisans, if not in the electorate as a whole. See Pammett et al., The 1974 Federal Election: A Preliminary Report, 60–2.

21 The “feeling thermometer” is constructed so that a score of 50 indicates “neutral” feelings vis-à-vis a particular political object. Scores from 51 through 99 indicate an increasing degree of “like,” while scores of 49 through 01 indicate an increasing degree of “dislike.”

22 Meisel, Working Papers on Canadian Politics, Appendix One, Table 8.

23 Ibid., Appendix One, Table 9.

24 Table 5 does not distinguish between respondents choosing leader and candidate and, thus, is not perfectly comparable with Figure 1 and the analysis here.

25 A further indication of the skewness of opinion favouring Trudeau is seen in the distribution of opinion on the standard C.I.P.O. question as to which of the party leaders “would make the best Prime Minister for Canada.” Trudeau's greater than two-to-one advantage on this item is also an indication of “skewness,” to the extent that the concept is applicable here. C.I.P.O., The Gallup Report, May 4, 1974.

26 There is extensive evidence regarding this observation, including both past election studies and a number of public opinion surveys. Among the published findings, see Meisel, Working Papers on Canadian Politics, 58–9; Regenstreif, Diefenbaker Interlude, 57; and Schwartz, Mildred, Politics and Territory (McGill-Queen's: 1974), 187–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 Meisel, Working Papers on Canadian Politics, 58–9.

28 Leduc, Lawrence, “Public Opinion and Minority Government,” paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, Toronto, 1974.Google Scholar A more detailed analysis of these data may also be found in LeDuc, , “The Majority Government Issue and Electoral Behaviour in Canada,” paper presented to the IPSA/ISA Committee on Political Sociology Round Table on Elections in Complex Societies, Queen's University, 1975.Google Scholar

29 The question read: “In recent years, the political party which has formed the government in Ottawa has frequently not had a majority of the seats in Parliament. Some people think that it is better when the government has a majority of seats in Parliament, while others feel that minority governments can accomplish more? Which do you feel is better?” All three items on majority government were asked of a random half-sample of the 1974 respondents.

30 The Gallup question was: “Canada has had a number of minority governments in Ottawa during the past ten years or so—that is, a parliament in which the party in power has no clear majority over all other parties. On the whole, in your opinion, do you think that a minority government is good or bad for the nation?” C.I.P.O., The Gallup Report, April 25, 1973.Google Scholar

31 This question, which was identical to that asked in 1965, read: “If you believed that one party was more likely to be able to form a majority government, but you did not ordinarily vote for that party, how likely would you be to vote for it in order to have a majority government, very likely, somewhat likely or not at all likely?”

32 Similar results are obtained when other measures of partisanship such as party identification or past voting behaviour are correlated with these items.

33 Because we are working with quite small numbers, considerations of sampling error are of particular importance here. Applying the tests of significance discussed in Appendix A, the 95 per cent confidence interval for our estimate that 1.7 per cent of the electorate switched parties and were influenced “a great deal” by the majority government issue would be ± 1.0 per cent. Comparable tests should be applied to other estimates made here.

34 Butler and Stokes, Political Change in Britain, 349–54.

35 The question, which was open-ended, read: “We have asked you a lot of questions about reasons why you might have decided to vote. Sometimes, however, in asking all these questions, researchers can lose track of what was really important to people. So, could you take a moment to think over all the reasons why you decided to vote the way you did, and just briefly tell me the things that were most important to you?” This question was asked of a random half-sample of voters in the 1974 survey.