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Voting Research in Canada: Problems and Prospects*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

David J. Elkins  and
Donald E. Blake
David J. Elkins
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia
Donald E. Blake
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia
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Abstract

The volume and variety of published works on voting in Canada suggest to us it is time to take stock of where we have been and where we should go. It is our belief that developments have not matched the rosy prognosis implicit in Donald Smiley's 1967 statement that “undoubtedly the most extensive developments in Canadian political science in the past two decades have been in the field of studies of voting behaviour and political parties.” To be sure, the body of literature has expanded considerably, but we are struck by major gaps in its coverage and by certain conceptual and technical shortcomings.

Traditionally review articles have treated a limited number of works in detail or have attempted an overview of an entire body of literature. We have eschewed the former approach since it presupposes the existence of a few outstanding works, comprehensive in nature, which can be fruitfully compared because of the diversity of approaches or interpretations they present. Such a situation does not yet obtain in the field of Canadian voting behaviour. The latter approach is less necessary since the recent appearance of a propositional inventory by John Terry and Richard Schultz, and a long summary chapter by Mildred Schwartz.

Therefore, we propose to outline major trends in the last decade or so and to suggest new directions.

Type
Note Bibliographique/Review Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , June 1975 , pp. 313 - 325
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1975

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References

1 See his “Contributions to Canadian Political Science since the Second World War,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 33 (Nov. 1967), 571. However, some optimism may be justified by the fact that it no longer seems necessary to defend the legitimacy of the study of voting behaviour, an exercise which occupied much of the space in an earlier review. See F.C. Engelmann and R. Gilsdorf, “Recent Behavioural Political Science in Canada,” a paper presented to the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, Sherbrooke, Quebec, 1966.

2 By way of contrast, see Cairns, Alan C., “Alternative Styles in the Study of Canadian Politics,” this journal 7 (March 1974), 101–28.Google Scholar

3 Terry, and Schultz, , “Canadian Electoral Behaviour: A Propositional Inventory,” in The Canadian Political Process, ed. Kruhlak, O.M. et al. (Toronto 1973 rev. ed.), 248–85Google Scholar; Schwartz, , “Canadian Voting Behavior,” in Electoral Behavior: A Comparative Handbook, ed. Rose, Richard (New York 1974)Google Scholar, ch. 11

4 One might take as a subject for review the data bases themselves: Meisel's 1965 and 1968 studies, cipo, and others. Instead, the “data” for this article are the published reports and conference papers which are based on these surveys.

5 Terry and Schultz, “Canadian Electoral Behaviour,” are much too stringent in their requirement that the same relationship be found at national, provincial, and local levels before it be considered an established generalization.

6 Examples include Meisel, John, The Canadian General Election of 1957 (Toronto 1962)Google Scholar; most of the chapters in Papers on the 1962 Election, ed. Meisel, John (Toronto 1964)Google Scholar; and the first two chapters in Meisel, John, Working Papers on Canadian Politics (Montreal 1972, rev. ed. 1973).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Some examples are Regenstreif, Peter, The Diefenbaker Interlude (Don Mills 1965)Google Scholar; Angus, Henry F., “The British Columbia Election, June, 1952,” in Voting in Canada, ed. Courtney, John C. (Scarborough, Ont. 1967)Google Scholar; and some of the speculative sections of most book-length studies.

8 The only book-length study we can cite here is Laponce, Jean A., People vs. Politics (Toronto 1970)Google Scholar; but several good recent articles may be illustrative: Cunningham, Robert, “The Impact of the Local Candidate in Canadian Federal Elections,” this journal 4 (June 1971), 287–90Google Scholar; Gilsdorf, Robert R., “Cognitive and Motivational Sources of Voter Susceptibility to Influence,” this journal 6 (Dec. 1973), 624–38Google Scholar; and Sniderman, Paul, Forbes, Donald, and Melzer, Ian, “Party Loyalty and Electoral Volatility: A Study of the Canadian Party System,” this journal 7 (June 1974), 268–88.Google Scholar

9 The clearest example here, besides public opinion polls designed solely to predict the winner, is Howard A. Scarrow, “By-Elections and Public Opinion in Canada,” in Courtney, Voting in Canada.

10 See especially: Berelson, Bernard, Lazarsfeld, Paul, and McPhee, William, Voting (Chicago 1954)Google Scholar; and Campbell, Angus, Converse, Philip, Miller, Warren, and Stokes, Donald, The American Voter (New York 1960).Google Scholar

11 Campbell, Angus et al., Elections and the Political Order (New York 1966), 5Google Scholar

12 “Review Article: Election Studies of the Survey Research Center,” British Journal of Political Science 1 (Oct. 1971), 479–502

13 Alan Cairns has pointed out (personal communication) that this historical difference may reflect also the extent to which Canadian political culture has placed a relatively higher value on system than on individuality, compared to the United States.

14 The Canadian General Election of 1957, vii

15 Ibid., viii

16 Don Mills 1965

17 Laponce, People vs. Politics; Alford, , Party and Society: The Anglo-American Democracies (Chicago 1963)Google Scholar

18 Przeworski, Adam and Soares, Glaucio, “Theories in Search of a Curve: A Contextual Interpretation of Left Vote,” American Political Science Review 65 (March 1971), 51–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar, outline some of the conflicting interpretations of class voting.

19 Robert Alford, “The Social Bases of Political Cleavage in 1962,” in Papers on the 1962 Election, ed. Meisel, John; Simeon, Richard and Elkins, David J., “Regional Political Cultures in Canada,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 1 (Sept. 1974), 397–437Google Scholar

20 Chaps 1 and 2

21 See for example: Jerome Black, Michael Coveyou, and Jenson, Jane, “Federal-Provincial Voting Behaviour: An Examination of Electoral Migration,” a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, Montreal, June 1972Google Scholar; Cunningham, Robert, Rubas, Janet, and White, Graham, “Differential Loyalties: Split Identification and Voting at the Federal and Provincial Levels,” a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, Montreal, June 1972Google Scholar; Irvine, William, “Voting Shifts in Canada: A Comparison of 1963–65 and 1965–68,” a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, Montreal, August 1973Google Scholar; and Jenson, Jane, “Party Identification in Canada: A Rationally Limited Allegiance,” a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, St. Johns, Newfoundland, June 1971.Google Scholar Also see Paul Sniderman, Donald Forbes, and Ian Melzer, “Party Loyalty and Electoral Volatility.”

22 For attempts (not entirely successful) to remedy this situation see Winham, Gilbert and Cunningham, Robert, “Party Leader Images in the 1968 Federal Election,” this journal 3 (March 1970), 37–55Google Scholar; and Schwartz, Mildred A., Politics and Territory: The Sociology of Regional Persistence in Canada (Montreal 1974), especially pp. 116–34 and 174–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 “Political Participation in Canada: The 1965 Election,” this JOURNAL 3 (Sept. 1970), 376–99; Scarrow, Howard, “Patterns of Voter Turnout in Canada,” Midwest Journal of Political Science 5 (Nov. 1961), 351–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar, derives from aggregate data and thus cannot satisfactorily address questions about individual participation.

24 It is equally easy to believe that little learned elsewhere is appropriate. Appropriateness must be ascertained case by case.

25 “Canadian Electoral Behaviour.” Although the phenomenon Terry and Schultz call “first footnotism” exists, in most cases it represents token acknowledgment.

26 To name only three possibilities: Vallee, Frank, Schwartz, Mildred, and Darknell, Frank, “Ethnic Assimilation and Differentiation in Canada,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 23 (Nov. 1957), 540–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Social Psychology: The Canadian Context, ed. Berry, J.W. and Wilde, G.J.S. (Toronto 1972)Google Scholar; and Nosanchuk, Terrance, “Note on the Use of the Correlation Coefficient for Assessing the Similarity of Occupational Rankings,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 9 (Nov. 1972), 357–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 “Alternative Styles,” 103. We are raising these questions by examining articles, papers, and monographs rather than textbooks.

28 New York 1969

29 (Toronto 1971), 248–54

30 Ibid., 249–50

31 Their other generalizations range from the undocumented assertion that most surveys indicate only that the pattern of voting of other ethnic groups is not much different from other non-French Canadians (p. 253); to the poorly documented view that support for the Liberals is concentrated in urban areas, based on election results in Toronto (pp. 251–2); to the one generalization for which they cite more than one study as evidence – the overwhelming tendency of Catholics to identify themselves as Liberals (p. 253).

32 Partial exceptions are Irvine, “Voting Shifts,” and Sniderman et al., “Party Loyalty and Electoral Volatility.”

33 x–xii

34 Ibid., 14–22. We discuss below the need for more careful attention to the framing and analysis of issue questions.

35 Ibid., 23–8

36 For provocative suggestions in this regard see Tufte, Edward, “Improving Data Analysis in Political Science,” in The Quantitative Analysis of Social Problems, ed. Tufte, Edward (Reading, Mass. 1970), 437–49.Google Scholar

37 Techniques analogous to multiple regression but which do not require interval level dependent variables exist as well. See for example, Jenson, Jane and Regenstreif, Peter, “Some Dimensions of Partisan Choice in Quebec, 1969,” this journal 3 (June 1970), 308–17Google Scholar; and Laponce, J.A. and Uhler, R., “Measuring Electoral Cleavages in a Multiparty System: The Canadian Case,” Comparative Political Studies 9 (April 1974), 3–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which use polychotomous multivariate probit analysis and logit analysis, respectively.

38 See, for example, Laponce, J.A., “Post-dicting Electoral Cleavages in Canadian Federal Elections, 1949–1968: Material for a Footnote,” this journal 5 (June 1972), 270–86Google Scholar; Robert Alford, Party and Society; and Schwartz, Mildred, Public Opinion and Canadian Identity (Berkeley 1967)Google Scholar, which utilize cipo data to examine changes over time. Also see Segal, David R., “Status Inconsistency and Party Choice in Canada: An Attempt to Replicate,” this journal 3 (Sept. 1970), 471–4Google Scholar, which illustrates possible advantages obtained by combining cipo surveys. A useful discussion of the possibilities of secondary analysis using Gallup poll data is given by Glenn, Norval D., “Archival Data on Political Attitudes: Opportunities and Pitfalls,” in Political Attitudes and Public Opinion ed. Nimmo, D. and Bonjean, C. (Don Mills 1972), 137–46.Google Scholar

39 See for example, Blake, Donald E., “The Measurement of Regionalism in Canadian Voting Patterns,” this journal 5 (March 1972), 55–81Google Scholar; and Jackman, R.W., “Political Parties, Voting, and National Integration: The Canadian Case,” Comparative Politics 4 (July 1972), 511–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a study demonstrating the possibilities of combining the analysis of survey and census data see Laponce, J.A., “Ethnicity, Religion, and Politics in Canada: A Comparative Analysis of Survey and Census Data,” in Quantitative Ecological Analysis in the Social Sciences, ed. Dogan, M. and Rokkan, S. (Cambridge, Mass. 1969)Google Scholar, chap. 8.

40 The core questionnaire devised by the Canadian Political Science Association's Interim Committee on Federal Election Research implicitly resolves this tension in the direction of stability (or rigidity).

41 The Rise of a Third Party (Engelwood Cliffs, N.J. 1971), x–xi.

42 This Commission helped fund the Canadian election study carried out after the 1965 federal election. The study was designed by Philip Converse, John Meisel, Maurice Pinard, Peter Regenstreif, and Mildred Schwartz.

43 Theodore Adorno et al. (New York 1950)

44 The Open and Closed Mind (New York 1960)

45 “Conservatism and Personality,” American Political Science Review 52 (March 1958), 27–45; McClosky, and Schaar, John, “Psychological Dimensions of Anomy,” American Sociological Review 30 (Feb. 1965), 14–40CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; McClosky, , “Personality and Attitude Correlates of Foreign Policy Orientation,” in Domestic Sources of Foreign Policy, ed. Rosenau, James N. (New York 1967)Google Scholar; McClosky, and Palma, Giuseppi Di, “Personality and Conformity: The Learning of Political Attitudes,” American Political Science Review 64 (Dec. 1970), 1054–73Google Scholar; and Sniderman, Paul M. and Citrin, Jack, “Psychological Sources of Political Belief: Self-Esteem and Isolationist Attitudes,” American Political Science Review 65 (June 1971), 401–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46 Personality and Politics (Chicago 1969)

47 Political Ideology (New York 1962), and Political Thinking and Consciousness (Chicago 1969)

48 Berry and Wilde, Social Psychology, contains little of direct political relevance. The few conference papers utilizing psychological variables are not well known; for example, Ted Harvey, “Attitudes Towards Freedom of Speech in a Canadian Community: A Study of Social, Political and Psychological Correlates,” a paper presented to the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, St. John's, Nfld., June 1971. For an early example of political psychology in the Canadian context, see Irving, John A., The Social Credit Movement in Alberta (Toronto 1959).Google Scholar

49 See Regenstreif, The Diefenbaker Interlude, 169; Scarrow, Howard A., “Distinguishing Between Political Parties–The Case of Canada,” Midwest Journal of Political Science 9 (Feb. 1965), 61–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kornberg, Allan, Smith, Joel, and Bromley, David, “Some Differences in the Political Socialization of Canadian and American Party Officials: A Preliminary Report,” this journal 2 (March 1969), 64–8Google Scholar; Perlin, George and Peppin, Patti, “Variations in Party Support in Federal and Provincial Elections: Some Hypotheses,” this journal 4 (June 1971), 280–6Google Scholar; Mallory, J.R., The Structure of Canadian Government (Toronto 1971), 203Google Scholar; Dawson, R. Macgregor and Ward, Norman, The Government of Canada (Toronto 1970), 414Google Scholar

50 Blake, “Measurement of Regionalism”

51 Simeon and Elkins, “Regional Political Cultures,” 414–15

52 See the references in footnote 45.

53 “Some Correlates of Nationalism Among Quebec Youth in 1968,” a paper presented to the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, Montreal, June 1972

54 Berry and Wilde, Social Psychology, contains some work in this direction.

55 See Terry and Schultz, “Canadian Electoral Behaviour”

56 Ibid., 260

57 Ibid., 271

58 In fact, Terry and Schultz have to amend their criteria to obtain any “highly” reliable generalizations; see Ibid., 281–2.

59 Classification of respondents according to “mother tongue” as English, French, or “other” is an obvious limitation, particularly for research on Canada west of Quebec.

60 The possibility of important differences in the political behaviour of “non-charter” groups depending on country of origin, period of immigration, or region of residence is suggested by a number of studies. See, for example, Blake “Measurement of Regionalism”; Laponce, “Ethnicity, Religion and Politics”; and Flanagan, Thomas, “Ethnic Voting in Alberta Provincial Elections 1921–1971,” Canadian Ethnic Studies 3 (Dec. 1971), 139–64.Google Scholar

61 As witness the growing number of studies published or forthcoming dealing with the subject from a variety of perspectives. See, for example, the papers by Arend Lijphart, S. Noel, Gerard Bergeron, William Irvine, and David Cameron, from the cpsa/scsp 1970 Colloque in this JOURNAL 4 (March 1971), 1–25; Careless, J.M.S., “Limited Identities in Canada,” Canadian Historical Review 50 (1969), 1–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Blake, “Measurement of Regionalism”; Mildred Schwartz, Politics and Territory; and Wilson, John, “The Canadian Political Cultures: Towards a Redefinition of the Nature of the Canadian Political System,” this journal 7 (Sept. 1974), 438–83.Google Scholar

62 The Vertical Mosaic: An Analysis of Social Class and Power in Canada (Toronto 1965)

63 Party and Society, especially chap. 9

64 Ibid., 284–6. Also see Wilson, John, “Politics and Social Class in Canada: The Case of Waterloo South,” this journal 1 (Sept. 1968), 307–9.Google Scholar

65 See Cairns, Alan, “The Electoral System and the Party System in Canada, 1921–1965,” this journal 1 (March 1968), 55–80.Google Scholar

66 See Charles Taylor, The Pattern of Politics (Toronto 1970), especially chap. 7.

67 See Alford, Robert, “Class Voting in the Anglo-American Political Systems,” in Party Systems and Voter Alignments, ed. Lipset, S.M. and Rokkan, S. (New York 1967), 65–93Google Scholar; and M. Schwartz, “Canadian Voting Behavior,” 583–92. However, other studies treating social class in a different fashion suggest that social class already has an important effect on parties and party support or that the ways in which we measure social class need reexamination. See Blake, “Measurement of Regionalism”; N.H. Chi, “Class Voting in Canadian Politics,” in Kruhlak, Canadian Political Process, 226–47; and Johnson, Leo A., “The Development of Class in Canada in the Twentieth Century,” in Capitalism and the National Question in Canada ed. Teeple, Gary (Toronto 1972), 141–83.Google Scholar

68 Canadian Provincial Politics, ed Robin, Martin (Scarborough 1972)Google Scholar; Wilson, “Canadian Political Cultures”; and Wilson, John and Hoffman, David, “The Liberal Party in Contemporary Ontario Politics,” this journal 3 (June 1970), 177–204Google Scholar, are important steps in this direction.

69 Black, “Federal-Provincial Voting Behaviour”; Cunningham, Rubas, and White, “Differential Loyalties”

70 Elkins, David J., “The Perceived Structure of the Canadian Party Systems,” this journal 7 (Sept. 1974), 502–24Google Scholar

71 Survey questionnaires need not be restricted in choice of issues to those central to an election campaign.

72 For a sensitive treatment of the role of issues in campaigns see Laponce, People vs. Politics, chap. 5.

73 Alan Cairns, “Political Science in Canada and the Americanization Issue,” this JOURNAL, 191–234.

74 An ominous possibility is that Canada Council will be replaced, according to the Spring 1974 Throne Speech, by a body more responsive to government priorities for funding.

75 Virtually all of the conference papers and no small proportion of the published articles we have cited on Canadian voting use as their sole data base the Meisel 1965 or 1968 surveys. The rest use cipo, except for a few local surveys such as those by Winham, Cunningham, and Laponce.