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Absent Mandate? The Role of Positional Issues in Canadian Elections
by
Yannick Dufresne
A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirementsfor the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Graduate Department of Political ScienceUniversity of Toronto
c© Copyright 2015 by Yannick Dufresne
Abstract
Absent Mandate? The Role of Positional Issues in Canadian Elections
Yannick Dufresne
Doctor of Philosophy
Graduate Department of Political Science
University of Toronto
2015
Positional issues are political issues that generate disagreement among citizens and divide the electorate.
Voting theories conventionally assume that positional issues have little effect on how individuals vote
and that parties have little incentive to develop issue-based electoral strategies. Such a characterization
of electoral dynamics is particularly prevalent in Canada. An enduring view holds that Canadian parties
engage in “brokerage politics” wherein they avoid taking clear policy stances in order to avoid alienating
segments of a fragmented electorate.
This thesis challenges the conventional characterization of Canadian electoral dynamics by revisiting
the role and impact of positional issues on electoral strategy. First, the results show that once measure-
ment accuracy is improved and the heterogeneity of issue effects is taken into consideration, positional
issues have non-negligible effects on individual vote choice. Second, the thesis demonstrates that the
behaviour of Canadian political parties does not fully correspond to the brokerage party model. Parties
can and do engage in behaviour prescribed by political marketing theory, to which positional issues are
central. Positional issues are at the core of an exchange between citizens who care about a small set
of issues and political parties who target these citizens using micro-campaigns. Ultimately, this thesis
shows that political parties can use positional issues to increase their room for electoral manoeuvre.
ii
Acknowledgements
I am deeply indebted to my adviser Neil Nevitte for the transformative role he has played in my life
over the last seven years. Dr. Nevitte once told me that he thinks of his function as transferring his
knowledge from his mind to the minds of his students. After much patience and perseverance, I hope that
he feels that all the time and effort he has invested in my academic development has been worthwhile.
To say that he has influenced me as a political scientist would sell short the impact he has had on my
development. More than any other person, Dr. Nevitte has changed the way I read, think, and write.
His rigour shall remain an inspiration and an example to which I will aspire for the rest of my career.
I also wish to thank the other members of my committee: Drs. Richard Nadeau and Peter Loewen.
Dr. Nadeau has been a mentor and a model to me for nearly a decade. I will never forget the uncondi-
tional support and confidence he has offered me since I was his Master’s student many years ago. Dr.
Loewen has provided me with invaluable advice as my project developed from an intuition to a set of
coherent ideas. He is one of the most talented young academics I have had the fortune to encounter and
there is no doubt in my mind that his name on my doctoral thesis will be a matter of pride for years to
come.
I am greatly indebted to the internal and external reviewers of my dissertation, Drs. Nelson Wiseman
and Eric Belanger. Dr. Wiseman’s influence on my development as a scholar of Canadian politics
began early and has persisted in shaping the way I understand the Canadian political landscape. His
guidance during my years as a teaching assistant for his Canadian politics course provided me invaluable
pedagogical training that I am certain will be an asset to me all my career. Moreover, Dr. Eric Belanger’s
careful and insightful evaluation of my thesis gave it the final pushes it needed to become a work of which
I am wholeheartedly proud.
Finally, I want to thank my colleagues and friends, old and new. Attempting to list all their names
runs the risk of forgetting some. It would be an omission for which I would not be able to forgive myself.
But all of them know who they are and how grateful I am for their encouragement and support. This is
what friends are for. I have saved the last word of acknowledgment for my family, whose role in my life
has been, and continues to be, immense. Merci.
iii
Contents
Contents iv
List of Figures viii
List of Tables x
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Research Question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.2 Case Selection: Canada and Brokerage Politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.3 Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.4 Thesis Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2 The Citizen Competence Problem in Voting Theories 16
2.1 From the Democratic Citizen to the Incompetent Voter . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.1.1 The Rationality of the Classical Democratic Citizen . . . . . . . . . 22
2.1.2 The Columbia School: The Predetermination of the Self . . . . . . 24
2.1.3 The Michigan School: Partisan First . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.2 Giving the Voters a Break? Nuance in the
Columbia and Michigan Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
iv
CONTENTS
2.2.1 Loosening Issue-Voting Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.2.1.1 Information shortcuts: Making the Most of Limited Infor-
mation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
2.2.1.2 Retrospective Voting and Valence issues . . . . . . . . . . 32
2.2.1.3 Heterogeneity and Issue Publics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.2.2 Measures and Conceptualization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
2.3 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
3 Political Marketing: In Search of Room for Manoeuvre 43
3.1 The Advent of Political Marketing: Segmentation and Positioning . . . . . 44
3.1.1 What is Political Marketing? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
3.2 A Changing World? Post-Industrial Elections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
3.2.1 Convergence or Fragmentation? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
3.2.2 A Recent Increase in Issue Voting? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3.3 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
4 A New Look at an Old Concept: Conceptualization, Measurement and
Effects of Positional Issues 65
4.1 The Conceptual Status of Positional Issues: Ontological and Causal Con-
fusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
4.1.1 The Quest for the Essence of Vote: Rival concepts . . . . . . . . . . 66
4.1.1.1 Party Identification: Causal Confusion . . . . . . . . . . . 68
4.1.1.2 Values: Ontological Confusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
4.1.2 Messy Territory: Conceptualizing Positional Issues . . . . . . . . . 74
4.2 Hypotheses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
4.3 Methodology and Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
v
CONTENTS
4.4 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
4.5 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
5 Public Issues or Issue Publics? The Distribution of Genuine Political
Attitudes 91
5.1 Heterogeneity and the Citizen Competence Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
5.1.1 A Black-And-White Electorate: Elite-Based Heterogeneity . . . . . 95
5.1.2 A Fragmented Electorate: Salience-Based Heterogeneity . . . . . . 97
5.2 Hypotheses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
5.3 Methodology and Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
5.4 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
5.5 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
6 Detecting Potential for Growth: Immigrants as Targetable Segments 112
6.1 Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
6.1.1 Immigrantness and the Welcoming Effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
6.1.2 Minority Issues and the Alienation of Racial Minority Voters . . . . 116
6.1.3 Cross-Pressured Targetable Segments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
6.2 Hypotheses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
6.3 Methodology and Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
6.4 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
6.4.1 A Welcoming Effect? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
6.4.2 Immigrantness Versus Race . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
6.4.3 Racial Minorities as Targeted Cross-Pressured Voters . . . . . . . . 132
6.5 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
vi
CONTENTS
7 Digging Deeper: The Micro-Targeting of Jewish and Muslim Voters 142
8 Conclusion 150
8.1 Macro- and Micro-Campaigns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
8.2 Potential for Future Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
8.3 Normative Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Appendix: Figures 161
Appendix: Tables 174
References 197
vii
List of Figures
2.1 The Funnel of Causality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
3.1 The Political Marketing Exchange Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
3.2 Three Types of Party Orientation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
4.1 The Various Foci of Issue Typologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
4.2 Stability of Issue Attitudes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
4.3 Effect of Issue Items and Scales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
4.4 Effect of Issues, Values and Partisan Identifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
4.5 Evolution of Issue Effects for Each Party . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
5.1 Accessibility and Stability of Issue Attitudes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
5.2 The Effect of Issue Salience: Issue publics? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
5.3 Elites or Issue Publics? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
6.1 Minorities’ Partisan Support Over Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
6.2 Independent Effects of Immigrantness and Race on the Vote . . . . . . . . 131
6.3 Immigrant and Racial Minorities’ Ideological Positions and Resistance to
the Conservatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
viii
LIST OF FIGURES
6.4 Riding-Level Effect of Issue-Public Proximity on Being a New Conservative
Voter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
7.1 Jewish and Muslim Voters’ Ideology and Propensity to Vote Conservative . 145
1 Effect of issues on vote choice (Breakdown by issues) . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
2 Effect of issues, values and partisan identifications on vote choice (Break-
down by values and party identifications) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
3 Evolution of voters’ most important issue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
4 The effect of voters’ most important issue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
5 Increase in Issue Impact? (1) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
6 Increase in Issue Impact? (2) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
7 How Citizens Perceive Parties’ Stands on Minority Matters . . . . . . . . . 168
8 Minorities’ Partisan Support Through Time (Three main parties) . . . . . 169
9 Effect of Positional Issues on Issue publics in “very ethnic” targeted ridings 170
10 East-Asian and Hispanic Canadians’ Ideological Positions and Resistance
to Conservatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
11 Evolution of the effect of being Jewish/Muslim on the vote for the Conser-
vatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
12 Evolution of the effect of being Jewish/Muslim on the vote for the Liberals 172
13 Evolution of the effect of being Jewish/Muslim on the vote for the NDP . . 173
ix
List of Tables
4.1 Eight Positional Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
6.1 The Welcoming-Party Effect: A Bonus for the Party in Power? . . . . . . . 128
6.2 Who Shifted? The New Conservative Voters of the 2011 Election . . . . . . 133
6.3 Targeted Ridings: Race, Proximity on All Issues, or Issue Publics? . . . . . 138
7.1 The Canadian Jewish and Muslim Vote (1968-2011) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
1 United States vs. Canada: The effect of scales on explained variance . . . . 174
2 Issue scales information (1) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
3 Issue scales information (2) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
4 Issue scales information (3) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
5 Issue scales information (4) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
6 Scaling information (5) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
7 Evolution of the Effect of the Economy Issue Position on Attitudes Toward
Political Parties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
8 Evolution of the Effect of the Environment Issue Position on Attitudes
Toward Political Parties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
x
LIST OF TABLES
9 Evolution of the Effect of the Foreign/US Relations Issue Position on At-
titudes Toward Political Parties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
10 Evolution of the Effect of Law and Order Issue Position on Attitudes To-
ward Political Parties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
11 Evolution of the Effect of Minority Issues Position on Attitudes Toward
Political Parties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
12 Evolution of the Effect of Moral Issues Position on Attitudes Toward Po-
litical Parties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
13 Evolution of the Effect of Social Programs Issue Position on Attitudes
Toward Political Parties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
14 Evolution of the Effect of Women Issues Position on Attitudes Toward
Political Parties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
15 Accessibility and Attitude Stability on the Same-Sex Marriage Issue . . . . 188
16 The Effect of Issue Salience: Full Regression Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
17 The Effect of Immigrantness and Ethnicity on the Liberal Vote . . . . . . . 190
18 The Effect of Immigrantness and Ethnicity on the Conservative Vote . . . 191
19 The Effect of Immigrantness and Ethnicity on the NDP Vote . . . . . . . . 192
20 Who Shifted? The New Conservative Voters in the 2011 Election . . . . . 193
21 Targeted Ridings: Race, Proximity on All Issues, or Targeted Issue Publics?194
22 Left-right scale information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
23 Jewish and Muslim Effect on Conservative Vote: Religious or Issue-Public? 196
xi
Chapter 1
Introduction
There is a persisting idea in Canada that the major Canadian political parties engage in
brokerage style politics. In a brokerage politics system, parties appeal to different voters by
not pronouncing themselves on divisive issues that might exacerbate tense social cleavages
(Carty, Young and Cross, 2000; Clarke et al., 1984). As a result, parties end up competing
for the same policy space and the same voters, and few ideological differences are developed
between them. The brokerage politics perspective views Canadian parties as “centrist,
non-ideological election machines” (Bickerton and Gagnon, 2004a, 241). Electoral choice
in such a context is influenced largely by leader images and valence issues (Clarke et al.,
1996). Valence issues, unlike positional issues, are defined by their non-polarizing nature.
They are issues upon which everyone agrees—such as the need for a good economy and
clean environment—and do not address the means by which these ends should be achieved.
As such, brokerage parties do not fit the rational party model inherent in the classical
theory of democracy (Downs, 1957). They do not develop positions on issues in an
attempt to target the median voter. Rather, brokerage parties avoid taking any positions
1
on issues at all. Yet classic democratic theory expects citizens to make vote choices based
on parties’ positions on issues. If parties do not articulate clear issue positions, how can
political issues affect the voting behaviour of citizens? The implication of the brokerage
politics model seems to be that positional issues cannot affect voting behaviour in any
substantial way.
This thesis argues that, contrary to the brokerage model, positional issues not only matter
to Canadian voters, but are also fundamental tools in the strategic toolboxes of political
parties. Positional issues can affect the voting decisions of some citizens and can thus be
used by parties to increase their room for manoeuvre in attaining their electoral goals. It is
a well-known fact that the major Canadian political parties now use political marketing
tools to segment the electorate and target specific groups of voters (Flanagan, 2011;
Goodyear-Grant, 2013; Marland, Giasson and Lees-Marshment, 2012; Pare and Berger,
2008; Watt, 2006). Positional issues are at the centre of this type of micro-targeting
strategy:
Microtargeting allows candidates to surgically deliver different messages to
different constituencies, thus expanding the arsenal of potential wedge issues
that can be used in the campaign. With direct mail, email, telephone calls,
text messaging, Web advertising, and the like, candidates can narrowcast issue
messages to some voters even if others in their coalition might disagree or
consider the issue less important. (Hillygus and Shields, 2008, 151)
Evidently, such behaviour contrasts with the expected behaviour of parties in a brokerage
politics system. How are positional issue-based strategies reconcilable with the assumption
of traditional voting models that issues have little impact on the vote?
The main argument of this thesis is that the potentially impactful role of positional issues
2
in Canadian politics has been overlooked. Most voting behaviour scholarship developed
in reaction to the finding that citizens were falling short of their expected roles in classic
democratic theory (Saris and Sniderman, 2004). Citizens lack of political competence
shifted academic focus away from electoral strategies and toward more essential or struc-
tural determinants of the vote, such as sociodemographics, values, party identification,
and the state of the economy (Campbell et al., 1960; Fiorina, 1981; Lazarsfeld, Berel-
son and Gaudet, 1948). Such perspectives have been fruitful, as they have shed light on
the long-term factors that explain the greatest portion of voting behaviour. Perspectives
focusing on short-term factors in light of citizen incompetence have looked to cognitively-
tractable factors such as valence issues and leader evaluations.
Theoretical models describing party behaviour, such as the brokerage model, also devel-
oped with the assumption that positional issues play a minimal role in political behaviour.
The argument presented in this thesis stipulates that if one is interested in examining the
narrow room for electoral manoeuvre that parties might have, one must consider posi-
tional issues. Though positional issues might only explain a small percentage of overall
electoral change, small percentages can be decisive.
Approaching the subject from this perspective, the thesis argues that the study of the
effect of positional issues on the vote has suffered from three factors: imprecise measure-
ment, unfitting conceptualization, and, more generally, a lack of theoretical interest for
marketing-based electoral strategies used by parties on the field. The thesis argues that
better measurement of positional issues, the consideration of the possible heterogeneity
of their effects, and the use of more appropriate data to observe micro-phenomena can
provide new insights on how parties can use positional issues to their electoral advantages.
An underlying aim of this thesis is to reconcile more traditional voting models with po-
3
litical marketing approaches. A first step in reaching this aim is clarifying that the two
lines of reasoning have different academic goals. While traditional voting models focus on
the macro-level factors impacting elections, political marketing models focus on parties’
abilities to generate room for manoeuvre by also running micro-campaigns. Nevertheless,
the two can serve to inform each other in consequential ways.
1.1 Research Question
In an endeavour to redress the historical lack of attention paid to positional issues, this
thesis aims to answer the following questions: Can positional issues matter? If so, for
whom? And under what conditions? This thesis examines both the effects of positional
issues on voting intentions and the roles that positional issues play in parties’ electoral
strategies.
There are both theoretical and empirical reasons for why the effects of positional issues
might have been overlooked in Canada. First, positional issues have been traditionally
operationalized and measured in ways that might have led to the underestimation of their
effects. By accounting for this measurement error, it might be possible to observe more
stable and consistent issue attitudes than those that have been captured by previous
Canadian electoral studies. And by using multi-item issue scales, it might be possible to
observe much stronger effects of issues on vote choice. Once properly measured, the effects
of positional issues might even compare with those of conventional vote predictors, such
as values and party identification. Second, how positional issue effects operate might have
been conceptualized in ways that obscured their strength. Central to this thesis is the
finding that positional issue effects can operate heterogeneously. An effect can be said to
4
operate heterogeneously if its impact on an individual with a certain characteristic depends
on another characteristic of that individual, such as her level of political sophistication
or the salience she accords to the issue under investigation. Heterogeneity of this kind
is observed when, for instance, the effect on vote choice of an individual’s position on
an issue is dependent on the importance of that issue to the individual in general. This
perspective echoes the issue-publics perspective, which assumes that voters care about,
and are thus affected by, only a small set of issues that are important to them (Krosnick,
1990). If we disaggregate the population by issue importance, the effects that arise from
examining issue publics individually could cumulatively have an effect on vote choice,
even if the effect of issue positions in the aggregate (without accounting for issue publics)
is minimal.1 It is this idea that underlies the concept of salience-based heterogeneity
presented in this thesis.
This thesis demonstrates that accounting for measurement error and the heterogeneity
of effects leads to the observation of significantly greater positional issue effects on vote
choice. These findings add some nuance to the theoretical frameworks inherited from the
Columbia and Michigan schools, which hold that the homogeneous effect of positional issue
is negligible. However, they support and contribute to the political marketing perspective,
which assumes that voter preferences and party strategies have an impact on electoral
outcomes (O’Shaughnessy, 1990; Scammell, 1999). Political marketing focuses on the
interaction, or exchange, between voters and political parties. In such an interaction,
1It is important to distinguish between issue publics and public issues. The latter concept refersto widely-shared concerns of the day. Single, highly-salient issues have played a crucial role in someCanadian elections. For instance, the Free Trade Agreement with the United States was a critical issuein the 1988 Canadian federal election (Johnston et al., 1992), health care was critical in 2000 (Nadeau,Belanger and Petry, 2010), and corruption and accountability were critical in 2006 (Andrew, Maioniand Soroka, 2006). In fact, the Free Trade Agreement with the United States in 1988 is considered aclassic example of a highly important public issue in a Canadian federal election (Johnston et al., 1992).However, the same public issues are not necessarily salient to voters from one election to the next.
5
positional issues are key elements in party’s toolboxes and are used to attract or mobilize
voters.
In order for parties to be able to use positional issues, these issues must affect citizens’
voting behaviour in a substantial way. This thesis shows that some positional issues can
affect some citizens greatly and that it is thus possible for parties to capitalize on posi-
tional issues in their quest for electoral success. The thesis also shows that the actions
parties take to capitalize on positional issues, as described by the political marketing
literature (see, for instance, Baines, 1999), are justified. According to the political mar-
keting literature, the development of new market research technologies has led political
parties to increasingly micro-target heterogeneous segments of the population (Hillygus
and Shields, 2008). Such micro-targeting is more impactful if issue effects actually operate
heterogeneously. This thesis explains party behaviour by arguing that issue effects can
indeed operate heterogeneously.
The idea that Canadian political parties use positional issues to target segments of the
electorate runs contrary to the conventional view of electoral strategies in a brokerage
party system (Carty, 2013). Indeed, the main defining characteristic of a brokerage party
is that it avoids taking clear stances on issues:
A brokerage party system defines national problems in the vaguest and most
general of terms and produces band-aid politicies to deal with them. It is often
the preferred strategy of parties during election campaigns to avoid commit-
ment to specific solutions of any depth [...] (Clarke et al., 1984, 181)
Yet positional issues are not the most important determinants of electoral results. This
thesis does not challenge the consensus that long-term structural and institutional effects,
as well as cognitively-tractable short-term effects, like valence issues, matter more. Issue
6
effects might be, as Holbrook (1996) argues, substantively similar to ‘campaign effects’,
which, even when they are as low as 3%, can have a real impact on election results: “[...]
although national conditions set the parameters of likely outcomes and contribute more to
the eventual outcome, the campaign can provide the votes that swing the outcome one way
or the other.” (Holbrook, 1996, 158) Positional issues might not always swing an election,
but focusing on the dynamics of the electorate and on parties’ potential for growth opens
up new research avenues that can reinvigorate the study of political strategy. The idea
that positional issues have systematic effects on electoral politics offers great potential to
political research by relaxing some of the constraints that have historically impeded the
empirical study of electoral strategy and, more broadly, challenged the assumptions of
political marketing. If citizens actually have stable and consistent issue attitudes, then
positional issues have the potential to render closer links between voter behaviour and
party behaviour.
By focusing on the relationship between positional issues, voter behaviour and party
behaviour, it might be possible to uncover why a party with traditional moral values like
the Conservative party of Canada, for example, took a stance in 2006 on the issue of gay
marriage but avoided taking a stance on abortion. Is this kind of party behaviour based
on myths, or does the nature of public opinion justify such campaign strategies?
1.2 Case Selection: Canada and Brokerage Politics
Canada is a particularly appropriate setting for the investigation of the relevance of issues
for the simple reason that it is a tough case: positional issues should not really matter
in Canada. The conventional wisdom is that positional issues do not explain electoral
7
behaviour in the country because a peculiar political context discourages mainstream
political parties from taking strong stands on issues (Clarke et al., 1996). Different reasons
have been offered to explain why brokerage politics developed in Canada. One line of
reasoning is based on the idea that the country has long been defined by its racial, cultural
and regional heterogeneity (see, for instance, Bourassa, 1902; Mallory, 1954; Siegfried,
1907). If parties were to take clear and unambiguous positions on issues, they would risk
alienating segments of the highly fragmented Canadian electorate or affecting national
unity. Indeed, in Canada, a politics of accommodation originated from the perceived need
for “regional brokerage” (Carty, Young and Cross, 2000, 17), a strategy some consider
optimal for winning elections (Clarkson, 2005). Emerging from that line of reasoning is
the idea that Canada is particularly susceptible to valence politics, in which policy debates
revolve around the ‘who’ and ‘what’ rather than the ‘how’ (Clarke, Scotto and Kornberg,
2010). Political parties all campaign on the same uncontentious valence issues (Stokes,
1963, 1992). At the same time, uninformed voters minimize their electoral calculations by
voting mainly on perceived competence of the parties (Petrocik, 1996) or on incumbent
performance and leader evaluations (Fiorina, 1981), thereby exacerbating the irrelevance
of positional issues. Some scholars contend that the sociodemographic characteristics and
values of Canadians also preclude issues from mattering (Blais et al., 2002). The argument
presented here contests the view that voters do not have stable issue preferences to which
parties can appeal.
A brokerage politics context and a lack of citizen competence are not the only reasons
for which positional issues have been understudied. Positional issues have also been un-
derstudied because they are idiosyncratic to each country and thus not always amenable
to comparative evaluations. The idiosyncratic nature of positional issues stands in con-
trast to the ubiquitous nature of valence issues, which are better suited for comparative
8
investigation (see Lewis-Beck, 1988; Powell, Jr. and Whitten, 1993). Positional issues
are often heavily dependent on specific “cultural” contexts (Leege et al., 2002). Issues
such as race in the United States, Turkish integration in the European Union, the asylum
seekers debate in Australia, and the Aboriginal question in Canada are all difficult to
examine cross-nationally. The solution might be to move up the ladder of abstraction
(see Sartori, 1970) by developing concepts with less defined attributes, such as ‘tolerance
toward ethnic minorities’. Such an approach can shed light on some research questions,
like that examining the global evolution of values in post-industrialized countries (see, for
instance, Inglehart, 1977). However, it is difficult to defend the idea that nothing can be
gained by moving down the ladder of abstraction and developing more precise concepts
that retain the contextually-derived symbolic dimensions of issues. The potential impact
of issues on the vote cannot be divorced from the way that issues are understood by vot-
ers. By not taking into account the unique cultural values inherent to different contexts,
we might forego insight into important psychological processes. For instance, without
understanding the cultural values of a country, we might not understand why issue fram-
ing might heterogeneously affect a demographically similar group of people (Gamson and
Modigliani, 1987).
1.3 Data
This thesis uses data drawn from all available Canadian Election Study (CES) investi-
gations from 1965 to 2011. The first two empirical chapters address the measurement
of positional issues and the heterogeneity of their effects on vote choice. The empirical
evidence for these chapters relies primarily on the 2004 and 2008 Canadian Election Stud-
ies (CES). These elections are both recent and are not considered to be positional-issue
9
oriented (see Gidengil et al., 2012). Looking for effects of positional issues in contexts in
which they are less likely to be highly determinant seems like a good place to start. The
CES datasets have several advantages: they include numerous questions probing respon-
dents’ issue attitudes. They also include a set of conventional controls such as those for
sociodemographic factors, party identification, and political sophistication. The 2004 and
2008 CES also include panel studies, which make it possible to explore the stability of
issue attitudes over time. Moreover, the CES question wordings of key items were crafted
with a concern for cross-time comparability. This last characteristic is particularly im-
portant when pooling data in order to capture heterogeneous effects in larger samples.
Pooling these data facilitates the use of group sub-sampling and multiple interactions in
statistical models, which can be used to detect heterogeneous effects (see Maxwell and
Delaney, 2004).
The CES data are also supplemented with data from the 2011 Canadian Federal Vote
Compass (VC). There are many reasons for using VC data. First, party positions on thirty
positional issues are all measured on the same five-point scale, thus allowing for direct
comparison and better dimensional analysis. Party positions were determined through
analyses of party platforms and other publicly-available documents, as well as through
discussion with party representatives. More importantly, the VC questionnaire was de-
signed specifically to probe issue attitudes while, at the same time, including conven-
tional sociodemographic variables and retaining a sample size of more than one million
respondents. Large samples permit a fine-grained segmentation of the population, such
as by riding, immigration group, or consumption of specific media channels. Thus, VC
represents an invaluable source of data for studying the heterogeneity of the electorate.
Nevertheless, there are issues related to sample selection bias that must be considered. As
with other web-based surveys, Vote Compass respondents are not selected in the random
10
way prescribed by classic survey theory (Couper, 2008). However, several methods now
exist that allow us to adjust for such shortcomings (see, for example, Alvarez et al., 2011;
Wang et al., 2014). When necessary, this thesis employs demographic weights built from
2006 Canadian census data. The use of this new kind of self-selected ‘big data’ might
foster suspicion or doubt in some researchers, but as King (2011) notes: “in many areas
of the social sciences, new forms and quantities of information may well make dramatic
progress possible” (King, 2011, 721). VC data have already been proven useful in measur-
ing the effects of different media events that occured during the 2011 Canadian election
(Dufresne et al., 2012). Others have compared VC data to more traditional online surveys
and confirmed the usefulness of VC data for explaining public opinion (Fournier, Gelineau
and Harell, 2014). The CES and VC data are ultimately compatible data sources that,
when combined, are highly valuable for political behaviour research.
1.4 Thesis Overview
The thesis proceeds as follows. The next two chapters present an overview of the lit-
erature on positional issues and thereby set out the theoretical groundwork upon which
the thesis is based. The role of this literature review is to demonstrate that, contrary to
the conventional characterization of Canadian electoral dynamics, positional issues have
a non-negligible impact on voting behaviour. As such, Canadian political parties have an
incentive to run micro-campaigns that exploit positional issue effects. Chapter 2 engages
in a more specific examination of the reasons why one might expect positional issues to
be more or less meaningful than party identification, ideology, and values. It investigates
how the lack of citizen competence has rendered a situation in which it is difficult for
positional issues to affect voters’ choices. The citizen competence problem holds that
11
the vast majority of voters are not well informed about political issues. If citizens are
not informed about issues, it is difficult for issues to affect their voting decisions and it
is difficult for parties to use issues in their electoral strategies. Chapter 3 describes po-
litical marketing theory and the way it reconceptualizes the relationship between voters
and political parties so as to redeem the relevance of positional issues. Contrary to the
brokerage politics model, the political marketing approach assumes that parties engage
in electoral strategies that very often involve positional issues. Political marketing does
not endeavour to supplant or contradict traditional voting and party theories. The two
perspectives simply have different academic goals. While traditional theories focus on
uncovering the fundamental structure of the vote, political marketing theory focuses on
investigating the narrow room for electoral manoeuvre that parties might have.
The next four chapters empirically investigate first, the possibility that positional issues
may have a substantial impact on voting behaviour and second, that political parties both
use micro-targeting to increase their support among specific groups and are justified in
doing so. To begin, Chapter 4 demonstrates how the redemption of positional issue effects
is both possible and justifiable. It explores how reconceptualizing positional issues and
measuring them in novel ways can expose their full impact. The difficulty in defining the
concepts inherent to issues, compared to the relative ease of defining concepts inherent
to values and ideology, is discussed. The distinction between valence and positional issue
voting is then clarified and disentangled from different typologies in the literature. The
principle argument of the chapter is that the effects and stability of positional issues
have often been underestimated because of measurement issues. The use of multi-item
scales strengthens the effects of positional issues at levels comparable to those of party
identification and arguably to those of values.
12
Chapter 5 further investigates how positional issues can matter by examining to whom
they might matter. To do so, it examines how genuine political attitudes are distributed
in the electorate. It is possible that the effect of positional issues is heterogeneous: the
same issues might have different impacts on different voters. But there are two types
of heterogeneity to consider: elite-based heterogeneity and salience-based heterogeneity.1
Elite-based heterogeneity views the electorate as being divided into two groups: politically
sophisticated elites and politically unsophisticated masses. Positional issues are considered
to have a significant impact on political elites and a minimal impact on the uninformed
masses. Salience-based heterogeneity assumes a more complex distribution of political
attitudes. It takes as its point of departure the “issue-publics” hypothesis (Krosnick,
1990), which posits that different voters care about different issues. It then demonstrates
how different voters are differently affected by different issues. The analyses show that
the importance accorded to issues can increase the effect these issues have on the vote to
a greater degree than can other measures of political sophistication. These results provide
some support for the segmentability of the electorate by political parties.
The last two empirical chapters (Chapters 6 and 7) examine the practical implications of
the previous findings for party strategy. They investigate whether the micro-targeting of
electoral segments like immigrant and racial minorities is a viable electoral strategy. The
argument is that the increased complexity of the electorate combined with the develope-
ment of targeting technologies led to the development of two parallel electoral campaigns:
a macro- and a micro-campaign. While the former conforms to the brokerage politics
model, the latter relies heavily on the impact of positional issues. It is for that rea-
1We might consider a third type of heterogeneity—“cognition-based” heterogeneity—, which capturesthe different ways people organize information and understand politics. However, this type of hetero-geneity seems to be quite amorphous and is not considered in this thesis. For more information aboutthis type of heterogenity, see Bartle (2005).
13
son that positional issues should perhaps be considered fundamental elements in parties’
toolboxes.
The thesis concludes with a discussion suggesting that positional issues have been un-
derstudied in Canada for two main reasons. The first reason is that citizens were long
thought to be unable to reason about positional issues sufficiently to allow such issues to
impact their vote decisions. The second reason is the enduring idea that Canadian elec-
toral dynamics exist in a context of brokerage politics reinforced by party discipline, where
positional issues are set aside principally in favour of valence issues. In order to remedy
this inattention, this thesis examines how reconceptualizing and re-operationalizing posi-
tional issues might redeem their impact on voting behaviour. The results show that once
positional issues are more accurately measured and once the heterogeneity of their effects
is taken into consideration, positional issues have non-negligible effects on individual vote
choice. Different voters care about different political issues. When precisely measured,
positional issues are revealed to matter to the voters that care about them, or to whom
they are salient. In light of these findings, the thesis explores whether parties are justified
in engaging in positional issue-based micro-targeting strategies. It first establishes that
Canadian political parties indeed employ micro-targeting tactics and thereby do not fully
correspond to the brokerage party model. Second, it demonstrates that because differ-
ent positional issues matter to and affect different segments of the population, political
parties have good reason to engage in the tactics prescribed by political marketing the-
ory. Positional issues are thus found to be at the core of an exchange between citizens
who care about a small set of issues and political parties who target these citizens using
micro-campaigns. Political parties can leverage the knowledge that positional issues affect
the behaviour of those who care about them in order to increase their room for electoral
manoeuvre. In sum, this thesis aims to offer a new perspective on positional issues and
14
to clarify why and how they can matter to both citizens and political parties.
15
Chapter 2
The Citizen Competence Problem in
Voting Theories
The question of the relevance of issues is consequential. Issues are central to political
parties’ strategies to attract voters. If voters had no significant attitudes about positional
issues, party platforms and campaign promises would be irrelevant. Some of the academic
literature suggests that this might indeed be the case. The Columbia and Michigan
schools—pioneers in the field of electoral behaviour—argue that voters do not meet classic
democratic citizenship standards because they do not have significant attitudes about
issues (Berelson, Lazarsfeld and McPhee, 1954). The cumulative empirical findings in the
academic literature demonstrate that voters’ choices are more constrained by fundamental
factors, such as the state of the economy, sociodemographics, and party attachments,
than they are by voters thoughts on issues. As a result, electoral studies from the last
few decades have focused on the study of the structural, institutional, and social forces
that stabilize electoral dynamics (see Lewis-Beck et al., 2008).
16
This chapter reviews how classical voting theories leave very little room for political
parties to impact electoral outcomes, and consequently, little room for positional issues to
matter. Such a perspective is apparent in the Columbia school’s Minimal Thesis, which
argues that campaigns do not matter (Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet, 1948), as well as
in the Michigan school’s Funnel of Causality (Campbell et al., 1960). In these theories,
voting patterns are considered to be so stable and so engrained that it is almost possible
to predict electoral outcomes ahead of time. Indeed, both the normal vote perspective
(Converse, 1966) and the predictability of electoral campaigns perspective (Gelman and
King, 1993) assume that political parties have very little latitude in determining their
electoral fate. From these vantage points, studying positional issues or other short-term
effects is at best unimportant and at worst completely fruitless.
The citizen competence problem is identified in this chapter as the principle factor explain-
ing the relative lack of scholarly attention given to positional issues and party strategies.
The first findings regarding citizen competence were disappointing, if not outright shock-
ing. Although Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet (1948) were expecting to detect the effect
of voters’ personalities and media exposure on vote choice, their data instead revealed
the decisive influence of social group membership: “[...] a person thinks, politically, as he
is, socially. Social characteristics determine political preferences” (p.69). This pessimism
about citizens’ competence was fueled by the publication of two subsequent articles by
Philip Converse, who demonstrates the disappointing level of political attitude stabil-
ity (1962) and ideological constraint (1964) in the population. Converse was puzzled by
how voter behaviour did not seem to fit classical models of democracy. Classical mod-
els of democracy expect the most knowledgeable citizens to be the most likely to shift
their political positions upon receiving new political information. Yet Converse (1962)
found that it was in fact less knowledgeable citizens—those with only middling levels of
17
information—who are most likely to shift their positions from one election to another.
Further research led him to conclude that a very large proportion of citizens exhibit a
lack of ideological constraint (Converse, 1964) and form their attitudes about political
issues randomly (Converse, 1970). Butler and Stokes (1975) replicated these findings in
the British context, arguing that individual voters have a limited understanding of the
left-right ideological spectrum.
This unflattering portrait of the electorate has driven generations of researchers to turn
their backs on issue attitudes and party strategy in order to examine the more funda-
mental underpinnings of vote choice (see Kuklinski and Peyton, 2007). Analyses of the
fundamental underpinnings of the vote have significantly contributed to our understand-
ing of voting behaviour. The micro-sociological approach of the Columbia school was
followed by the psychosocial approach of the Michigan school and the macro-sociological
approach of researchers such as Lipset and Rokkan (1967). All these approaches explain
voting behaviour by minimizing citizens’ individual input; voters’ choices are constrained
by social groups (Berelson, Lazarsfeld and McPhee, 1954; Katz and Lazarsfeld, 1955;
Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet, 1948), by psychological ties to parties, acquired through
socialization (Campbell et al., 1960; Miller and Shanks, 1996), or by structural factors
emerging from historical events such as the industrial revolution (Lipset and Rokkan,
1967). More recently, scholars have uncovered the potential of other structural factors,
such as the state of the economy (Fiorina, 1981; Lewis-Beck, 1988) and genetics (Bell,
Schermer and Vernon, 2009; Dawes and Fowler, 2009; Hatemi et al., 2010), to explain
voting behaviour.
The effects of positional issues on vote choice cannot compare in size to the effects of
more fundamental factors discovered through decades of research. However, there are
18
some factors that suggest that the effects of positional issues and campaign strategies
in general might have been underestimated. First, the original studies of the Columbia
school are much more nuanced with regards to the effects of electoral campaigns than
the label ‘minimal effects’ implies. Nowadays, it is perhaps difficult to understand the
surprise of the authors of The People’s Choice (1948) when their central hypotheses
regarding campaign effects were not supported by the data. However, while only (sic) 8%
of voters are said to have been converted by a candidate during the electoral campaign,
84% are shown to have been somehow influenced by the campaign (Lazarsfeld, Berelson
and Gaudet, 1948, 103).1 By today’s standards, few would consider these numbers as
supporting the well-known motto ‘campaigns do not matter,’ even though they suggest
that a campaign can determine the winner of the election. Similarly, Philip Converse
recently complained about the way the conclusions of his 1964 article have too often been
exaggerated in the literature: “I disavow any reading of the Belief Systems essay that
concludes that most citizens lack political attitudes. I think there is a limited stratum–10
percent? 20 percent?–with a very sparse complement of such attitudes, mostly because
of an aversion to the whole subject of politics” (Converse, 2007, 149).
Other reasons for why positional issues might have been underestimated might be related
to measurement and conceptual issues. Some scholars have shown that the effects of
positional issues increase once measurement problems are addressed (Achen, 1975; An-
solabehere, Rodden and Snyder Jr., 2008). Others argue that the effects of positional
issues might be heterogenous : individual voters care about different issues and thus might
be differently affected by different issues (Bartle, 2005). It is uncertain whether media
consumption contributes to or simply reflects this fragmentation of the electorate, but
1Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet (1948) enumerate five different effects of the 1940 Erie Countyelectoral campaign: 1) Reinforcement (53%); 2) Activation (14%); 3) Reconversion (3%); 4) Partialreconversion (6%); and 5) Conversion (8%).
19
the salience of issues varies across audiences and is reflected in voting patterns (Baum,
2002; DellaVigna and Kaplan, 2007). Finally, it might be that the effects of positional
issues were underestimated because researchers, working within a classical conception of
democracy, were not looking for them.
The effects of positional issues have the potential to stimulate research on campaign
strategies. Even if fundamental factors determine most of political behaviour, the re-
maining variance should not be dismissed. Any remaining variance, no matter how small,
represents room for political parties to impact their electoral fates. Positional issues
represent the link between parties and different types of voters and should thus not be
dismissed. Nevertheless, constraints on the effects of issue-based campaign efforts are
frequently discussed in the literature. A principle constraint is the citizen competence
problem. However, recent works show that positional issues are in fact used by parties
to alter voters’ perceptions of their ideological positions (van der Brug, 2004), to attract
cross-pressured partisans (Hillygus and Shields, 2008), to distract voters from the state
of the economy (Vavreck, 2009), or to highlight particular personal characteristics of can-
didates (Jacobs and Shapiro, 1994). Some scholars even suggest that issues might be
the main cause of conversion from one party to another (Luskin, McIver and Carmines,
1989). This role of issues does not contradict the Columbia school model. Indeed, even
if social factors structure electoral dynamics, “social groups need to be treated as live
social forces, not static categories” (Blais et al., 2002, 96). The increasing fragmentation
of the media space and the development of new communication technologies offers new
opportunities for political parties to create micro-campaigns aimed at reaching and influ-
encing different types of voters (Baines, 1999). In constrast with the conception of the
traditional macro-campaign, positional issues could be considered as being at the heart
of micro-campaigns.
20
This chapter is divided in two main sections. The first section reviews classic voting
theories and shows how their development in and application to the Canadian context was
influenced by the citizen competence problem. The second section discusses the different
suggestions that have been made to improve the measurement of positional issues and the
different works that loosen the conditions under which issues can matter.
2.1 From the Democratic Citizen to the Incompetent
Voter
Various theories support the claim that positional issues do not matter. Some authors
focus on the nature of campaigns and media coverage to defend this claim. In these
cases, the media and political parties are considered responsible for issues not mattering.
Some argue, for example, that media attention is more often directed at the electoral
horse race (Norris et al., 1999), party image (Egan, 1999) and leaders (Mendelsohn, 1996)
than it is at issues. Other authors argue that the effect of positional issues is limited
because parties either take similar or ambiguous positions on issues (Page and Brody,
1972). Alvarez (1998) argues that party ambiguity on issues increases voters’ uncertainty
and thus decreases voters’ inclinations to vote on the basis of issues. However, most
influential theories of voting behaviour put the responsibility for issues not mattering on
citizens.
The key to understanding the limited interest in the study of positional issues is the citizen
competence problem: the idea that voters fail to meet their expected role in a democratic
society. There are cumulative findings showing that voters lack political information and
are not ideologically constrained (Butler and Stokes, 1975; Converse, 1964; Delli Carpini
21
and Keeter, 1996). This line of reasoning represents an elite-centric perception of the
mass public, wherein only a handful of citizens possess substantial political information.
One version of the elite-centric perspective suggests that “individuals never think for
themselves” (Zaller, 1992, 287) or that “the voice of the people is but an echo” (Key,
1961, 2). As such, only a small proportion of the population is expected to base its vote
decisions on issue positions (Goren, 1997; Neuman, 1986). Issues just cannot matter very
much in models portraying citizens as “muddle-headed” or “empty-headed” (Saris and
Sniderman, 2004, 337). The pessimism concerning voters’ ability to reason politically can
be traced back to the origins of modern electoral studies.
2.1.1 The Rationality of the Classical Democratic Citizen
In its simplest form, democracy implies that citizens vote for politicians who share their
political preferences. Yet when interpreted literally, this simple task ends up being very
demanding for individual voters. As Berelson, Lazarsfeld and McPhee (1954) point out,
for individual citizens to meet their expected role in a classic democratic system, they
must be politically interested, motivated, knowledgeable, principled, and rational. In such
a case, the link between citizens and political parties rests on maximizing one another’s
utility. This view was first formalized in Anthony Downs’ (1957) Economic Theory of
Democracy, which conceptualized voters and political parties as rational actors. This
rational view also provided the foundation for a spatial theory of voting (Enelow and
Hinich, 1984).
Downs’ economic explanation of voting behaviour is derived from the classical conception
of democracy and developed into the rational-choice theory of voting. The theory is based
on the idea that electoral behaviour can be explained with the same models that are used
22
to study the economic market. Once the rationality of political parties and voters is
assumed, the model has the ability to explain and predict the behaviour of these actors.
For the proponents of this theory, there are few, if any, differences between voters and
consumers and between political parties and commercial companies (Schlesinger, 1991).
Voters, like consumers, seek to maximize their utility, and political parties, like companies,
seek to maximize their profits, in this case electoral gains (Downs, 1957, 295-296). Thus,
political parties take positions on issues that allow them to gather the largest vote share:
“[...] parties formulate policies in order to win elections, rather than win elections in order
to formulate policies” (Downs, 1957, 28). In the case that the democratic political system
offers a certain level of consistency and differentiation between options, rational citizens
can fulfill their classic democratic roles and vote according to their preferences. These
assumptions enable the spatial representation of parties and voters’ positions in a given
electoral context.
To represent strategic positions, Downs (1957) uses a linear scale that aggregates eco-
nomic issue positions of both voters and parties. This scale allows for the estimation
of the optimal position of parties and, consequently, for the prediction of their relative
positionings. More precisely, in a context in which voter distribution is unimodal, Downs
(1957) predicts that parties will converge toward the same position. This line of reasoning
is further developed by the spatial theory literature. Some scholars expanded the model’s
unidimensional aspect (Stokes, 1963). In a multidimensional ideological space, the best
position for a party would be at the junction of all spatial dimensions’ averages (Hol-
combe, 1989). Such a median voter position minimizes the sum of the distances from all
voters. However, the median voter is not considered an optimal position by all scholars
in the spatial theory literature. Rabinowitz and Macdonald (1989), for instance, contend
that voters do not seek to maximize their proximity to political parties. Instead, they are
23
often more likely to support parties that promise to shift policies in their own preferred
ideological direction. For example, if an incumbent is implementing policies that are con-
sidered too conservative by a moderate conservative voter, that voter might vote for a
progressive party to shift governance in his preferred direction, even if he is ideologically
closer to the conservative party.
Despite attempts to refine Anthony Downs’ model of voting, its main weakness re-
mains: the rational voter assumption does not fit the empirical evidence presented by
the Columbia school. As Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet (1948) put it: “The notion
that people who switch parties during the campaign are mainly reasoned, thoughtful,
conscientious people who were convinced by issues of the election is just plainly wrong”
(69).1 The criticisms of this assumption motivated more than 50 years of research aimed
at questioning and understanding the citizen competence problem (Kuklinski and Peyton,
2007).
2.1.2 The Columbia School: The Predetermination of the Self
The Columbia school sees individual choice as principally influenced by the sociodemo-
graphic group to which the individual belongs: “[...] a person thinks, politically, as he is,
socially. Social characteristics determine political preferences.” (Lazarsfeld, Berelson and
Gaudet, 1948, 69) This conclusion follows the finding that voters’ personalities and their
exposure to media have very little influence on vote choice. According to the proponents
1Many in the literature also criticize rational-choice theory for its failure to explain the most basicquestions. For instance, Uhlaner (1989) and Blais (2000) both point out the inability of model to explainwhy most citizens actually do vote: “[...] unfortunately for the theory, many people do vote” (Blais, 2000,2). Green and Shapiro (1996) offer a more general criticism of rational-choice theory and its applicationin political science. According to these authors, rational-choice suffers from 1) post-hoc theoreticaldevelopment; 2) the absence of empirical tests; and 3) selection bias.
24
of the Columbia school, voters are so socially bound that their behaviour can be explained
by three sets of variables: 1) Socio-economic status; 2) Religion; and 3) Area of residence.
These indicators constitute what Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet (1948) name the polit-
ical predispositions of individuals. Therefore, the act of voting is not considered by these
scholars as an individual act, but a social one: ”People vote, not only with their social
group, but also for it” (Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet, 1948, 148). This explains why
the Columbia school is also known as the micro-sociological approach.
The findings of the early Columbia school studies necessarily discourage the study of cam-
paign strategies and positional issues. In this perspective, the study of intra-group socio-
logical processes is more useful to understanding political behaviour. From the Columbia
school findings emerged many important concepts used in modern political communica-
tions theory such as selective attention and two-step-flow communications. The latter
concept holds that the flow of political information moves from social groups’ opinion
leaders to less politically active voters (Katz, 1957; Katz and Lazarsfeld, 1955). Such
a process reinforces the maintenance of intra-group homogeneity and the persistence of
social group differentiation (Berelson, Lazarsfeld and McPhee, 1954).
The Columbia school does not consider electoral campaigns useless. Their influence was
just found to be so secondary that related factors such as positional issues and campaign
strategies did not merit much attention. Nevertheless, the Columbia school model does
not well explain the variation in party vote share from one election to the next. The
sociological approach can also not explain why the state of the economy affects electoral
results or why some people do not vote according to their political predispositions. It is in
reaction to this perceived static aspect of the Columbia school model that the Michigan
school model developed.
25
2.1.3 The Michigan School: Partisan First
The outline of the Michigan school model of voting behaviour was first presented in The
American Voter (Campbell et al., 1960). The keystone of the Michigan school model is
party identification; a concept that adds dynamism to the sociological model while at the
same time addressing the citizen competence problem.
The main distinction between the Columbia and Michigan schools resides in the impor-
tance accorded to psychology in the vote decision-making process. The core of Michigan
school model rests on psychological theories that aim to explain individuals’ affective
orientations toward groups:
Both reference group theory and small-group studies of influence have con-
verged upon the attracting or repelling quality of the group as the generalized
dimension most critical in defining the individual-group relationship, and it is
this dimension that we call identification. (Campbell et al., 1960, 121)
Partisanship is psychological and its strength varies across individuals. This emotional
attachment to a party is acquired through a socialization process. Miller and Shanks
(1996) compare this process to the way individuals are socialized into a religion by their
environment. Voters have different levels of attachment to their party just as people have
different degrees of religiosity. The strength of such emotional links is heavily influenced
by sociodemographic and environmental factors (Campbell et al., 1960). Some even sug-
gest that partisanship is a form of social identification like that proposed by the Columbia
model (Green, Palmquist and Schickler, 2002). Berelson, Lazarsfeld and McPhee (1954)
have already suggested that voters’ partisan allegiances might drive their ideologies and
political positions. The causal order implied by the Michigan school is thus the com-
26
plete opposite of the order described by classical democratic theory, wherein voters’ issue
positions drive their support for parties.
A crucial element of the Michigan model is the conceptual distinction between parti-
sanship and vote choice. This distinction means that a voter’s psychological inclination
toward a party does not necessarily translate into a vote for that party. Such a distinction
adds the dynamic aspect to the Michigan model that is missing in the Columbia model.
The Michigan school perspective sees vote choice as less predetermined than does the
Columbia school perspective. Like other long-term factors that influence behaviour, such
as sociodemographics, religion and values, partisanship might be difficult to alter. But the
vote can nevertheless be influenced by short-term factors specific to an election (Campbell
et al., 1960; Lewis-Beck et al., 2008; Miller and Shanks, 1996). If short-term factors such
as the state of the economy, positions on issues, or the quality of candidates disappoint
a voter enough, he or she might decide to vote for another party or simply not to vote,
especially if the voter’s partisan attachment is relatively weak. However, according to
the proponents of the Michigan school, such disloyal behaviour does not affect the voter’s
fundamental partisanship (Green and Shapiro, 1996). The Funnel of Causality (see Fig-
ure 2.1) conveys the idea that vote decision is the result of the influence of subsequent
factors, the most determinant of which are long-term factors such as sociodemographics
and partisanship.
Given the great influence of the Columbia and Michigan schools on voting behaviour re-
search, it is not surprising that little attention has been paid to the study of positional
issues. Research conducted with these approaches has focused on uncovering the funda-
mental factors underpinning voting behaviour. The Funnel of Causality illustrates well
the quest for the structural root of the vote: a person’s vote is influenced by his or her
27
Figure 2.1: The Funnel of Causality
Socio-Demographics
Party Identification
Issues
Candidates
VOTE
Time
Note: Figure taken from The American Voter Revisited (Lewis-Beck et al., 2008, 23).
party identification, which is itself influenced by sociodemographic factors. In an era when
citizens were revealed as incapable of fulfilling their democratic roles, it is understandable
that scholars such as those belonging to the Michigan School were focused on uncovering
structures that stabilize the democratic system.
Not all scholars agree with the assumptions underlying the Michigan model. Some scholars
note the difficulty of exporting the model outside of the American context, to multi-
party systems like Canada (Budge, Crewe and Farlie, 1976; Leduc et al., 1984; Meisel,
1975).1 Others argue that the model might be less relevant today given a recent weakening
1Many studies show that party identification is less influential in Canada than in the United States.
28
of partisan attachment in the United States and elsewhere (Dalton, 1984). But, more
importantly here, Fiorina (1981) and many others argue that the model exaggerates the
inalterability or the causal priority of partisanship (see also Franklin, 1992; Kiewiet and
Rivers, 1985). The next section discusses the reasons why the effects of short-term factors
like positional issues might have been underestimated.
2.2 Giving the Voters a Break? Nuance in the
Columbia and Michigan Models
The core of the citizen competence problem is that voters cannot vote according to po-
litical issues if they cannot grasp the substance of politics. Many scholars now agree that
the citizen competence problem might have been overstated (see Kuklinski and Peyton,
2007). Even Converse (1975) complains that the conclusions of his 1964 article are too
often simplistically cited: “They are frequently misinterpreted as saying that not much of
anybody has public opinions about much of anything. This is a disastrous misconstruc-
tion, for it fits no data at all” (Converse, 1975, 83). But, as Saris and Sniderman (2004)
put it: “The dominant themes of two generations of research have been that citizens tend
to be muddle-headed (the lack of constraint theme), empty headed (the non-attitude
Early Canadian electoral studies even claim that the concept of party identification “may be almost in-applicable in Canada” (Meisel, 1975, 67). Or that the Canadian electorate is composed of an importantnumber of ‘flexible partisans’ that are more susceptible to short-term forces (Clarke et al., 1996). However,the Canadian exceptionalism regarding weak partisanship and, more specifically, the reconceptualizationof party identification based on the distinction between flexible and stable partisans have attracted differ-ent criticisms. Most of these criticisms state that Clarke et al. (1996) typology suffers from measurementand conceptualization problems that tend to exaggerate the levels of volatility in Canada: 1) Wiseman(1986) observes that the typology is based on recall information, subject to bias; 2) Johnston (1992)argues that the exclusion from the party identification question of a ‘none’ category produces significantmeasurement error; and 3) Blake (1982) argues that considering inconsistent party identification betweenlevels of government should not be considered as a measure of flexibility. In Canada, the lack of symmetryin federal and provincial party systems does not necessarily make for unstable voting within level.
29
theme) or both” (Saris and Sniderman, 2004, 337-338). There are two major critiques of
these dominant research lines. The first is methodological, questioning mostly the mea-
surement of political information. The second is theoretical and endeavours to loosen the
requirements for making enlightened political choices.
2.2.1 Loosening Issue-Voting Requirements
The classic democratic citizen is a super-voter that is expected to have genuine attitudes
on many different political issues and to know party positions on these issues. Given these
high requirements, it is no wonder that the Columbia and Michigan schools were able to
declare most citizens politically incompetent: “people’s motivation is weak if not absent
[...] a sense of fitness is a more striking feature of political preference than reason and
calculation” (Berelson, Lazarsfeld and McPhee, 1954, 308-311). If voters show so little
political competence, how could their attitudes on positional issues matter?
Despite the citizen competence problem, many citizens do manage to make vote deci-
sions. In fact, Key (1961) points out that people generally tend to vote rationally even
if their political ideas are fuzzy. Why might that be the case? Some scholars argue
that the expectations imposed on voters might have been exaggerated: “if ‘attitudes’ are
taken to mean logically consistent summary evaluations of any conceivable political object
[...] then it seems clear to me that even splendidly well-informed, attentive citizens will
routinely flunk the test” (Bartels, 2003, 63). The American Voter. As Margolis (1977)
points out: “Although voters’ positions on the issues did not provide a very powerful
explanation of actual votes cast, the relationship between individuals’ positions on the
issues and their votes was by no means random” (Margolis, 1977, 31). Indeed, mini-
mal attitudes, involving meagre thought and information, are probably more common
30
than Converse’s non-attitudes (Luskin, 1987). Also, it has been shown that citizens vary
‘wisely’ in their degree of political sophistication; voters might not be fully informed, but
they can nonetheless make smart use of their limited information (Saris and Sniderman,
2004). As Key Jr. (1966) states: “Voters are not fools” (p.7). This use of limited infor-
mation might explain in part why Carmines and Stimson (1980) observe widespread issue
voting within the electorate despite observing relatively low levels of political information
and involvement. Ultimately, efforts to mitigate the citizen competence problem can be
grouped into three categories: 1) The use of heuristics or information shortcuts; 2) The
evaluation of incumbent’s and other candidates’ competences with regards to valence is-
sues; and 3) Issue publics and a focus on a small set of positional issues. These three lines
of research all loosen the competence requirements for issues to matter to voters. The
third category, which holds that different people care about different issues, underpins
the idea of the heterogeneity of effects presented in this thesis.
2.2.1.1 Information shortcuts: Making the Most of Limited Information
Information shorcuts counter voters’ lack of political information (Sniderman, Brody and
Tetlock, 1991). Instead of conforming to the ideal of democratic citizenship, voters resort
to psychological cues to avoid having to acquire complex political information. Although
voters do not have extensive knowledge about politics, they still find ways to reason about
parties, candidates, and issues (Popkin, 1991).1
Even the most informed voters use psychological shortcuts. The limitations of human
thought preclude people from acquiring the kind of political information described in nor-
1Downs (1957) posits the idea of information shortcuts in his rational theory of democracy. It mightvery well be rational for individuals to ignore things they cannot change and thus be politically ignorant.Indeed, Downs views political ideologies as shortcuts: “With this short cut a voter can save himself thecost of being informed upon a wider range of issues” (Downs, 1957, 98).
31
mative democratic theories (Bartels, 2002). Some scholars argue that group cues provided
during a campaign allow less-informed voters to understand the position of their social
group on issues and vote accordingly (Lupia, 1994, 1998). Even voters’ gut-level likes and
dislikes can fill the gaps between less-informed and more-informed voters (Brady and Sni-
derman, 1985; Popkin, 1991; Sniderman, Brody and Tetlock, 1991).1 But others are less
certain. For instance, Kuklinski and Quirk (2000) show that heuristics do not perfectly
compensate for a lack of information and can introduce bias. Nevertheless, information
shortcuts perspectives offer convincing theoretical and empirical evidence that voters can
hold political attitudes without being unrealistically politically sophisticated.
2.2.1.2 Retrospective Voting and Valence issues
Other ways have also been proposed to explain how voters make the best use of their
imperfect political information. One possiblity is that citizens simply vote according to
perceived performance of the incumbent administration (Key Jr., 1966). The ‘reward-
punishment’ theory of elections boils citizens’ democratic burden down to the decision
about whether or not to ‘throw the rascals out’ (Fiorina, 1981). Long before Fiorina
(1981), Downs (1957) also mentioned such retrospective voting as a cost-cutting mech-
anism for rational but uninformed voters. Voters do consider the incumbents’ economic
performance while in office when making a vote decision (Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier,
1The literature on information heuristics is vast and different views exist about what qualifies as aninformation shortcut. For instance, some scholars consider ideologies and values as shortcuts; Hinich andMunger (1994) see ideology as reducing the transaction cost of political exchange, as it reduces uncertaintyand information costs. However, considering ideologies or values as ‘cues’ might be tautological, dependingon how these concepts are defined. Ideologies and values can be thought of as summaries of preferencesas much as they can be thought of as determinants of preferences. The definitional distinction betweenexternal and internal cues requires further investigation. Internal cues such as ideologies are not consistentwith Popkin’s (1991) external conception of heuristics. Popkin (1991) conceptualizes heuristics as externalcues that exploit campaign information to help voters reach conclusions about which candidate will bestserve their interests.
32
2009). The ideas posited by Fiorina triggered an entire literature about the effects of
economic performance on retrospective evaluations of actors and, ultimately, vote choice
(see Lewis-Beck and Paldam, 2000; van der Brug, van der Eijk and Franklin, 2007).
The idea of retrospective economic voting is appealing: uninformed voters just have to
look to their pocketbooks when deciding whether or not to vote for the governing party.
However, the empirical evidence presents a more complex story. Some scholars have
found that prospective evaluations of economic performance can matter as much to vote
decisions than retrospective evaluations of an incumbent’s past economic performance
(Kuklinski and West, 1981; Nadeau and Lewis-Beck, 2001). In a prospective evaluation,
a citizen evaluates the incumbent’s ability to improve or maintain a good economy in
the future. Such a consideration is obviously more cognitively demanding than simply
remembering or noticing the current state of the economy. The finding that perhaps runs
the most counter to individualistic economic logic is that voters assign more weight to
collective economic interests than personal economic interests when evaluating a party or
candidate (Kinder and Kiewiet, 1979). Collectively, observations about economic voting
highlight the fact that voters do care about the competence of their governors.
Different theories in the literature assess citizens’ perceptions of competence on vote
choice. These theories extend beyond economic competency and are not restricted to
incumbent evaluations. Numerous studies document the importance of valence issues
on vote choice (Ansolabehere, 2000; Clarke et al., 2010, 2009; Stokes, 1992). Valence
issues, as opposed to positional issues (or ‘pro-con issues’), are defined by Stokes (1963)
as issues on which almost no voter disagrees (e.g., economic well-being, accessible health
care, protection from terrorism, and honesty in government). Political parties can focus on
these consensual issues without alienating any segment of the electorate (Clarke, Kornberg
33
and Scotto, 2008). In turn, uninformed voters can limit their reasoning to just selecting
the best candidate to deal with valence issues. Brokerage politics models encourage this
kind of limited reasoning as political parties within brokerage systems campaign on valence
issues instead of pronouncing themselves on contentious positional issues.
2.2.1.3 Heterogeneity and Issue Publics
Most attempts to deal with the citizen competence problem, like information shortcut and
retrospective voting theories, recognize that positional issues’ direct impact on vote choice
is negligible. They try to explain how voters are able to cast votes that correspond to
their preferences without holding genuine attitudes on positional issues. Most works that
account for a lack of political sophistication also criticize the classic democratic citizen
proposed by spatial theory models (see Kuklinski and Quirk, 2000).1 Indeed, in revisit-
ing The American Voter (1960), Lewis-Beck et al. (2008) enumerate different reasons for
which we should not expect issues to matter to vote choice. Among these reasons are vot-
ers’ ‘internal’ limitations, including general political competence, familiarity with issues,
and ability to perceive party differences on issues. If a voter is unable to cognitively grasp
an issue or its implications, he or she is unlikely to develop a position on that issue and
use it to make a vote choice. There are also ‘external limitations’ on the effects of issues.
For instance, if many different issues are given equal media attention during a campaign,
the explanatory effect of a single issue on the vote might be imperceptible. However, most
1It must be noted that an effort has been made by spatial theory scholars to adapt their models. Forinstance, Rabinowitz and Macdonald (1989) concede that citizens do not have clear positions on issues.Instead, voters have diffused preferences and choose candidates that advocate the clearest stance in thedirection that voters prefer. Another attempt to scale down spatial theory models’ assumptions is foundin the work of Hinich and Munger (1994), who argue that what matters in spatial theory is ideology,not issues. Finally, Merrill and Grofman (1999) present a ‘unified model’ that conceptualizes ‘candidateacceptability’ by being a directional model with proximity constraint.
34
of these limitations assume that each issue affects every individual in the same way, or,
as articulated by spatial theory, that all issues matter equally for each voter. But what
if some issues matter only for some voters? This concept is the driving force behind the
issue-publics hypothesis.
Some scholars argue that voters can only care and be knowledgeable about a small set of
issues, and that different voters care about different issues (Krosnick, 1990). According to
Krosnick, knowledge about specific issues differs depending on the voter, and voters are
more receptive to parties’ positions on issues they care about. Issue publics comprise the
citizens that are alert, attentive, interested and informed about a given issue (Key, 1961).
If such issue publics exist, political knowledge might be more specific than generalized.
Some voters might know a lot about one issue without knowing much about other issues.
Citizens’ motivations to acquire knowledge might be triggered by specific interests. Some
scholars argue that issues need to be considered important to voters to influence their vote
(Rabinowitz, Prothro and Jacoby, 1982). Others contend that people are able to translate
their policy preferences into voting choices on issues that are important to them (RePass,
1971). If voters care about a variety of different issues, it is not surprising that the effect of
issues has not been detected in aggregate homogeneous voting models. Even proponents
of the Michigan school admit that knowledge about issues is not evenly distributed in the
population: “We still need to determine why familiarity with a single issue or a common
set of issues varies from one citizen to the next” (Lewis-Beck et al., 2008, 171).1
The issue publics idea is important because it relaxes the conditions for issue voting im-
plicit in spatial models and criticisms of issue voting. Voters do not have to know all
1However, some scholars argue that political knowledge is mostly a general, and not a specific, phe-nomenon. These scholars also observe that “[...] more than a small fraction of the public is reasonablywell informed about politics—informed enough to meet high standards of good citizenship” (Delli Carpiniand Keeter, 1996, 269).
35
parties’ positions on all issues. They can handle being knowledgeable about a small set of
issues that are important to them: “people who consider a policy attitude to be important
are indeed more likely than those who consider it unimportant to perceive a substantial
difference between competing candidates’ attitudes” (Krosnick, 1990, 66). Stable atti-
tudes on a single issue can exist without ideological consistency. For instance, Jews and
Muslims living in Canada might be more informed about the Canadian government’s po-
sition on the Israeli issue as it likely triggers more interest in their communities than in
other communities. It is worth noting that Converse, who is most often associated with
the concept of ‘non-attitudes’, also participated in the development of the ‘issue-public’
concept. In The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics (1964), Converse mentions
the possibility of specialized political sophistication: “We do not disclaim the existence
of entities that might best be called ‘folk ideologies,’ nor do we deny for a moment that
strong differentiations in a variety of narrower values may be found within subcultures of
less educated people” (Converse, 1964, 66).
To summarize, since the early findings of the Columbia and Michigan schools, a great
deal of attention has been paid to the citizen competence problem. Different solutions
have been proposed to explain how uninformed voters end up making political choices.
These include the use of information shortcuts, valence politics, and issue publics.1 Of
all solutions, only the one based on the fragmentation of the electorate into different
1The current discussion about the proposed solutions to the citizen competence problem focuses onmicro-level or psychological explanations. However, it must be noted that many scholars consider thatthe solution is in the aggregation of the individual opinions. The main logic is as follows: because mostcitizens hold ‘random’ attitudes on policy issues (Converse, 1970), these opinions cancel one another outwhen aggregated and reveal attitudinal consistency (Erikson, MacKuen and Stimson, 2001, 429) or evenrationality (Page and Shapiro, 1992). This would explain why, despite individual instability, collectiveopinion moves in stable, recognizable patterns (Stimson, 1999). The aggregation of opinions or macro-politics would explain economic voting: “It is true that individual Americans have a weak grasp on theessentials of economics and economic policy, and it is also true that Americans, in the aggregate, arehighly sensitive to real economic performance” (Erikson, MacKuen and Stimson, 2001, xxi).
36
issue publics considers positional issues to be an important component of vote choice.
The literature on information shortcuts usually focuses on how voters can end up making
reasonable political choices without holding firm attitudes on issues. By definition, the
valence politics model also does not consider positional issues as being important. Yet,
as will be shown here, the valence politics model and the idea of issue publics might not
be entirely irreconcilable. It is possible that a valence issue-based macro-campaign might
coexist with an issue public-based micro-campaign that targets voters sensitive to certain
positional issues. More importantly, the issue-publics concept opens the door to the idea
of the heterogeneity of issue effects, a concept central to the arguments presented in this
thesis but one that is difficult to operationalize. The study of positional issues also faces
a variety of methodological and conceptual challenges.
2.2.2 Measures and Conceptualization
Recent advances in measurement (Ansolabehere, Rodden and Snyder Jr., 2008) and the
development of the concept of mass public heterogeneity (Bartle, 2005; Goldberg, 2011;
Krosnick, 1991) have introduced new ways of thinking about issue effects. As shown
below, the methodological solutions to the citizen competence problem are compatible
with some of the theoretical responses presented above. Achen (1975), for example,
demonstrates that measurement correction could improve the stability and coherence of
voters’ political thinking. The idea of the heterogeneity of the mass public is also not
new. In 1964, Converse proposed that “[...] we come a step closer to reality when we
recognize the fragmentation of the mass public into a plethora of narrower issue publics”
(Converse, 1964, 245).
37
Achen (1975) was among the first to challenge the contention that people answer survey
questions at random and therefore do not have real attitudes about political matters.
Achen showed that both the ‘stability’ and the ‘coherence’ of voters’ political thinking
increased when corrected for measurement error. Indeed, some argue that the use of
multi-item scales for measuring positional issues might help to uncover their effects on
vote choice (Ansolabehere, Rodden and Snyder Jr., 2008). Such a way of measuring
and operationalizing issues might be more consistent with current political psychology
research. People sometimes misinterpret questions, are not familiar with terminology
or have different considerations that frame their answers (Saris and Sniderman, 2004;
Tourangeau, Rips and Rasinski, 2000). The use of multiple items serves to correct, in part,
these measurement errors. The result is a more abstract measure of positional issues that
fits with Bartels’ (2002) conception of an attitude. Indeed, according to Bartels, citizens
hold attitudes on issues–that is, psychological tendencies–but do not have elaborated
preferences, which are essentialist and discrete expressions.
The debate sparked by measurement theorists is more consequential than it might initially
seem, as it implies different assumptions about citizens’ reasoning abilities.1 On the one
hand, Zaller (1992) rejects the presumption that survey responses are manifestations
of underlying fixed attitudes, which can be corrupted by measurement error. On the
other hand, scholars like Ansolabehere, Rodden and Snyder Jr. (2008) contend that ”[...]
the tension in the empirical literature [on issue voting] stems from measurement error
in individual issue items” (Ansolabehere, Rodden and Snyder Jr., 2008, 223). Even in
high-quality surveys such as the ANES and GSS, Ansolabehere, Rodden and Snyder Jr.
(2008) show that measurement error can explain approximately half of the variance in
1For those interested in this measurement debate, it is striking how the question of issue measurementechoes the debate about whether to include a ‘Don’t know’ option in surveys (see Krosnick, 1991). Bothdebates involve a disagreement between scholars about whether voters have latent genuine attitudes.
38
responses within a typical issue item. Differences in preferences are therefore blurred
substantively by measurement error. The use of multi-item scales is thus appropriate
to correct measurement error (McIver and Carmines, 1981). These scales might offer
evidence to support the idea that voters have consistent and stable policy preferences, that
issues matter to the electorate, and that the heterogeneity of sophistication among the
population matters for issue voting (Ansolabehere, Rodden and Snyder Jr., 2008).
The concept of heterogeneity and its operationalization into models of electoral choice
is also a promising avenue for circumventing the citizen competence problem (Bartle,
2005). Heterogeneity is the idea that not all voters reason the same way, and that voters’
political behaviour therefore does not follow the same regularities or decision processes
(Rivers, 1988). The concept of heterogeneity can take different forms and has been used to
criticize the uniform nature of some theoretical models. Some scholars, for example, apply
the concept of heterogeneity to spatial theory: “It is possible that some voters evaluate
candidates according to the proximity model, whereas others use a directional measure. In
other words, heterogeneity among voters is an alternative explanation to individual mixed
utilities” (Merrill and Grofman, 1999, 79). Others argue that some heterogeneity exists in
the cognitive organization of belief systems (Baldassarri and Goldberg, 2010). This line of
research is reminiscent of Axelrod’s Schema Theory, which aims at “providing new insights
into how people can and should cope with the highly complex environments typical of
political arenas” (Axelrod, 1973, 1249). Similarly, Hochschild (1981) suggests that the
lack of consistency found in publics’ belief systems could dissimulate the simple fact that
elite standards of ideological consistency do not capture ordinary citizens’ patterns of
belief.1
1It needs to be noted that the bases of heterogeneity are not necessarily psychological. Heterogeneitycan also be geographically-based. For instance, Gelman et al. (2008) has shown that in the United Statesthe effect of partisanship is much more important in poor states than it is in rich states.
39
It is easy to see that the concept of heterogeneity can render theoretical voting models
significantly more complex. To avoid confusion, it is crucial to determine the source of
the heterogeneity intended for study. The idea that different voters might be influenced
differently by the same issues is not new. Converse’s (1970) Black and White model im-
plicitly considers heterogeneity: a small number of people have political attitudes on issues
while others answer at random. Political elites ought therefore to vote more according
to their issue positions than do the larger group of uninformed voters. Such elite-based
heterogeneity is present in the Canadian electorate (Roy, 2009). From this perspective,
the effect of positional issues on the vote is moderated by political information. But is
it possible that different types of voters can be influenced by different issues? If so, then
issue-based heterogeneity should also be taken into consideration.
Issue-based heterogeneity is intrinsic to the idea of issue publics. As Krosnick (1990)
argues, the electorate is fragmented into a multitude of issue publics of different sizes.
These groups of voters only care and are only adequately informed about a small set of
issues. If Krosnick is correct, it is easy to see why the effect of positional issues might
have been underestimated in traditional vote choice models. If moral issues, for instance,
are only important to a very small portion of the electorate, their effect on the vote would
not appear as strong and significant in homogeneous models. They would still have an
impact on the vote, but not one detectable by models that assume that their effects are
the same for those who care about moral issues and those who do not.
40
2.3 Discussion
Traditional voting theories do not allow the full potential of positional issue effects to
be realised. Since the empirical findings of the Columbia School, research has focused
primarily on solving the challenge to democratic normative models caused by the citizen
competence problem. This challenge led researchers to pay more attention to fundamental
long-term determinants of vote choice than to short-term factors like positional issues.
Cumulative empirical evidence established the importance of social group membership
and partisanship in structuring voting patterns. Thereafter, the influence of short-term
factors, such as the fluctuation of the economy and party competence, have been largely
documented (Lewis-Beck, 1988; Petrocik, 1996). Despite the attention given to positional
issues in recent years (see Ansolabehere, Rodden and Snyder Jr., 2008; Hillygus and
Shields, 2008), this short-term factor (central to the classic democratic model) is still
largely neglected in the field of electoral studies. The relative unimportance of positional
issues compared to more fundamental factors might partially explain this neglect. The
centrality of the citizen competence problem in traditional voting theories might have
also contributed to limiting interest in examining the effects of cognitively-demanding
positional issues. But recent reconceptualizations and methodological advances in the
voting behaviour literature suggest new ways for positional issues to matter. In particular,
new developments in measurement theory and the concept of issue-based heterogeneity
in the electorate suggest that voters can cogitate, within limits, about positional issues.
The literature review presented in this chapter therefore suggests that positional issues
may matter. Consequently, it is reasonable to revisit the effects of positional issues on
voting behaviour and to re-examine their role in campaign strategies. The next chapter
does precisely that and, in doing so, presents a political marketing framework that offers
41
parties issue-based room for manoeuvre.
42
Chapter 3
Political Marketing: In Search of
Room for Manoeuvre
The conception of the electorate as heterogeneous is at the core of the political marketing
approach. According to political marketing theory, parties benefit from segmenting the
heterogeneous electorate, targeting strategic groups and positioning their policy proposals
accordingly. This conception clashes with the optimal electoral strategy implied by bro-
kerage politics, which includes avoidance of clear issue positions and focusing on leader
competence on vague valence issues (Clarke et al., 1984; Clarkson, 2005). Also, by assum-
ing that voters have some attitudes on political issues and that parties have the ability
to persuade voters to vote for them, political marketing theory conflicts with much of the
previously discussed political behaviour literature (Bartle and Griffiths, 2002). However,
conflict between the conventional theories and political marketing seems to be the product
of differing research interests. An interest in uncovering the structural essence of voting
will lead one to different research foci than an interest in determining the most efficient
43
electoral strategy. The impact of positional issues might have been largely underestimated
because most electoral research deals with theoretical frameworks that are not principally
interested in electoral strategies.
As discussed in the previous chapter, the voting behaviour literature’s focus on the citizen
competence problem leaves little room for party strategy development. Most party be-
haviour models also do not leave much room for positional issues to matter. Theoretical
models such as the brokerage party model focus on what might be called macrocampaigns :
uniform campaign strategies that are elaborated to affect the electorate as a whole. But
parties have the capacity to target more specific groups of voters, especially with the
advent of new communication and polling technologies (West, 2013). If different issues
matter differently to different voters (see, for instance, Krosnick, 1990; Margolis, 1977),
then political parties have the option of engaging in microcampaigns by which they en-
deavour to reach specific segments of the electorate. Recent research shows that parties
indeed engage in microcampaigning (Gould, 1998; Hillygus, 2007; Watt, 2006). The goal
of this chapter is to establish how political marketing might represent a promising theo-
retical avenue for the study of the effects of positional issues.
3.1 The Advent of Political Marketing: Segmenta-
tion and Positioning
What is the goal of political parties? Some posit that the goal of political parties is
simply to win elections and that these organizations are, by definition, only vehicles to
obtain power (Riker, 1962; Schlesinger, 1991). However, not everyone agrees with this
plain definition of political parties’ behaviour. Strøm (1990), for example, distinguishes
44
between vote-seeking, office-seeking, and policy-seeking parties. Vote-seeking and office-
seeking parties act in order to maximize their vote share or win public office. Policy-
seeking parties endeavour to influence the direction and substance of policy debates and
governmental programs and are thus more ideologically-driven. Other scholars contend
that political parties might have different goals entirely:
If it is a political party fighting an election campaign, it may want to maximize
the number of seats it wins, or, indeed, it may as, say, a Green party, be seeking
to influence the political agenda. [But] by waging campaigns, parties may also
seek to serve internal party purposes, like maintaining party unity, attracting
new members, fund raising, nurturing potential coalition links and so on. [...]
Yet success at elections, and the chance to occupy government positions that it
provides, is clearly the core objective of parties and candidates. (Schmitt-Beck
and Farrell, 2002, 3-4)
Political parties have different goals. But a more fundamental question is whether parties
have adequate means to achieve their goals. If parties do not have the tools to accomplish
their goals or influence their electoral fates, there is arguably little point in having goals
to begin with. Party behaviour is already heavily constrained by a diversity of factors
(Lewis-Beck et al., 2008). Some of these are external contraints, such as the state of the
economy, and are out of their control. In the current media-saturated climate, political
parties also have little control over the flow of election communication (Holbrook, 1996).
Parties also face internal contraints. For instance, some parties’ organizational structures
give their members a lot of power, and their members are often more ideological than the
rest of the population (Herrnson, 2009; Layman et al., 2010). Financial considerations
are also often related to the success of electoral parties (Farrell and Webb, 2001). The
45
main assumption of political marketing is that, despite the constraints parties may face,
they ultimately have control over their electoral fates.
3.1.1 What is Political Marketing?
At the core of any attempt to understand the phenomenon of political mar-
keting is, of course, a definitional exercise. Therein lies one of the main short-
comings of political marketing research. Although somewhat developed as a
discipline, political marketing is difficult to define. (Henneberg, 2002, 98)
Political marketing as a field of study is growing in importance. This is exemplified by the
creation of the Journal of Political Marketing, the annual International Political Marketing
Conference, and an increasing number of political marketing books. Yet the subject has
received limited attention in Canada (see Marland, Giasson and Lees-Marshment, 2012).
It is important to distinguish between the definition of political marketing used outside the
field and the definition used by scholars in the international political marketing literature.
Political marketing has many distinct features. It is defined both by a set of techniques
and as a conceptual framework. Contrary to popular usage, political marketing is not only
about the elaboration and study of political communication techniques. It also includes
cross-disciplinary analytical tools for studying party and voter behaviour (Scammell, 1999,
718).
Confusion exists regarding the term political marketing. Some authors note that political
analysts and journalists tend to use the term simply as a ‘buzzword’ (Henneberg, 2002,
93) or ‘convenient hold-all’ (O’Shaughnessy, 2002, 213). It is also often confused with
political communication (Albouy, 1994; Lock and Harris, 1996), as “being simply about
46
advertising, slogan, sound-bites and spin doctors” (Lees-Marshment, 2001, 2), or “used
more or less interchangeably with propaganda” (Scammell, 1999, 723). This conception
has perhaps been influenced by earlier narratives about particular political campaigns.
For instance, Richard Nixon was said to be sold to the US electorate “like soap powder
or a can of beer” (McGinnis, 1968).
Political marketing parallels the Marketing Revolution that occurred in the American busi-
ness community in the 1950s (see Keith, 1960). The Marketing Revolution followed the
development of market research techniques such as polling. These technical advancements
made it possible to segment the market and identify the needs and wants of consumers
in a more precise way. The practical application of market research techniques led to
the growing acceptance of the idea that the key to business success is a shift away from
emphasis on production efficiency and toward market research and customer satisfaction.
Marketing is different from product promotion; it places the consumer at the beginning of
the production-selling process (Newman, 1994; Steger, Kelly and Wrighton, 2006).1
To have any definitional value, political marketing must refer to the application of a
consumer-centric concept to the political realm (O’Shaughnessy, 1990). As Scammell
states, “[the] ‘Marketing concept’ is the key to understanding political marketing” (Scam-
mell, 1999, 726). This is what distinguishes political marketing from propaganda or po-
litical communication. Business management scholars were the first to apply the ideas
coming from the business marketing revolution to politics (see Newman, 1994; O’Cass,
1996). The edited volume, Handbook of Political Marketing (1999b) offers detailed de-
scriptions of marketing concepts and management applications developed specifically for
the political realm. Political marketing started to attract more attention when some of
1A consumer-centric strategy has also been applied outside the business world, for instance, to non-profit organizations (Burnett, 2007; Kotler, 1975; McLeish, 1995).
47
its ideas and techniques were attributed to highly publicized electoral successes such as
Bill Clinton’s in 1992 and Tony Blair’s in 1997. Some consider the 1992 American presi-
dential election as the beginning of a “new era in politics” (Newman, 1999a, 27). In that
election, Bill Clinton presented himself as a ‘New Democrat’, distancing himself from the
traditional Democrat ideology by endorsing more centrist social positions and neoliberal
economic principles. This new positioning was thought to be more in line with the aver-
age American voter. The British Labour Party rebranded and repositioned its ideology
in a similar fashion prior to its 1997 electoral success (McLaughlin, Mungie and Hughes,
2001). The American Democrats and British New Labour even relied on many of the
same campaign strategists (Gould, 1998).
There has been some resistance to the idea of applying marketing to politics. For in-
stance, there has been some debate surrounding the conceptualization of the political
product. Wellhofer (1990) contends that the unique nature of the political realm makes it
incomparable to the business realm. Others claim that the political product is irreconcil-
ably different from commercial products.1 The political product has been conceptualized
as the composition of two elements that tap into different types of wants and needs: the
political offer and the political image (Bernier, 2001; Henneberg, 2002; Newman, 1994,
1999a). The political offer represents the set of promises made by a political party or a
candidate. Positional issues are thus at the heart of the political offer. This definition
parallels the conception of the political offer presented by works drawing from classical eco-
nomic models (see Downs, 1957; Schlesinger, 1991; Stokes, 1963). These classic economic
1Consequently, some of the marketing models designed for commercial goods are not directly appli-cable to politics (See, for instance, the ‘Four Ps’ (or Marketing Mix) in Newman (1994)). The politicalproduct is less similar to consumer goods than it is to services offered by lawyers or financial consul-tants (Henneberg, 2002, 111). For this reason, the service branch of marketing, or more specificallyrelational marketing, is often considered as more relevant to politics (Henneberg and O’Shaughnessy,2009; Johansen, 2005).
48
works imply the existence of a unique optimal political position to maximize vote share.
They also consider the political image an essential component of the political product.
Some scholars following this line of reasoning even contend that the political image is more
important than the political offer (see Egan, 1999). The importance of image presents an
opportunity to adapt brand management to politics (White and de Chernatony, 2002).
The two elements of the political offer are interconnected. As Jacobs and Shapiro (1994)
show, the priming of positional issues can be used to affect political image. This dual
conception of the political product lessens the rigidity of the more economic conception
of the term. In that vein, some scholars make the case that political marketing has the
potential to reconcile economic and socio-psychological models of electoral behaviour “by
not [being] dogmatically committed to any single model of man” (Bartle and Griffiths,
2002, 20). Note that this perspective concedes that the heterogeneity of the electorate
lies at the heart of political marketing.
Whether political marketing represents a unified general theory is a matter for debate.
Given the complexity of the political environment, it is overly optimistic to expect a
general theory of political marketing. There is not even a unified theory of commercial
marketing (Gronroos, 1994). Instead, there are various schools of commercial marketing
theory, including several postmodernist schools (Brown, 1993). Nevertheless, most po-
litical marketing scholars agree with Scammell (1999) that the marketing concept and
exchange process constitute the “common core” of the term (see Figure 3.1).1 This ex-
change process can also be found in some political scientists’ works that describe political
parties as ‘market-based organizations’ or as office-seeking instruments (Strøm, 1990). As
1Political marketing scholars deal with more objects of study than just elections (electoral strategyand tactics). Among other things, these scholars examine party financing, e-government and cyber-democracy, media effects, and governance (see, for example, Newman, 1999b). It is difficult to determinewhether this multiplication of objects of study is only due to an excess of enthusiasm over a so-callednew sub-discipline.
49
Schlesinger suggests, “Elections are a type of political market, in which parties offer their
candidates and their policies in exchange for the votes needed to gain office.” (Schlesinger,
1991, 12)
Figure 3.1: The Political Marketing Exchange Process
STRATEGIC MARKETINGDeveloping the political product
VOTERS POLITICALPARTIES
TACTICAL MARKETINGPromoting the political product
Even though political marketing borrows the vocabulary and some of the assumptions
of rational-choice theory, it cannot be easily described as a variation of rational-choice
theory (Savigny, 2004). Least of all, it cannot be described as such because political mar-
keting does not necessarily assume the rationality of political actors. Indeed, even if the
political marketing model states that the use of rational pragmatism by a political party
tends to produce greater competitiveness, political marketing scholars habitually consider
political parties as restrained by some factors such as ideologies, party constitutions, and
party activists (Bowler and Farrell, 1992). Non-rational behaviour is integrated in the
Lees-Marshment typology (see Figure 3.2). This model presents three types of parties
at different stages of marketing optimization. A product-oriented party is a party that
refuses to adapt any aspect of its behaviour to voter’s needs and wants. The party’s
motivations are strictly ideological and it might be considered as suffering from a lack of
pragmatism. Even if the goal of a party was to simply influence the political agenda or
50
promote an ideology, market research can still offer insight into the best way to do so.
The sales-oriented party uses tactical marketing to optimize the promotion of its political
product. Finally, the market-oriented party engages in both strategic and tactical mar-
keting. Such a party endeavours to not only promote its political ideas, but also to better
adapt them to voters’ needs and wants. In order to do so, it harnesses modern technolo-
gies to conduct fine-grained market research and elaborate strategies based on collected
intelligence. The originality of political marketing lies in the use of innovative market
research techniques, such as segmenting and micro-targeting of the population, to elabo-
rate the political product. It is in this way that political marketing can be distinguished
from Strøm’s (1991) party typologies. Ultimately, these theoretical constructs provide
explanations of the observed variance in political parties’ ‘rational’ behaviours.
More relevant to this thesis are the positional issues that are at the core of market-
orientation processes. While parties’ can strategically position on issues in a way that
responds to voters’ needs and wants, they must also remain aware of their larger position
in the competitive partisan environment. The consistency and credibility of a party’s po-
sitioning are important. Some scholars stress the importance of a party’s political product
being based on an ideology that is linked to its history and traditions (Bartle and Griffiths,
2002; Bernier, 1991; Lees-Marshment, 2006). In 2006, the Conservative Party of Canada
repositioned itself, but–like Clinton’s Democrats and Britain’s New Labour–never entirely
eliminated its core ideology (Watt, 2006). Instead, the party moderated the ideological
component of its political product by incorporating some of the most popular elements
of the Liberal platform. This strategy, known as triangulation, was popularized by Bill
Clinton’s strategist Dick Morris (Worcester and Baines, 2006). Although the Conservative
Party moderated its ideology, it still held on to many traditional conservative positions,
such as being tough on crime, increasing the defense budget and re-evaluating the same-
51
sex marriage question. In doing so, the Conservatives came to occupy a unique position in
the competitive environment while still retaining much of their ideological core. The idea
was not to became a copy of the Liberal Party, but to offer an acceptable conservative
alternative to the electorate. Ultimately, this strategy increased the Conservative Party’s
political competiveness (Pare and Berger, 2008).
Figure 3.2: Three Types of Party Orientation
PRODUCT
PRODUCT
MESSAGE CONCEPTION
MESSAGE DIFFUSION
MARKETINGRESEARCH
Tactical Marketing(Product Communication)
MESSAGE CONCEPTION
MESSAGE DIFFUSION
MARKETSEGMENTATION
SEGMENT TARGETING
POSITIONINGMARKETINGRESEARCH
Tactical Marketing(Product Communication)
Strategic Marketing(Product Conception)
PRODUCT-ORIENTED PARTY
SALES-ORIENTED PARTY
MARKET-ORIENTED PARTY
Note: Adaptation of the Lees-Marshment Model, Lees-Marshment (2001).
Whether the contextual change that allowed for the advent of political marketing should
be considered a new phenomenon is debatable. Some enthusiasts describe the use of
52
the marketing concept in political practice as “the political marketing revolution” (Lees-
Marshment, 2004). But others disagree. Some authors trace the concept’s roots to the
beginning of the twentieth century (Lock and Harris, 1996). Others trace it back even
further, identifying similarities between political marketing and the Sophistic pragmatism
of ancient eras (Laufer and Paradeise, 1990). Yet other authors argue that political
marketing is as old as democracy itself (Perloff, 1999). This discord in the literature
might be the result of definitional problems surrounding political marketing. Some of the
disagreement might also arise from the failure to distinguish between strategic and tactical
marketing. Recall that what distinguishes political marketing from other approaches is
the assumption that the electorate is heterogeneous and that it is thus advantageous for
political parties to conduct fine-grained market research. Such market research involves
parties segmenting and targeting the electorate and repositioning themselves in order
to elaborate their political offers. Parties’ capacities to engage in market research has
certainly improved with the advent of new communication and polling technologies (West,
2013). Some scholars argue that these technologies have led to an even greater increase in
the heterogeneity or fragmentation of the electorate (Aarts and Semetko, 2003; Bennett,
2012; Gimpel, 1999; Pomper, 1996; Schantz, 1996b). Political marketing theory provides
a plausible and promising framework through which to explore the heterogeneous effect
of positional issues.
3.2 A Changing World? Post-Industrial Elections
Positional issues are generally considered to not matter very much because voters are as-
sumed to lack the requisite information for them to matter. Some scholars have suggested
that the system of brokerage politics operating in Canada has exacerbated the seeming
53
irrelevance of issues, as brokerage parties do not take stances on positional issues and thus
effectively remove them from the menu of political choice (Clarke et al., 1984). In deeply
divided societies, taking positions on issues can risk alienating substantial segments of the
electorate. Evidently, if parties do not take clear stances on issues, it becomes even more
difficult for them to matter to an already little-informed electorate. But the Canadian
political environment has recently experienced some changes that might open the door to
positional issues playing a greater role in party strategy (Bittner and Koop, 2013). At the
same time, some scholars argue that the voter information problem has waned due to the
general increase in citizens’ levels of education. More educated citizens are considered to
be better able to deal with positional issues (Dalton, 1988). This phenomenon is consis-
tent with the cognitive mobilization thesis (Dalton, 1984) and the idea that the political
instability of the 1960s increased political interest in the population (Miller and Miller,
1975). In addition to rising education levels, the increase in comprehension of politics
is also attributed to the greater availability of mediated information (see Klingemann,
1979a,b). Yet other authors identify even deeper changes in voting behaviour; they sug-
gest that new generations of citizens are more likely to have weaker party ties (Butler and
Stokes, 1975; Dalton, 1988) and that traditional social cleavages are weakening (Franklin,
Mackie and Valen, 1992). These trends have arguably engendered a ‘new political culture,’
characterized by the electorate’s growing interest in politics and the rise in importance of
new issues such as the environment, women’s rights, and immigration (Inglehart, 1990).
Taken together, these changes suggest that positional issues might have the space today
to play a greater role in voting and party behaviour than they have in the past.
54
3.2.1 Convergence or Fragmentation?
A tension persists in the literature between two conceptions of the consequences of this
modernization of politics. Some scholars argue that the structural impacts of post-
industrialization have a homogeneous effect on society:
The cultural and structural differences among western countries [...] have de-
clined in some respects. The diffusion of values, the comparable economic
changes, and the development of rapid transportation and almost instan-
taneous communication seem to be producing a common western culture.
(Nevitte, 1996, 56)
Most structural theories, such as post-materialism (see Inglehart, 1977, 1998), describe a
convergence in citizens’ attitudes and behaviour. But the effect of industrialization might
be twofold. On the one hand, the fact that many post-industrial countries are experienc-
ing a reduction in the stress related to fulfilling basic needs (Abramson and Inglehart,
1995; Inglehart and Abramson, 1994) and an increase in education levels (Dalton, 2007,
1988; Nie, Junn and Stehlik-Barry, 1996) surely led to comparable macro-level patterns
of political behaviour and value development. On the other hand, industrialization and
modernization might also engender more complexity at the micro-level. According to
Dalton: “Electoral politics is moving from cleavages defined by social groups to value
and issue cleavages that identify only communities of like-minded individuals” (Dalton,
1988, 174). Indeed, the fragmentation of the media space and the specialization of the
workplace, among other things, could favour the development of different political be-
lief networks (Baldassarri and Goldberg, 2010). Others suggest that rising immigration
levels have encouraged the “balkanization of the population,” and that this has had an
impact on electoral politics (Gimpel, 1999, 115). In Canada, Henderson (2004) argues
55
that interprovincial differences in political attitudes are either stable or declining. She
identifies nine relatively homogeneous cultural clusters that can account for the variations
in political attitudes among Canadians. In the commercial world, consumer behaviour is
increasingly studied at the micro-level with emphasis on personality traits and lifestyles
(Kahle, Beatty and Homer, 1986; Sandy, Gosling and Durant, 2013). The theoretical
assumptions of both postmaterialism theory and commercial Value and Life Style theory
are based on Maslow’s (1954) concept of a hierarchy of needs. The postmaterialist con-
siderations that emerge in a wealthy society might encourage the fragmentation of citizen
interests:
The issue public hypothesis therefore suggests that unanimity among Amer-
icans in terms of which policy attitudes are personally important to them is
unlikely to have been the case during much of recent history. [...] But when
such prominent events or problems [such as a major war or economic depres-
sion] do not focus national attention, people are unlikely to focus their passions
on the small set of policy debates. (Krosnick, 1990, 74)
It is reasonable to suppose that mass media might well be associated with the mass
marketing of politics (Newman, 1999a). Television has long represented the citizens prin-
cipal source of campaign information (Ansolabehere, Behr and Iyengar, 1993). Recently,
web-based news sources and social media have ascended to become critical components of
modern campaigns (West, 2013). Bartels (2003) explains how such a political environment
shapes voter attitudes. In his view, voter attitudes cannot be considered as preferences;
they must be considered as psychological tendencies influenced by one’s political environ-
ment: “[...] the context dependence of preferences is an unavoidable consequence of basic
cognitive and evaluative processes” (Bartels, 2003, 64). Iyengar (1991) underscores the
56
importance of context in attitude formation: “While there can be no denying the influence
of stable dispositional characteristics or cultural norms on attributions of responsibility
for political issues, there is compelling evidence that contextual or circumstantial factors
are equally if not more important [...] the most important of these contextual influences
is television” (Iyengar, 1991, 10). The media of course helps people to make sense of their
own experience within a larger society (Mutz, 1994). Consequently, political parties have
incentives to develop more thorough communication strategies. As Norris et al. (1999)
point out, it is increasingly important for parties to run campaigns that are thematically
undistracted.
The increased complexity of the media environment could encourage the fragmentation
of the electorate and could increase the importance of issues in electoral politics (Geer,
2006; Stroud, 2008a). The development of a more complex media space multiplies the
opportunities for parties to reach voters that are uninterested in, and pay little attention
to, politics (Baum and Kernell, 1999; Ladd, 1995). These voters are arguably the most
susceptible to new information (Zaller, 1992), but they are also the toughest to reach:
“The group which the campaign manager is presumably most eager to reach—the as yet
undecided—is the very group which is less likely to read or listen to this propaganda”
(Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet, 1948). On the one hand, the increased complexity
of the media space offers uninterested citizens a greater opportunity to avoid political
media (Baum and Kernell, 1999; Prior, 2007). In fact, the multiplication of TV and
radio channels coupled with the structure of the internet makes it possible for voters
to entirely avoid electoral campaign coverage. On the other hand, the popularity of
soft news and the proliferation of political advertising represents a new opportunity for
politically disengaged segments of the populations to acquire political knowledge. Indeed,
both soft news (Bastien, 2013; Baum, 2002) and political advertisements (Ansolabehere
57
and Iyengar, 1995) have been shown to increase political information. And Just (1996)
demonstrates that political interviews on popular talk shows usually focus more on issues
than on the candidate’s character. Just argues that Bill Clinton increased his presence
on talk shows in 1992 in order to focus the debate on the economy and away from the
Paula Jones scandal. Similarly, Geer (2006) shows that negative advertisements provide
voters with policy information, sourcing for facts, direct quotes, and information that
generally holds incumbents accountable. A greater fragmentation of the media space could
also potentially result in greater coverage angles or agenda-settings (see, for example,
DellaVigna and Kaplan, 2007).1 If most people engage in selective exposure (Stroud,
2008b), then it is plausible to suppose that the increased complexification of the media
space reinforces the heterogeneity of effects in the electorate.
The fragmentation of postindustrial societies might have in turn caused the fragmentation
of the electorate. Dalton (1988) argues that there has been a multiplication of what
he calls ‘apartisan’ voters. These voters differ from traditional independent partisans
in that they are sophisticated, well-educated, active citizens. They refuse to identify
with a party not out of ignorance or unconcern but out of discontent with what the
parties offer. These citizens are less likely to vote as predicted by traditional voting
models and are more likely to make discriminating, thoughtful voting choices: “citizen
voting behavior is more dependent on the attitudes and perceptions of each individual”
(Dalton, 1988, 177). In Canada, Nevitte (1996) observes a similar trend between 1981
and 1990. Similarly, McAllister (2002) observes that a significant proportion of ‘late
deciders’ are not irrational, floating voters but ‘calculating’ voters who pay close attention
to campaigns and who are thus susceptible to campaign influence. Greater electoral
1Contrary to this view, Soroka (2003) observes a convergence in Canada among the media when itcomes to the importance accorded to issues.
58
volatility means that electoral strategies have greater opportunities to impact electoral
outcomes beyond just activating socio-political cleavages (Dalton and Wattenberg, 2001).
And these opportunities place pressure on political parties to adopt sectional strategies
(Pomper, 1996; Schantz, 1996b).
3.2.2 A Recent Increase in Issue Voting?
Many theories suggest an increase in issue voting among citizens, but the empirical find-
ings on the matter are inconclusive. Franklin, Mackie and Valen (1992) observe the
decrease of the explanatory power of social cleavages and an increase in the importance of
issues to the vote. Sarlvik and Crewe (1983) show an increase in the importance of issue
voting in Britain during the 1970s. Bartels (2006) observes a similar phenomenon in the
United States in the 1980s, but also notes that the economy remains the most important
short-term influence on voting behaviour. Belanger and Nadeau (2009) point out that
the influence of issues on the vote has also recently risen in Quebec, despite the effect
of economic voting remaining relatively constant over time (Belanger and Nadeau, 2009,
41).1 A similar pattern has been observed in 23 other democracies (Budge and Farlie,
1983).
Yet not all scholars agree with the view that there has been a significant increase in the
impact of issues (see Lewis-Beck et al., 2008; Miller and Shanks, 1996). The hypothesis
of an increase in issue voting is based on the theoretical assumption of an increase in
political knowledge. But levels of political knowledge among American citizens seem to
not have changed over the past 50 years (Delli Carpini and Keeter, 1996). Converse and
1“Mais contrairement a la conjecture economique, dont l’effet semble s’etre fait sentir de maniererelativement constante dans le temps, il semble que l’influence des autres enjeux sur le vote au Quebecsoit plus importante aujourd’hui que par le passe” (Belanger and Nadeau, 2009, 41).
59
Markus (1979) test the alleged rising importance of issues in elections, but reach the
same conclusion as those articulated in The American Voter (1960). However, using the
same dataset (NES), Page and Jones (1979) reach different conclusions. They argue that
the influence of policy preferences on voting decisions has been underestimated and the
influence of party attachments, overestimated. The methodologies and measurements used
to uncover the effect of issues on vote choice seem to have a great impact on conclusions.
In this regard, Margolis (1977) argues that methodologies used in the 1960s overestimated
the effect of issues and can be seen as a cause of the observed increase in issue voting;
the effect of issues increased in the beginning of the 70s and receded in 1976, but most
studies do not find the ‘issueless’ state of the 1950s.
The understanding of issue voting presented in The American Voter (1960), some analysts
suggest, is too simplistic (Margolis, 1977). Issue voting is more subtle and complex than
is typically presumed. Although citizens’ positions on issues are not powerful predictors
of voting behaviour, they are not random. Recall that even Converse (2007) recently com-
plained that his own conclusions about voter competence have been exaggerated by other
scholars. Moreover, it is important to remember that the Michigan model was originally
a critique of the Columbia model, which was considered too static. And, for proponents
of the Michigan school, the key to the dynamics of voting lies in leader personalities
and salient issues (Gidengil, 1992). These two dynamic factors—leader personalities and
salient issues—are similar to the two components of the political product defined in the
political marketing literature. There seems to be a debate within the political marketing
literature about what constitutes the political product. Some scholars consider the issue
positions presented in electoral platforms to be central elements of the product (Baines
and Egan, 2001), while others focus rather on images and leaders (Scammell, 1999). How-
ever, most scholars agree on a definition of the political product that incorporates both
60
elements (Bartle and Griffiths, 2002; Henneberg, 2002). These two elements also might
not be entirely independent of one another. Jacobs and Shapiro (1994), for example, ex-
plain how positional issues have strategically been primed to shape voters’ perception of
candidates’ personalities. Priming strategies are also used to boost the salience of issues
in the whole population (Druckman, Jacobs and Ostermeier, 2004) or among targeted
subgroups of the electorate (Hillygus and Shields, 2008).
Political marketing focuses on how political parties do, or at least can, improve their
competitive advantage. The key seems to lie in parties having a more subtle understanding
of their electoral market. The brokerage strategy of taking ambiguous positions on issues
to avoid alienating segments of the electorate is not necessarily the most efficient strategy.
Alvarez (1998), for instance, shows that the more uncertain a voter is about a candidate’s
positions, the less likely the voter is to support that candidate. Is it possible that the
potential for issue voting has always been present but some opportunities, such as those
that targeting technologies represent, were not? Issue voting did not necessarily emerge
from a ‘Silent Revolution’ and its corresponding value shift (see Inglehart, 1971, 1977). It
might have always existed at the micro-level, among smaller groups of voters concerned
about a particular set of issues.
3.3 Discussion
This thesis argues that positional issues might matter more than the voter and party
behaviour literatures assume. The key to understanding the historical lack of interest in
positional issues is the citizen competence problem. The dearth of political sophistication
among citizens seems to have encouraged analysts to focus on uncovering the fundamental
61
factors underpinning vote choice, instead of the effects of positional issues. These factors
were mainly structural and left little room for campaign activities and other electoral
strategies to matter. The structural perspective suggests that the fate of political parties
is mostly determined by factors that parties cannot control. Even when positional issues
are considered to matter, the strategic prescription for parties is often to converge toward
median positions. In Canada, the concept of brokerage politics has been used to describe
why parties traditionally avoid taking clear issue positions (Bickerton and Gagnon, 2004b;
Carty, Young and Cross, 2000; Clarke et al., 1984). Few conjectures imply the need for
a thorough study of positional issues. On the one hand, the voting behaviour literature
suggests that positional issues have little effect. On the other hand, the party behaviour
literature reveals few incentives for parties to take distinct issue stances. By contrast,
the political marketing perspective provides a theoretical rationale for supposing that the
effect of positional issues might have been underestimated.
The core presumption of political marketing is that the electorate is heterogeneous and
that there is no “single model of man” (Bartle and Griffiths, 2002). The implication that
follows is that parties should base their political strategies on thorough market research.
Such a conception of the electorate supposes that different voters care about, and are
affected by, different issues. It is important to note the difference between the public
salience of an issue and its salience at the personal level. Although the salience of public
issues in certain elections has been acknowledged, the effect of issue salience among is-
sue publics has generally been overlooked. But some criticise political marketing on the
grounds that it relies too heavily on dependent variable selection and post-hoc rational-
izations (Henneberg, 2002). The basic assumptions underlying political marketing, then,
need to be investigated. Also, the extent to which positional issues constitute central
elements of the exchange between voters and parties must be examined. Ultimately, if
62
some positional issues can matter to some voters who care about them, parties might
have more room to position, grow and shape their images.
In the Michigan School tradition, the effect on vote choice of short-term factors, such
as issues, is considered small compared to the effect of long-term factors. The present
thesis does not contradict this notion. When it comes to predicting electoral outcomes,
positional issues cannot compete with structural factors such as the state of the economy.
However, some importance must still be allotted to positional issues. Positional issues
are important elements in parties’ strategic toolboxes. As Holbrook (1996) observes, a
factor does not need to be the most important determinant of electoral outcomes in order
to still play an important role in shaping public opinion. Indeed, the effects of issues
that the authors of The American Voter Revisited (2008) observe are not small1, even
when the heterogeneity of the electorate is not taken into account. The relative absence
of positional issues in traditional voting and party behaviour theories and their assumed
presence in political marketing theory can in part be explained by differing research foci.
While traditional theories have sought to uncover the essential foundations of the vote,
political marketing has sought to examine any issue-based leverage that might remain for
parties.
Positional issues are difficult to study in a comparative perspective because they can be
unique to contexts and times. For example, Abramowitz’s (1995) study of the effect of
the abortion issue during the 1992 American presidential election could not easily have
been examined in a cross-national context. Stewart (2002) identifies this situation as the
1On each one of the issues included in their survey, at least around 40% of voters meet the threeconditions identified by Lewis-Beck et al. (2008) to be considered a potential issue voter : 1) Familiarity;2) Opinionation; and 3) Differentiated perceptions of candidates. The results range from 37.8% for“Government assistance to blacks” to 62.1% for “Diplomacy versus military action” (Lewis-Beck et al.,2008, 181).
63
nuance paradox : the more subtle the understanding of a particular political context, the
harder it is to compare to other political contexts. Generalizable theoretical concepts can
nonetheless be extracted from context-specific findings. Methodological and measurement
challenges are inherent to the study of positional issues. The next chapter is dedicated to
such methodological questions. The following chapters test the underlying assumptions of
political marketing. First, the concept of the heterogeneity of effects is explored. Different
forms of heterogeneity are discussed and the issue-public hypothesis is revisited. A final
chapter focuses on issue-based party strategies and looks more specifically at the dynamics
of sociodemographic segmentation.
64
Chapter 4
A New Look at an Old Concept:
Conceptualization, Measurement
and Effects of Positional Issues
This chapter discusses the main conceptual and measurement issues that have arisen in
studies of political issues. Following Ansolabehere, Rodden and Snyder Jr. (2008), issue
scales are used to test the stability and relative strength of positional issues compared to
rival concepts, such as values and party identification. Political issues have been defined
and measured in a large variety of ways across time and subfields. The complexity of the
definitional exercise goes well beyond the difference between brokerage-style valence issues
and positional issues. However, once these ontological and methodological challenges are
overcome, the effects and stability of issues seem to be significantly greater than it is
conventionally assumed.
65
4.1 The Conceptual Status of Positional Issues: On-
tological and Causal Confusion
There is no consensus in the literature about how to conceptualize political issues. The
confusion partly arises because there are so many different angles from which issues can
be studied. For example, the way one thinks about an issue will vary greatly depending
whether one’s approach is micro-sociological, socio-psychological, or rational. The advent
of survey methodology triggered a debate about the nature of citizens’ issue preferences.
And positional issues are at the centre of the citizen competence problem. Different labels
have been used to define the issue positions citizens report in surveys.1 These different
conceptualizations entail different operationalizations and model constructions. It is thus
important to determine the ontological contours of the different definitions of political
issues and the causal structure they involve before delving into empirical analysis of issue
effects. This section first discusses the links between issues and rival concepts such as party
identification and values. Then, the different ways that issues have been conceptualized
in the literature are analyzed before the measurement of issues is tested.
4.1.1 The Quest for the Essence of Vote: Rival concepts
Voters’ issue preferences are often described in the voting literature as manifestations of
more deeply rooted political inclinations such as party identification, ideologies, or values.
If these factors are the cause of voters’ opinions on issues, then what causes these factors?
Scholars influenced by the Columbia and Michigan schools see group membership as the
1To name a few: preferences (Downs, 1957), random non-attitudes (Converse, 1964), considerations(Zaller, 1992), latent dispositions (Krosnick, 1991), and psychological tendency (Bartels, 2002).
66
main root of issue positions (Campbell et al., 1960; Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet,
1948). But some argue that greater structural factors are at play. Historical circum-
stances, like the industrial revolution for instance, can cause sociodemographic changes
that provoke value shifts, which impact voters’ issue positions (Inglehart, 1977; Lipset and
Rokkan, 1967). A more recent line of research explores the possibility that another struc-
tural source—genes—might influence issue attitudes (Dawes and Fowler, 2009). When
these historical, sociological and biological factors are taken into account, very little room
is left for individuals to independently determine their issue preferences. One implication
of such a line of speculation is that political parties cannot influence election outcomes
beyond mobilizing their existing electoral base. Nevertheless, when one is more interested
in examining campaign strategy than in uncovering the underlying essence of the vote,
positional issues are crucial. Indeed, they are one of the few factors over which parties
have any control.
No one disputes the fact that political parties take issue positions to attract certain
voters. But we cannot rule out the idea that issue-based strategies might be successful
just because citizens’ preferences are influenced by party identification and values. In fact,
most issue-based strategies operate through party identification and values. Parties have
been known to use issues to attract cross-pressured partisans (Hillygus and Shields, 2008)
and to increase the salience of certain values that are advantageous to them (Abramowitz,
1995). Other scholars have shown how parties have primed positional issues in order to
highlight their candidates’ positive character traits (Jacobs and Shapiro, 1994). Such
party strategies do not fit the logic of conventional voting models. The relationship
between parties and voters entailed by these strategies is the inverse of the relationship
between parties and voters entailed by conventional voting models: positional issues are
used to tap into values shared by certain sociodemographic groups in order to alter or
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bolster their party identification.
4.1.1.1 Party Identification: Causal Confusion
The literature about the impact of party preferences on political behaviour has been
described as “vast and confused” (Johnston, 2006, 336). The concept of party identifi-
cation, which lies at the core of the Michigan model, has been endlessly scrutinized but
a consensus has yet to emerge. Most of the disagreement emerges from the difficulty of
determining the causal position of partisanship in models of political behaviour. From
a rational standpoint, it appears reasonable to assume that issues can affect voters’ at-
titudes toward parties and that, in turn, these attitudes can affect vote choice (Fiorina,
1981). However, the Michigan school’s classic Funnel of Causality implies a reverse causal
order: party identification has an indirect effect on candidate evaluations and issue orien-
tations and a direct effect on vote choice (Campbell et al., 1960; Miller and Shanks, 1996).
This theoretical model is consistent with the observation that voters tend to project their
own issue positions onto candidates (Berelson, Lazarsfeld and McPhee, 1954). Ultimately,
party identification has frequently been considered the key to solving the citizen compe-
tence problem. Moreover, while people have often been shown to have unstable attitudes
on issues, they have often been shown to have stable party affiliations, and in several
different political contexts (Butler and Stokes, 1969).
The greatest contribution of the Michigan school’s socio-psychological model was the
establishment of party identification as a concept indispensable to voting studies. But
confusion persists in the literature about the relationship between party identification
and issue positions, and the respective relationships of these two concepts to the vote.
Johnston (2006) distinguishes two ways of conceptualizing party identification: as an
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unmoved mover and as a sum of preferences. Many scholars disagree with the idea,
as suggested in The American Voter (1960), that party identification is an unmoved
mover influencing attitudes on issues and candidates. These dissenters argue that party
identification is better understood as a sum of preferences or a ‘running tally’ (Fiorina,
1981). The sum of preferences view argues that voters are rational actors who update their
party affiliations when they assimilate new information (Gerber and Green, 1998). It has
been shown that party identification is indeed updated continuously as new information
about economic performance and presidential approval is received (MacKuen, Erikson and
Stimson, 1989). In a similar vein, Jackson (1975) argues that positional issues cause party
identification. Others observe that party identification can be influenced by short-term
factors more broadly (Page and Jones, 1979). The two latter views give greater credence
to the role of positional issues in voting models. These views imply that political parties
have some leverage to increase their partisan base in the long or medium term.
Many scholars argue for a more dynamic conception of party identification (Clarke and
McCutcheon, 2009; Franklin and Jackson, 1983; Niemi and Jennings, 1991), that high-
lights the importance of other factors, such as leaders and valence issues, to vote choice
(Clarke, Kornberg and Scotto, 2008; Clarke et al., 2010; Green, 2007). But a dynamic
conception of party identification is difficult to demonstrate empirically. The stability of
party positions on issues makes it difficult to separate conceptually the effects of party
identification from the effects of positional issues. Stable party positioning may mask sta-
ble party attachments. A fiscally conservative voter, for example, might identify with a
party because that party constantly takes fiscally conservative positions and other parties
do not. Even when parties do change their positions, the effect of the changes is lagged
and it takes some time for citizens to notice. Carmines and Stimson (1989) use aggregate
and time-series data to show the long evolution of the effect of the American parties’
69
repositionings on racial issues in the 1960s. When parties change their issue positions,
voters do not realign en masse in one election. Instead, the effect of issue repositioning
on party identification is gradual, and thus difficult to gauge.
Uncertainty about the causal position of party identification in voting models is con-
sequential. If issue concerns affect voter attitudes toward political parties instead of
attitudes toward parties affecting issue concerns, then controlling for partisan attitudes in
voting models would be at best, redundant and at worst completely wrong (King, 1991).
Some analysts regard themselves as “agnostic about the causal relations among the vari-
ables” in voting models (Ansolabehere, Rodden and Snyder Jr., 2008, 227). These analysts
add party identification to voting models only to test the robustness of their results. The
causal confusion surrounding party identification is further complicated by unobserved
heterogeneity in individual partisan stability (Neundorf, Stegmueller and Scotto, 2011).
Not all voters are moved the same way by party identification. The observed decline in
people’s psychological ties to political parties, for instance, does not occur at the same
rate in all segments of the electorate (Abramson, 1983; Dalton, 1999). Similarly, younger
voters’ partisan identification seems to be more easily shifted by political events than older
voters’ party identification (Franklin and Jackson, 1983). Also, some heterogeneity might
arise from different causal orders (Bartle, 2005, 656). Soroka (2003) notes that different
issues exhibit different patterns of causal influence. Therefore, party identification can
intervene in different stages of voters’ decision-making processes (Rivers, 1988). Some
scholars point out that heterogeneity might even pervade spatial-theory models: “It is
possible that some voters evaluate candidates according to the proximity model, whereas
others use a directional measure” (Merrill and Grofman, 1999, 79). Many scholars disagree
with any theory that moderates the effect of partisanship (see Johnston, 2006). Miller
(1991), for instance, still considers party identification to be the strongest predictor of
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vote choice across all demographic groups. Other more recent studies have also shown
that party identification is stable and impervious to short-term influences, and that the
typical voter is a ‘tethered partisan’ (Green, Palmquist and Schickler, 2002).
4.1.1.2 Values: Ontological Confusion
In the quest to uncover the determinants of vote choice, party identification can be con-
sidered rival to positional issues. Voters’ attitudes on issues might simply be superficial
manifestations of partisan allegiances. But the independent effects of issues on vote
choice are also challenged by two other concepts: ideologies and values. These psycholog-
ical structures guide uninformed voters during the development of their political beliefs.
The causal confusion between party identification and issue positions is thus compounded
by an ontological confusion. The conceptual distinctions between ideologies, values, and
issue attitudes are difficult to make.
Numerous academic attempts to solve the citizen competence problem have led to the
establishment of abstract concepts such as ideologies and values in the literature. Ideolo-
gies and values seem to have many advantages over positional issues. While randomness
seems to underly individual issue preferences, a stable, constrained structure seems to
underly ideologies and values (Jackson, 1983). Moreover, theories based on values and
ideologies often take into consideration voters’ low levels of political sophistication. Con-
cretely speaking, values and ideologies show greater stability in voting models and seem to
have stronger effects on vote choice than do positional issues (Blais et al., 2002; Feldman,
1988). Attempts have even been made to elaborate spatial theories wherein ideologies
replace issues as the most important factors (Hinich and Munger, 1994). Because values
and issues have a higher degree of abstraction than positional issues, they are easier to ex-
71
amine in a comparative perspective (Haller, 2002). Positional issues are often products of
the peculiarities of political contexts and are thus difficult to compare (Heath, Fisher and
Smith, 2006). From this perspective, values can be considered as moving up on the ladder
of abstraction (see Sartori, 1970). Values have fewer concretely defined attributes than do
issues and can thus be applied to a greater diversity of contexts (Davidov, Schmidt and
Schwartz, 2008). Ultimately, it is easy to see why values became such popular starting
points within studies of comparative politics (see, for instance, Abramson and Inglehart,
1995; Inglehart, 1990). In their level of abstraction, values might be considered as being
mid-way between positional issues and ideologies (Gerring, 1997). Even Converse (1964)
perceived fundamental values such as egalitarianism, collectivism, statism, individual-
ism and minoritarianism as ‘crowning postures’ that helped structure political attitudes.
Other scholars argue that values act as bridges between the sociodemographic and par-
tisan bases of voting behaviour: “[values] provide one important avenue for bringing the
sociological and social-psychological approaches back together” (Gidengil, 1992, 241). Fi-
nally, Alvarez and Brehm (2002) show how even the effect of political information on issue
preference is moderated by values.
The ontological confusion between ideologies, values, and issues is reflected in the confus-
ing ways these three concepts have historically been operationalized. Values have often
been measured with a subset of the positional issue survey items used to measure ide-
ologies. Not much has changed since Rokeach (1968) argued some 45 years ago that
academics “do not as yet have methods for assessing values in a manner that would be
distinct from the assessment of attitudes” (Rokeach, 1968, 547). Values seem to be more
theoretically convenient than positional issues and ideologies insofar as they circumvent
the citizen competence problem. Values, acquired and internalized at a young age, require
little political information and cognitive involvement in order to be effective influences
72
on vote choice (Kroh, 2009). As a result, values might be treated as sociodemographic
characteristics or permanent personality traits. In that case, they would appear at an
even earlier stage in the causal order explaining issue attitudes and, ultimately, vote
choice.1 Hence, according to Inglehart (1990), the development of post-material values
causes the increase in the salience of new issues such as the environment, women rights
and immigration.
Values help clarify voters’ preferences by linking political preferences to broad social ob-
jectives (Popkin, 1991; Sniderman, Brody and Tetlock, 1991; van Deth and Scarborough,
1995). But if positional issues had stable and strong independent effects on vote choice,
there would be no justification for ignoring them. In some circumstances, positional issues
might be of even greater interest than rival concepts. The study of electoral strategies
in particular would benefit from a greater focus on concepts like positional issues that
are more concrete and more directly observable than ideologies and values. Positional
issues are both easier to track and to measure. Moreover, the role of positional issues
as tokens of exchange between parties and voters has the potential to nuance rejections
of the classic theory of democracy. If issues were actually as consequential and as stable
as values, it would be difficult to justify studying values over issues. There seems to
be little reason to study an abstract concept when a relatively more concrete concept
shows comparable stability and consistency. However, one might choose to do so if ones
research question is better suited to abstraction. One would understand positional issues
differently depending on whether one was trying to uncover the underlying structure of
the vote or understand campaign strategies. Therefore, the choice to study values over
positional issues can be considered to be dependent on the researcher’s objectives.
1Confusion exists in the causal order explaining vote choice as well. For example, some scholars holdthat partisan considerations affect values (see Goren, Federico and Kittilson, 2009).
73
The citizen competence problem has driven scholars to concentrate their efforts on trying
to uncover the essence of the vote. Specifically, it motivated academics to try to answer
the following question: if voters are not informed enough to live up to the expectations of
classical democratic theory, then upon which factors do they base their voting decisions?
An entire field of study was born in response to this particular question. Indeed, the
sociological, socio-psychological, economic and, more recently, genetic theories of voting
all originated from this question. Each of these theories try to uncover the fundamental
structures of voting decisions. But what do the underlying assumptions of these theories
mean for political parties and electoral strategies? This question has often been avoided
by repeating the mantra: campaigns do not matter. Nowadays, few scholars deny that
electoral strategies have at least some effect (Wlezien, 2005). Political parties do have
some leverage over electoral results. This room for manoeuvre is heavily constrained by
the more fundamental determinants of vote choice. Nevertheless, the modest effects of
campaigns have been shown to often be decisive in determing electoral outcomes (Hol-
brook, 1996). Positional issues are short-term factors that—if they have any independent
effects—definitely deserve scholarly attention. The following section reviews how posi-
tional issues have been treated in previous investigations.
4.1.2 Messy Territory: Conceptualizing Positional Issues
The various ways that issues are conceptualized and operationalized in the literature
reflects a lack of consensus about their effects on vote choice. The term ‘issue’ is used in
the literature to refer to many different concepts and theories. For example, it is difficult
to argue that the same ontological understanding of issues is shared by theories of issue
ownership, issue evolution, and issue publics. Complicating the situation further are a
74
multitude of issue typologies, of which the positional-valence dichotomy is only one. Of
course, different definitions and operationalizations of issues lead to different observed
effects on vote choice. This section explores the different ways that political issues have
been conceptualized and measured in the literature.
Issues are not as well defined as other political factors. Neither sociodemographics, nor
party identification, nor values suffer from the same conceptualization problems as issues.
The peculiarity of issues has led to frequent academic efforts to create typologies of issues
that distinguish between issues that matter and those that do not. A brief scan of the
literature reveals that different typologies capture different aspects of political issues.
Figure 4.1 displays some of the typologies used to define issues. It is evident that different
typologies focus on and thus capture different aspects of issues. The following paragraph
describes the difficulties encountered by those seeking for a common definition of political
issue.
Four aspects of political issues are assessed by the different issue typologies found in the
literature. Some scholars focus on the substance or content of issues. For instance, some
make the distinction between traditional issues and ‘new’ issues, such as immigration
issues, women’s issues and environmental issues, all of which emerged as a result of post-
industrialization (Hooghe, Marks and Wilson, 2002; Inglehart, 1990). Others argue that
the symbolic dimensions of certain ‘cultural’ issues can have peculiar effects on voters. In
the United States, cultural issues such as nationalism and patriotism, race, gender and
religion are all considered to have contributed to the Republican party’s electoral success
between 1968 and 1988 (Leege et al., 2002). Differing complexity in the substance of issues
has also been categorized into typologies. In that vein, Carmines and Stimson (1980)
distinguish between ‘easy’ and ‘hard’ issues, with easy issues being those that require
75
little cognitive engagement to grasp and hard issues being those that require comparatively
more.1 Abramowitz (1995) considers abortion, for instance, as an ‘easy issue,’ one which
impacted the results of the 1992 American presidential election. Baum (2002) defines
another class of issues that has the capacity to attract the attention of the politically less
interested: ‘soft issues.’ Substantive distinctions between issues are particularly relevant
to the solution of the aforementioned citizen competence problem. These distinctions add
another dimension to the idea that issues cannot matter to politically unaware voters. If
issues are grasped by different kinds of voters, their effects on voters might be different and
the mechanisms by which they operate might also be different. Moreover, not all issues
trigger the same interest in voters. Some scholars evaluate the impact of issues based on
their levels of salience among voters. Soroka (2003) distinguishes between ‘prominent’
and ‘sensational’ issues. Other authors focus on examining the effects on voters of ‘public
issues’ of the day, such as the issue of the Free Trade Agreement during the 1988 Canadian
federal election (Johnston et al., 1992), health care in 2000 (Nadeau, Belanger and Petry,
2010), and corruption and accountability in 2006 (Andrew, Maioni and Soroka, 2006).
But a salient issue is not necessarily a public issue and can be different for different
groups of voters or ‘issue publics’ (see Krosnick, 1990). Finally, other issue typologies
deal with the strategic value of certain issues. These typologies discuss ‘wedge’ issues,
for example, which have the potential to influence voters to defect from their parties
(Hillygus and Shields, 2008). They also discuss ‘insurgent’ issues (Vavreck, 2009), which
divert attention away from ‘unobstrusive’ issues such as the economy (Baum, 2002) and
which are more susceptible to agenda-setting.
The issue typology at the centre of this thesis is the positional-valence issue typology.
1Further proof of the lack of a common definition of positional issues lies in the fact that some authors,like Luskin, McIver and Carmines (1989), consider structural factors such as the economy ‘hard’ issues.
76
Figure 4.1: The Various Foci of Issue Typologies
SUBSTANCE SALIENCE
STRATEGY
POSITION
Sociotropic / Egotropic(Nannestad and Paldam, 1994)Prospective / Retrospective(Florina, 1981; Kuklinski and West, 1981)‘New’ issues(Hooghe et al., 2002; Inglehart, 1990)Easy / Hard issues(Carmines and Stimson, 1980)Soft issues (Baum, 2002)
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Issue publics / Public issues(Key, 1961, Krosnick, 1990)Prominent / Sensational / Governmental(Soroka, 2003)
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Positional / Valence issues (Stokes, 1963)Consensual issues (Dunlap, 1989)
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Wedge issues (Hillygus and Shields, 2008)Cultural issues (Leege et al., 2002)Unobtrusive (Baum, 2002)Insurgent issues (Vavreck, 2009)
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●
This typology seems to encompass all other issue typologies. Valence issues are most
often described as public issues, which by definition are salient for the whole population.
Moreover, the ‘valence politics’ model describes the strategic value of valence issues in
elections (Clarke et al., 2010; Clarke, Scotto and Kornberg, 2010). This model assumes
that valence issues matter and that positional issues do not. Carmines and Stimson (1980)
also note that easy issues are often framed as positional issues while hard issues are often
framed as valence issues. However, these same authors also define easy issues as those
that deal with ends rather than the means to ends, a characteristic often attributed to
valence issues.
The lack of consensus surrounding the definition of positional issues has led to positional
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issues being operationalized and measured in a diversity of ways. As such, it comes as no
surprise that the findings regarding positional issue effects have been mixed. The persis-
tent disagreement in the literature about the actual role of positional issues in electoral
politics calls for further investigation of the topic. Different measures of positional issues
are used in different voting models. Some scholars use the issues that survey respondents
consider most important to them personally (see Belanger and Nadeau, 2009) while others
use respondents’ attitudes toward public issues of the day, measured with single questions
(Blais et al., 2002). Ansolabehere, Rodden and Snyder Jr. (2008) prescribe the use of
multi-item issue scales instead of single-issue measurements, and advocate the inclusion
in these scales of more issues than just the ones people deem most salient. The analyses
presented in this chapter put the last two prescriptions into practice. They show that the
stability and effects of positional issues on vote choice differ substantially depending on
how issue positions are measured and conceptualized.
4.2 Hypotheses
The literature on issue effects leads to at least two research hypotheses amenable to em-
pirical investigation. The first hypothesis revisits certain assumptions about the stability
of positional issues once conceptual and measurement matters are taken into account.
The second hypothesis examines the possibility that positional issues might have a con-
siderable impact on the vote:
Hypothesis 1 : Issue stability is substantively increased with better measurement
Hypothesis 2 : Positional issues have a considerable effect on vote choice
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4.3 Methodology and Data
The data used to explore the hypotheses tested in this chapter come from the 2004, 2008
and 2011 Canadian Election Study (CES).1 These three studies contain a large number
of issue items that have consistent question wordings. These characteristics allow us to
construct consistent and comparable issue scales. Moreover, the 2004 and 2008 CES waves
also include a panel composed of respondents who answered the same issue questions in
four-year intervals, which allows us to explore the stability of issue attitudes.
The analysis presented in this section uses issue scales composed of multiple measures.
Some Canadian scholars have already called for an improvement in the quality of mea-
surements used in Canadian voting behaviour research; of these, some have suggested the
use of covariance structure analysis (Gidengil, 1992). Ansolabehere, Rodden and Snyder
Jr. (2008) show that there are clear advantages to using issue scales composed of multiple
measures instead of individual survey items. The scaling of survey items also effectively
manages the problem of measurement error (see Achen, 1975). Nevertheless, it is still
possible for nonrandom measurement error to emerge from unidimensional scales (Green
and Citrin, 1994). To account for that possibility, the reliability of scales needs to be
assessed. The scales used in this analysis are built using the factor scores for the first
factor of principal factors factor analyses.2
1Many issue attitudes are surveyed in CES mail-back questionnaires. The 2006 CES is not used forthis analysis because it does not include a mail-back questionnaire.
2Cronbach α’s and factor loadings are used to evaluate the internal validity and unidimensionality ofthe scales. All items’ factor loadings are higher, and most of the time, much higher, than the acceptancelevel of 0.3 (Kim and Mueller, 1978, 70). For Cronbach α scores, there is no sacred level of acceptability(Schmitt, 1996). Nevertheless, all of the α scores in the present analysis, except for those related to theenvironmental issue scale, are above 0.5. The relatively low Cronbach α scores can be explained by thesensitivity of the coefficient to the low number of items included in some scales (Garson, 2010). Also, thefactor corresponding to the unidimensional scale are all in accordance with the Kaiser’s rule (Eigenvalue> 1). The issue scales used in this analysis are standardized to facilitate interpretation and comparison ofthe results, but Ansolabehere, Rodden and Snyder Jr. (2008) finds identical results using both normalized
79
Pearson’s correlations and logistic regressions are then used to assess the stability and
strength of positional issues. The issue scales are used to compare the effects of positional
issues to rival predictors of vote choice. The proper combination of statistical controls is
difficult to determine. There is a debate in the political methodology literature between
proponents of fully specified models, measured by a high R2, and those favoring specific
causal inferences by including only control variables that are theoretically prior to the focal
independent variables and correlated with both the dependent and independent variables
(King, 1991).1 The choice of proper controls when assessing the effects of positional issues
is further complicated by ongoing debates about the exact causal orders of rival concepts
such as party identification, values, and positional issues in vote choice models. It is
unclear whether these rival concepts need to be included as controls in a statistical model
testing for the effect of positional issues on vote choice. To deal with this uncertainty,
different models including many different causal orders are tested. Such a procedure can
be considered as a partial sensitivity test for the robustness of the results. The next
section presents the substance of the issue scales used in the analysis and the results from
the tests of the different hypotheses.
4.4 Results
Eight positional issue scales are used in this analysis. The choice of these issues can be
justified in part by their relevance to the political context and in part by the limits imposed
by the available questionnaires. The number of issues and items is obviously limited by
the CES questionnaire, which was not designed with the precise idea of building issue
and standardized scales.1See Achen (2005) for a discussion of the problems associated with using too many control variables
in regression analyses.
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scales in mind. Consequently, the number of items per scale varies per issue and is not
as high as the multi-item scales used in other studies (see Ansolabehere, Rodden and
Snyder Jr., 2008). Despite these limitations, the issue scales in the following analysis
are sufficiently robust to test the stability and strength of positional issues. Table 4.1
shows the issues, the direction of their position, and the number of items used to build
the different scales.
Table 4.1: Eight Positional Issues
Issues Position Number of items
Economy Free market 6Environment Environmentalist 2Foreign/US relations More involvement, closer ties 5Law and order Tough on crime 3Minority issues More acceptance 8Moral issues Traditional 4Social programs No cut 6Women issues Feminist 7
Source: Canadian Election Study, 2004-2008. See Tables 2-6 in the Appendix for details.
Positional issues are conventionally included as single items in fully specified regression
models. The issue with this is that concepts operationalized by single items are prone to
measurement error. The results of the present analysis show that the stability and the
strength of positional issues are greatly enhanced when measurement error is taken into
account. When multi-item issue scales are used, the effects of positional issues are clearer
than when single-item questions are used. These results are important; they provide
some support for the conclusions presented by Ansolabehere, Rodden and Snyder Jr.
(2008). They also suggest that results found in the United States apply to the Canadian
setting as well. Positional issues appear more stable and their effect on vote choice is
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significant.
Figure 4.2: Stability of Issue Attitudes
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bilit
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orre
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effic
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Source: Canadian Election Study (CES), 2004 and 2008 (Panel respondents).Method : Pearson’s correlations. Factor scaling (if number of items > 2).
The data reported in Figure 4.2 also contribute to the literature in a different way; they
illustrate the stability of various issue attitudes between 2004 and 2008. In this case,
stability is assessed by examining Pearson’s correlations.1 The higher the score on the
vertical axis, the more stable the attitude. These results confirm that aggregating multi-
ple items increases the stability of positional issues. Correlations have been calculated for
all possible unique combinations of items for a given issue. For instance, the CES con-
tains seven different measures of attitudes toward the economy, which can be, and were,
1For the justification of this measure see Converse (1964), Achen (1975), and Ansolabehere, Roddenand Snyder Jr. (2008)
82
combined in 127 unique ways1 for which Pearson’s correlations are calculated. Figure 4.2
shows the correlations between the 756 unique combinations that can be constructed from
the eight positional-issue scales. When it comes to the number of items in the scales, the
adage “the more the better” seems to apply (Ansolabehere, Rodden and Snyder Jr., 2008,
223). Certainly, issue attitudes appear more stable than expected once measurement error
is taken into account. But this stability does not necessarily mean that positional issues
matter.2 And one way to ascertain whether positional issues matter is to examine the
effects of the same issues on vote choice.
The tests for the effects of issue scales are summarized in Figure 4.3. Logistic regression
models are estimated to evaluate the statistical significance and the impact of issues on
vote choice. Three models, one for each major political party, are estimated for each issue
variable.3 One way to circumvent the methodological debates associated with model
specification (see Achen, 2005; Schrodt, 2010) is to incorporate different sets of statistical
controls. This procedure can be considered as a partial4 sensitivity test that assesses the
robustness of the findings to the inclusion or exclusion of control variables. Figure 4.3
(a) reports the statistical significance of the individual issue items and of the issue scales.
Figure 4.3 (b) shows the strength of the effect on vote choice for the same variables. Once
again, the key finding is that scales clearly perform better than individual items when
1Broken down: 7 individual items + 21 possible two-item scales + 35 possible three-item scales + 35possible four-item scales + 21 possible five-item scales + 7 possible six-item scales + 1 possible seven-itemscale = 127 possible unique combinations.
2Actually, the stability of issue attitudes is not necessarily an indicator of ‘real attitudes’ as understoodby Converse (1964). People might change their minds for a number of reasons: “In the case of the‘stability theorem’ in mass belief studies, the empirical status of the theorem is clear only if we assumethe existence of a rigid reference coordinate that holds the object of appraisal unchanged either absolutelyor in relation to the appraiser during the interval between measurements. If we allow for change in theobject of appraisal, then the stability theorem can no longer claim an absolute or unambiguous significancefor the concept of stability” (Bennett, 1977, 478).
3For the results broken down by issues, see Figure 1 in Appendix.4Contrary to a sensitivity analysis, control variables were not added individually. The controls were
grouped and ordered according to the Michigan school’s Funnel of Causality.
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Figure 4.3: Effect of Issue Items and Scales
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Source: Canadian Election Study (CES), 2004 and 2008 (Pooled data).Method : Logistic regression (summary of 2808 models). Factor scaling.Dependent variables: Vote(Conservative, Liberal, NDP).Independent variables: (Items) (Issue items [included individually]); Scales (Issue scales [included individually])Controls: 1) SES only (468 models); 2) (...) + Values (468 models); 3) (...) + Party identification (468 models);
4) (...) + Economic perception (468 models); 5) (...) + Leader evaluation (468 models);6) (...) + Incumbent evaluation (468 models).
Note: The three vertical lines in graphic (a) represent the statistical significance levels:from bottom to top, p < .001; p < .05; p < .1.
assessing the effects of positional issues on vote choice. And positional issues do seem to
have significant effects on vote choice. These results are consistent with those found by
Ansolabehere, Rodden and Snyder Jr. (2008) in the United States.1
How do these effects compare with other predictors of vote choice? Figure 4.4 reproduces
the results for the issue scales and compares them to the statistical significance and
1Ansolabehere et al. (2008) results are only based on two issue scales: Economy (13 items) andMoral (6 items). The authors also tried “adding a Foreign Policy Scale but it was never statistically orsubstantively significant in 1992 or 1996” (Ansolabehere et al, 2008: 226). Contrary to these results,all eight positional issue scales are statistically or substantively significant in Canada in at least one ofthe elections under study. For a comparison of effect of scales on the explained variance, see Table 1 inAppendix.
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strength of different values and partisan identifications.1
Figure 4.4: Effect of Issues, Values and Partisan Identifications
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Source: Canadian Election Study (CES), 2004 and 2008.Method : Binary logistic regression (summary of 2808 models). Factor scaling.Dependent variables: Vote(Conservative), Vote(Liberal), Vote(NDP).Independent variables: Scales (Issue scales [included individually]);
Values (Value scales [included individually]);Party Id (Partisan identification [included individually])
Controls: 1) SES only (468 models); 2) (...) + Values (468 models); 3) (...) + Party identification (468 models);4) (...) + Economic perception (468 models); 5) (...) + Leader evaluation (468 models);6) (...) + Incumbent evaluation (468 models).
Note: The three vertical lines in graphic (a) represent the statistical significance levels:from bottom to top, p < .001; p < .05; p < .1.
But is it possible that these results just reflect peculiarities of the 2004 and 2008 elections?
And is it possible that there has been a recent increase in issue voting? To test these
possibilities, the impacts of the eight issue scales are observed over time. The Figure 4.5
shows the evolution of the effect for each positional issue from 2004 to 2011. Unfortunately,
the cross-time variability of the available CES issue questions makes it possible to only
develop comparable issue scales for three elections. The findings presented do not appear
1For the results broken down by values and partisan identifications, see Figure 2 in Appendix.
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to support the idea that there has been a general increase of issue effects. The impact
of issue effects seems to vary by election and by party and positional issue.1 It is not
surprising that the economic positional issue had a significantly more powerful impact
in 2011 than in other years, given that the world was facing a major economic crisis at
the time.2 Even so, the effect of economic positions is only greater in 2011 than in 2004
for attitudes toward the Conservative Party and the NDP. But the data do underscore a
significant point; it seems that contextual factors matter. For instance, the effect of the
environmental issue significantly increased from 2004 to 2008 for the Liberals, but not
for the other parties. It is possible that the emphasis Liberal leader Stephane Dion put
on imposing a carbon tax contributed to this situation, especially given that the effect
of the environment issue receded after the 2008 Federal Election. Overall, the directions
of the issue effects do generally seem to reflect the policy positions adopted by the three
parties. It is perhaps interesting to note, however, that every positional issue has its
strongest effect on attitudes toward the Conservative Party. Whether such a situation is
the result of the Conservatives’ global positioning or their electioneering style remains an
open question.
1Testing the evolution of issue effects in the Canadian context is complicated by the fact that nopositional issue question has been asked in every CES wave. The only issue-related question that hasbeen consistently included in CES questionnaires since 1965 is the one asking voters to identify the issuemost important to them. When we examine that question’s impact on explained variance in models ofvote choice, we observe a small increase in the effect of the most important issue. And, again, there aredifferences by parties. However, because this question is an issue-salience measure that is not necessarilylinked to a particular positional issue, the results must be interpreted with great care. For furtherinformation, see Figures 3 and 4 in the Appendix.
2The statistical significance of the results can be assessed in the full regression results displayed inTables 7 to 14 in Appendix. The standard errors of the coefficients for the interactions between theelectoral years and the positional issues are also represented graphically in Appendix in Figures 5 and 6.
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Figure 4.5: Evolution of Issue Effects for Each Party
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Source: Canadian Election Study (CES), 2004, 2008 and 2011.Method : Linear regression models are used in order to facilitate the direct comparisonsbetween coefficients from different years.Note: Solid line = Conservatives; Dashed line = Liberals; Dotted line = New Democrats.
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4.5 Discussion
The preceding analysis challenges the enduring view that positional issues do not mat-
ter much in Canadian elections. The results show that better conceptualizations and
measurements of positional issues lead to the exposure of both their stability and their
significant effect on vote choice. The significance and strength of issues is found to be
comparable to even the significance and strength of more conventional predictors of vote
choice like values and partisan identification. In fact, it turns out that issues are more
often statistically significant than values. However, the conceptual confusion between
values and positional issues might explain this surprising observation. One might argue
that issue scales are actually measuring values. After all, moral and economic issue scales
are often built using almost the same items as moral traditionalism and market liberalism
value scales (see, for instance, Gidengil et al., 2012). There is some support in the liter-
ature for the proposition that these scales are measures of values (McClosky and Zaller,
1984). But there is also support for considering these scales as measures of issue positions
(Ansolabehere, Rodden and Snyder Jr., 2008).1
It is possible that the analysis showing that positional issue attitudes are stable and have
independent effects on vote choice is simply the product of the use of multi-item scales.
The observed strength of issues could be an artifact of applying the scaling technique
typically used to measure values to positional issues. But even so, the idea that scaling
techniques determine the strength of issues has little theoretical consequence for the causal
order of conventional voting behaviour models. It is discussed above that single-item issue
indicators are highly prone to measurement error and are thus likely to produce noisy
1The question thus remains: when should issues be considered values and when should values beconsidered issues? For a more detailed discussion about the ontological distinction between values andpositional issues, see the corresponding section in the Appendix.
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attitudinal signals. These signals become clearer with proper scaling. That noise does
not mean that positional issue attitudes are less genuine. Many scholars after Converse
(1964) defended the idea that citizens do have political attitudes despite their apparent
lack of political sophistication and ideological consistency (Achen, 1975; Lane, 1962; Saris
and Sniderman, 2004). Issue scales such as those used in this analysis, as well as those
used by Ansolabehere, Rodden and Snyder Jr. (2008), seem to relax the requirements for
political sophistication enough to render citizens able to vote on positional issues. The
more items in a scale, the more opportunities to capture citizens’ real attitudes. The
implication of that line of speculation is that scales might need to include more items
in order to correctly measure positional issues. Including several questions about gay
rights in a scale, for instance, might help to ensure that it is indeed attitudes about gay
rights that are being measured and not attitudes about other, related moral issues, such
as abortion. The same pattern should emerge if there are more items available in a scale
to measure attitudes toward health care independently from attitudes toward other social
programs.
There are many aspects of issue effects that require further investigation. But the prin-
ciple question at hand is: do different issues affect all voters equally? Different ways of
assessing the effects of issues on voters vary both in terms of measurement techniques
and conceptualization. The positions and the personal saliences of issues constitute two
different dimensions, which need to be measured separately (Miller and Peterson, 2004).
These two aspects—position and salience—refer to two of the three elements that limit
the potential effect of issues, according to the authors of The American Voter (1960).1
1The discussion of the effect of issues is complicated by the fact that 1) a small proportion of voters isconsidered as having positions on issues; 2) party identification is considered as heavily influencing thesepositions; and 3) voters are not concerned with the same issues (Campbell et al., 1960; Lewis-Beck et al.,2008).
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The next chapter focuses on these two dimensions more directly as it examines the inter-
action between positional issues and personal salience. The heterogeneity of issue effects
is also considered.
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Chapter 5
Public Issues or Issue Publics? The
Distribution of Genuine Political
Attitudes
Explaining vote choice necessarily involves examining behavioural patterns. But do all
voters follow the same patterns? Most voting models assume that they do. For instance,
the Funnel of Causality posits that the order in which various factors come into play in de-
termining vote choice is the same for all citizens (Campbell et al., 1960). But some scholars
argue that voting behaviour is more complex (Bartle, 2005). Different types of voters can
be affected by different factors or behave according to different causal orders. Such a line
of speculation, however, significantly complicates voting theories. In fact, the complexity
of voters’ decision-making poses fewer problems to statistical modelling than the diversity
of reasoning paths that might precede vote choice (Rivers, 1988). Heterogeneity in voters’
decision making processes has at least two causes. First, heterogeneity might originate
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in differences in voters’ general ability to reason about politics. This ability to reason
is assessed with measures such as political knowledge (Delli Carpini and Keeter, 1996;
Roy, 2009), awareness (Converse, 1964; Zaller, 1992), and education (Sniderman, Brody
and Tetlock, 1991). Second, voters may have more specific or specialized knowledge than
general knowledge, and they might accord different levels of salience to different issues
(Krosnick, 1990; RePass, 1971). These two types of heterogeneity are referred to here as
elite-based heterogeneity and salience-based heterogeneity, respectively.
There are some similarities between the two types of heterogeneity.1 Both relate to in-
formation effects. Greater information about issues increases the weight that issues have
in voters’ decision-making processes. Elite-based heterogeneity recognizes that political
knowledge is concentrated among specific segments of the population and implies a rather
dichotomous view of the electorate (see, for example, the Black-and-White model in Con-
verse, 1970).2 Alternatively, the salience-based conception of heterogeneity implies a more
specialized political knowledge. Many voters may only care about a limited set of issues
and thus might act as issue publics (Krosnick, 1990). The concept of issue publics is par-
ticularly relevant here because it relaxes some of the limitations to positional-issue voting
identified in the literature: those that relate to the general lack of political attitudes.3
Indeed, despite the fact that few issues concern the entire electorate enough to trigger
1In his typology of heterogeneity, Bartle (2005) actually considers these two types of heterogeneityas a single type. A third type could be cognition-based heterogeneity, which involves different ways oforganizing information and understanding politics; this might be considered a more amorphous type ofheterogeneity (see also Goldberg, 2011).
2To be fair, Converse (2007) recently expressed concern about reductionist interpretations of histheories and “disavow[ed] any reading of the Belief Systems essay that concludes that most citizens lackpolitical attitudes.” It must be remembered that in the Belief Systems essay (1964), Converse does arguethat some issues, such as race, are very important to structuring political attitudes in the United States.
3For example, in The American voter Revisited (2008), Lewis-Beck et al. identify three individuallimitations that prevent issues from significantly mattering to vote choice: 1) the lack of issue intensity; 2)the limited familiarity with an issue; and 3) the difficulty in distinguishing between candidate’s positionson the issues.
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widespread attitude formations, the issue-public hypothesis contends that even unaware
voters can hold attitudes toward a limited number of issues about which they care. Issue
publics can sustain stable and consistent attitudes toward a limited set of issues because
of environmental and psychological reinforcement processes, such as selective exposure
(Iyengar et al., 2008). The issue-public perspective also implies heterogeneous issue ef-
fects. The level of salience accorded to issues may vary by the voter and by the issue.
The effect of environmentalist attitudes on voting behaviour, for example, might exhibit
very little homogeneous effect. But, as an issue, the environment might be decisive for a
small proportion of the electorate that cares specifically about that particular issue. This
is especially the case when a party takes a clear position on a particular issue or already
has a degree of ownership over the issue (Belanger and Meguid, 2008; Petrocik, 1996).
According to Delli Carpini and Keeter (1996), people usually tend to be generalists rather
than specialists about politics. Moreover, some research seems to indicate that there is
a fragmentation of political knowledge along lines that are different from the education
stratification implied by the elite-based heterogeneity concept. Soft news in the United
States, for example, has been shown to increase the information level of otherwise politi-
cally inattentive individuals on certain issues like foreign affairs and law and order (Baum,
2002).
This chapter explores the possibility that positional issue effects operate in a hetero-
geneous manner. More specifically, the chapter investigates the presence or absence of
elite-based and salience-based types of heterogeneity in the Canadian electoral context.
Salience-based heterogeneity supposes an electorate fragmented into various issue publics,
which can be consequential for electoral strategy research.
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5.1 Heterogeneity and the Citizen Competence Prob-
lem
One of the core findings to repeatedly emerge from decades of public opinion research is
that many voters lack political sophistication (Campbell et al., 1960; Converse, 1964; Delli
Carpini and Keeter, 1996). But no scholar has ever claimed that all voters are politically
ignorant. Campbell et al. (1960) found that there is a great divide between average
citizens and political elites in terms of their engagement in politics, levels of political
information, and ideological connectedness. Compared to elite belief systems, mass public
belief systems tend to be more disorganized and more dependent on charismatic leaders
than on political substance (Converse, 1964). According to Converse (1970), only around
20% of voters do not answer political questions at random. This dichotomous view of
the electorate is known as the Black-and-White model. Neuman (1986) is even more
pessimistic than Converse. In his view, roughly 75% of voters are politically uninterested
and unsophisticated. Another 20% of voters are completely apolitical; they exhibit only
minimal awareness of and concern for politics. Only 5% of the public constitutes what
Neuman calls opinion-elite citizens. Yet, this small number of competent citizens is not
necessarily alarming: “It is in the nature of representative democracy that only a small
proportion of the population can participate in politics to the fullest” (Luskin, 1990, 331).
Other scholars are more optimistic. Delli Carpini and Keeter (1996) conclude their study
on political information by arguing that, despite the unequal distribution of knowledge
across citizens, “more than a small fraction of the public is reasonably well informed about
politics–informed enough to meet high standards of good citizenship.” (269) The debate
about citizen competence is evidently closely related to the debate about the distribution
of political sophistication in the population. Voters need a minimum level of political
94
sophistication to be considered as having genuine attitudes on positional issues.
5.1.1 A Black-And-White Electorate: Elite-Based Heterogene-
ity
Many scholars describe the electorate in a way that leaves little room for issue voting to
be important. The Michigan school tradition of research is a well-known example. The
authors of The American Voter Revisited (2008) consider the lack of issue familiarity and
intensity as individual limitations that explain the absence of issue voting. People do not
recognize political issues and can not express degrees of preference for one issue position
over another. This situation is a product of the fact that there are often too many issues
discussed in a campaign, which is considered an external limitation. More-educated voters
can overcome these hurdles, but the pool of potential issue voters is too “small” to allow
issues to matter for vote choice (Lewis-Beck et al., 2008, 182). According to one widely
shared view, education is the key to positional issues mattering (see Kuklinski and Peyton,
2007). A rise in levels of education should be accompanied by a corresponding increase in
the importance of positional issues. Some scholars argue that such an increase in the effect
of issues on vote choice has indeed occured (Budge and Farlie, 1983; Franklin, Mackie and
Valen, 1992). But others show that higher levels of formal education do not automatically
lead to political interest and political sophistication (Neuman, 1986). Education turns out
to be an imperfect proxy for more relevant factors such as political awareness or political
interest (Highton, 2009; Kwak, 1999). More politically aware individuals are those that
are motivated enough to both gather information and put cognitive effort into developing
ideas about politics (Taber and Lodge, 2006; Zaller, 1990). Hence, political awareness
appears as a predictor of the amount of information gained during an electoral campaign
95
(Nadeau et al., 2008).1 Similarly, there is persuasive evidence showing that the knowledge
gap widens when a public issue becomes salient (Althaus, 2003). But does having new
information automatically translate into having genuine attitudes? There are reasons to
doubt that claim.
The media shapes perceptions and influences political attitudes (Mutz, 1998). In Canada,
media use is correlated with more negative perceptions of the state of health care (Bli-
dook, 2008). But information effects could simply encourage greater conformity with
the opinion-elite. Zaller (1992) defines these elites as government leaders, journalists,
activists, and policy experts, and Neuman (1986) characterizes them as well-educated
males, mature in age, who occupy high status and high income occupations. But how do
elites’ views diffuse? Educated voters tend to be more influenced by media content than
voters who use a combination of popular wisdom and experiential knowledge to frame po-
litical issues (Gamson, 1996). In any case, the elitist view is very present in the literature.
Recall, for instance, Key’s (1961) claim that the “voice of the people is but an echo.”
Schattschneider (1960) similarly views political elites as defining the scope of conflict and
controlling how ordinary voters think about issues. The elitist view sometimes borders
on conspiracy theory: “the marketplace of ideas is dominated by the views of elite strata.
The more exposed people are to the market, the more likely they are to see the world
through the eyes of the upper class” (Ginsberg, 1986, 148). Some even suggest that elites
are the guardians of such democratic values as political tolerance and minority rights
(Peffley and Rohrschneider, 2007). The claim that elites structure the political debate is
not particularly controversial. When elite consensus on an issue exists, sophisticated citi-
1The effect of electoral campaigns on the public level of information is now widely accepted (Holbrook,1996; Popkin, 1991). However, as stated by Nadeau et al. (2008), it might be important to distinguishbetween two types of political information: citizens’ general stock of information (GSI) and the campaign-specific information (CSI) that they might gain.
96
zens tend to conform to elite views (McClosky and Zaller, 1984). Conversely, when elites
disagree about an issue, polarization at the public level develops (Entman, 2004). More
politically aware individuals tend also to become more ideological about salient public
issues than politically unaware individuals (Zaller, 1992).
Different theories assume a dichotomy in the electorate in terms of political sophistication.
Whether this cleavage is caused by varying education, information, or awareness levels
matters less than the idea that only a small proportion of voters have the ability to
vote according to positional issues. According to this view, positional issues matter, but
only for the most politically enlightened in society. However, another line of research
explores a deeper level of heterogeneity, salience-based heterogeneity, which presumes a
more fragmented electorate.
5.1.2 A Fragmented Electorate: Salience-Based Heterogeneity
Positional issues can matter for political experts because these experts can access their
policy attitudes from memory (Goren, 1997). When a public issue becomes salient, more
people take it into consideration when making political decisions. This is the logic behind
the priming effect (see Scheufele, 2000). As the authors of The American Voter (1960) ac-
knowledge, highly salient public issues contribute to the dynamism of political behaviour.
In order for a public issue to become salient, it needs to be extensively diffused through
the population: “[...] the more attention the media pay to an issue, the more likely that
issue is to come to mind and thus influence people’s political judgments” (Gidengil, 1992,
89). However, as Lewis-Beck and colleagues (2008) note: “[the] widespread availability
of information does not, in itself, guarantee that issues will become part of a voter’s con-
scious reasons for supporting one candidate over another.”(166) Is it likely, then, that
97
different voters care about different issues? If different voters cared about different issues,
each would presumably inform herself about the particular issue she cares about. After
all, the acquisition of political information is considered to be the result of complex in-
teractions between individual factors and environmental supply (Huckfeldt and Sprague,
1995). Yet, people are often characterized as being generalists rather than specialists in
their political knowledge (Delli Carpini and Keeter, 1993). This characterization means
that familiarity with one issue should translate into an increase in the probability of fa-
miliarity with another (Lewis-Beck et al., 2008). That may be true but many scholars
also argue that issue salience operates at the individual level.
Issues need to be considered important to voters in order for them to be able to influence
vote choice (Rabinowitz, Prothro and Jacoby, 1982). Some argue that there are different
types of issue saliences. McLeod, Becker and Byrnes (1974), for instance, distinguish
between community issue salience, individual issue salience, and perceived issue salience.
The first two types of salience are particularly useful as they differentiate public issues
from issues that are personally important to an individual voter.1 If citizens’ vote choices
were influenced by their attitudes on issues important to them, then individual issue
salience would represent fertile ground for research into the extent to which, and how,
positional issues might matter to voting behaviour.
Determining why voters care about different issues is not a simple endeavour. Even the
authors of The American Voter Revisited (2008) were puzzled by the individual variance
among voters in familiarity with certain issues. For them, “the existence of cognition is
the critical factor” (Lewis-Beck et al., 2008, 171). But the question remains: what could
1The third type–the perceived issue salience–connects the first two types by referring to the individualperception of the community issue salience. Perceived issue salience can be associated with agenda-settingeffects (see McCombs and Shaw, 1972) and to the concept of impersonal influence (see Mutz, 1998).
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account for the difference in cognition? Different analysts supply different answers to that
question. First, voters are not all exposed to the same sources of information. In post-
industrial societies, the workplace and the media environment are becoming more complex
and more fragmented. The mass media is less uniform than it once was, when presidents
were sold like “soap powder or a can of beer” (McGinnis, 1968). The multiplication of
television channels and the advent of the internet has contributed to an environment that
favours the expression of sub-interests. Baum (2002), for example, shows how viewers of
soft news become inclined to care about some issues more than others. The fragmentation
of the media environment also facilitates selective exposure, which implies a reversed or-
der: viewers choose their source of influence. Indeed, citizens now have more opportunity
to avoid political information that does not conform to their worldview. Stroud (2008b)
demonstrated how voters’ political beliefs are increasingly related to voters’ media expo-
sure. Selective exposure to media sources is consistent with Festinger’s (1957) cognitive
dissonance theory, which argues that people tend to reject information that is not consis-
tent with their belief system. Moreover, there is evidence that voters do not react in the
same ways to the same sources of influence (Erbring, Goldenberg and Miller, 1980). For
example, elderly citizens are more affected by news reports about social security than are
younger citizens, and African Americans are more affected by news about racial discrimi-
nation than other citizens (Iyengar and Kinder, 1987). The structural changes associated
with the rise of post-industrial societies, combined with psychological concepts such as
cognitive dissonance and selective exposure, might jointly contribute to the creation of
issue-specific experts.
An issue public is comprised of voters who are more alert, attentive, interested and in-
formed about a given issue (Key, 1961). Ironically, it was Converse (1964) who first
introduced the concept of issue publics. According to Converse, “[...] we come a step
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closer to reality when we recognize the fragmentation of the mass public into a plethora
of narrower issue publics.”(245) But it was Krosnick (1990) who primarily elaborated the
contemporary version of the concept to create the issue-public theory. Salience-based
heterogeneity of the effect of positional issues on vote choice is central to issue-public
theory:
Policy attitudes that citizens consider important are highly accessible in mem-
ory, are highly resistant to change, are highly stable over time, are extensively
linked to and consistent with individuals’ basic values, instigate polarized per-
ceptions of competing presidential candidates’ policy attitudes, and are pow-
erful determinants of candidate preferences. (1990, 70)
The issue-public idea complicates elitist views of the electorate. However, the idea of
different causal mechanisms operating for different subgroups does not have the same
appeal as theories that are more universally applicable and parsimonious. Krosnick’s
issue-public theory is important because it relaxes the conditions under which issue voting
can matter. All voters do not need to know, as is implicitly assumed by spatial models, the
positions of all the parties on all the issues (Lewis-Beck et al., 2008). Voters can handle
being knowledgeable about a small set of issues that are important to them: “[...] people
probably accumulate large stores of knowledge in memory relevant to important policy
attitudes and smaller amounts of knowledge relevant to unimportant policy attitudes”
(Krosnick, 1990, 68). The stability of attitudes on a single issue that matters to a voter is
easier to manage, even without ideological consistency (Taylor, 1983). In this way, public
issues overcome the information-related hurdles facing issue voting. The authors of The
American Voter Revisited (2008) detect some variations in the electorate concerning the
perception of candidates’ issue positions, and these differences are not fully explained
100
by education. One possibility is that different levels of party identification account for
this variance in perception. But it is also possible that the relationship operates in the
opposite direction. According to Krosnick (1990), sophisticated perceptions on issues
follow personal salience, not the other way around. Consider the case of someone who
cares a lot about a particular issue and who is more informed about party positions on
that issue. That person would be more likely to support the party that is closer to his
own position on that issue. While party positioning on issues is rather stable, it is difficult
to detect issue-public voting from crystallized party identification.
The issue-public theory is not necessarily inconsistent with the Michigan school model.
Indeed, some Michigan school scholars seem to recognize the role of salience-based hetero-
geneity in vote decision: “[...] even though familiarity and opinionation are widespread,
citizens are much more narrowly focused with respect to the policy questions that arouse
strong feelings” (Lewis-Beck et al., 2008, 175). But not all voters are necessarily mem-
bers of an issue public. Moreover, other factors such as values, party identification, or
even elite discourse, can contribute to voters developing attitudes about issues that are
less important to them as well. In Krosnick’s view: “It seems more sensible [...] to
view linkage between an attitude and values, needs, and goals as one possible cause of
importance” (Krosnick, 1990, 60). From this vantage point, issue publics can hardly be
considered campaign-specific, short-term factors. The origins of issue publics might be
motivated by self-interest and might grow as the relevant issues become more prominent
(Key, 1961). In short, the issue-publics literature is ambiguous about where exactly in
the causal chain leading to vote choice issue-public membership should be placed. But by
considering salience-based heterogeneity, this literature implicitly assumes that attitudes
on positional issues precede party identification.
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5.2 Hypotheses
The different theories concerning the distribution of political attitudes provide the foun-
dation for a number of testable hypotheses:
Hypothesis 1 : Members of issue publics should have more stable attitudes and
more accessible positional issue attitudes than other voters
Hypothesis 2 : The impact of positional issues on vote choice should be stronger
among members of issue publics
5.3 Methodology and Data
The 2004 and 2008 Canadian Election Study (CES) surveys are useful platforms for
testing these hypotheses.1 The CES questionnaires include various measures of political
sophistication such as education, political information, and political interest. Salience
is also measured in different ways, which means that it is possible to test for both the
subjective and objective types of salience detected by Epstein and Segal (2000). The
various questions asking respondents how much importance they accord to issues pro-
vide a subjective measure of salience. Furthermore, the CES surveys also include stop
watches that measure the time it takes a respondent to answer positional issue questions.
These measures can be considered measures of objective salience (Miller and Peterson,
2004). Open-ended questions, like the ones that probe which issue respondents’ consider
most important, prevent an over-standardization of the responses (Kuklinski and Pey-
ton, 2007). Such a consideration is particularly relevant for exploring the heterogeneity
1Many issue attitudes are surveyed in CES mail-back questionnaires. The 2006 CES is not used forthis analysis because it does not include a mail-back questionnaire.
102
of the electorate. Finally, these datasets permit us to use the issue scales presented in
the previous chapter to assess potential heterogeneity of positional issue effects in the
electorate.
The concept of heterogeneity is not intuitive and it can represent operationalizational
challenges. One way to detect heterogeneity is to consider interaction terms that cap-
ture non-additive effects (Bartle, 2005, 656). Goren (1997) used similar interval-level
knowledge scales and similar formal interaction tests to demonstrate the effects of exper-
tise. In this analysis, positional issues are interacted with the two types of heterogeneity
bases. For elite-based heterogeneity, interactions between positions on issues and vari-
ous measures of political sophistication reveal whether issues matter more for politically
sophisticated voters than for unsophisticated voters. More precisely, these measures of
political sophistication include political interest scales, dummy variables for education
levels, and a political information scale: three indicators that tap voters’ motivation,
ability and opportunity to develop general political sophistication (see Delli Carpini and
Keeter, 1996; Luskin, 1990).1
When assessing salience-based heterogeneity, interactions between issue positions and
individual salience probe whether specific interest in an issue is associated with hetero-
geneous effects of issues on voting behaviour. Objective individual salience is measured
using a scale that includes various items tapping the importance respondents accord to a
particular issue. The use of such a scale is motivated by the difficulty inherent in capturing
the concept of issue salience with a single item. The use of only the conventional “Most
important problem” question to measure importance is problematic (see Wlezien, 2005).
1The choice of keeping multiple measures of political sophistication is justified by the desire to accountfor the various ways of conceptualizing and operationalizing political sophistication that exists in theliterature. Among others: 1) Education level (Converse, 1964); 2) Interviewer assessment (Zaller, 1992);3) Direct objective questions (Delli Carpini and Keeter, 1996).
103
It is unclear if this question taps the importance of an issue to the respondent personally
or if it simply reflects the respondent’s perception of the most publicly discussed issue.
Hence, it is important to employ a measure that distinguishes between the fact of being a
member of an issue public, which involves having strong feelings toward a specific issue,
and detached knowledge of the public issue of the day. This distinction is not always
made in the literature. For instance, Lewis-Beck et al. (2008) consider political informa-
tion and perception of objective reality on one issue as a measure of personal issue salience
when, according to Krosnick (1990), political information should be a consequence of issue
salience. Therefore, members of issue publics are defined by their level of attachment to
a particular issue. The use of multi-item scales that include questions asked at different
points in the survey and with various wordings provide further foundation for a more
valid measure of individual issue salience.
5.4 Results
The data reveal evidence of the first two types of heterogeneity. Salience-based hetero-
geneity has a greater impact on the effect of positional issues than elite-based hetero-
geneity. The evidence thus provides some support for an electorate composed of issue
publics.
Citizens who care about an issue tend to think more about it than those who do not
care about the issue. As such, these voters are likely to have more easily accessible issue
positions stored in their short term memory (Krosnick, 1990). The 2004 CES contains a
measure of how long respondents take to answer questions on same-sex marriage. This
timing indicator provides an objective measure of personal salience (Epstein and Segal,
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2000). The speed with which a respondent answers the question on same-sex marriage
in 2004 predicts the stability of the attitudes when the same question is asked in 2008.
Indeed, those who care the most about the same-sex marriage issue are the least likely
to have changed their minds over four years. Figure 5.1 illustrates the effect of response
time on the stability of attitudes once such political sophistication indicators such as
education, political knowledge, and political interest are controlled. The results show a
clear and significant effect of response time on the cross-time stability of attitudes on
positonal issues. Attitudes about positional issues are more stable for citizens who care
about a particular issue. But does personal salience also have an effect on attitudes toward
parties?
The issue-public hypothesis also stipulates that the effect of issue attitudes on vote choice
will differ depending on the level of salience voters accord to particular issues of interest.
One way to test this proposition is to consider those positional issues clearly associated
with a specific party: moral issues for the Conservative Party and the environmental
issue for the Green Party.1 These choices aim to avoid the confusion that disputed issue
ownership might have on issue voting (see, for instance, Damore, 2004; Holian, 2004).
The conventional wisdom is that for an issue attitude to have an effect on the vote, there
must be perceived party differences on that issue (Lewis-Beck et al., 2008).
Figure 5.2 suggests that views on moral issues of those who care a lot about these issues
have a stronger impact on evaluations of the Conservative Party than do other voters’
views on moral issues.2 A similar pattern emerges with individuals’ positions on the
1Oddly enough, the association of the environmental issue with the Green Party might be less clearin the context of the 2008 Canadian election. In that election, the Liberal Party included the propositionof a ‘Green Shift’ in their electoral strategy.
2Factor scales measuring attitudes toward parties are used as dependent variables instead of votechoice because there are so few Green Party voters in the sample. To be consistent, a similar scale isused to evaluate the impact of attitudes toward moral issues on support for the Conservative Party. But
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Figure 5.1: Accessibility and Stability of Issue Attitudes
Source: Canadian Election Study (CES), 2004 and 2008 (Panel).Method : Least Squares Regression (Full results in Table 15 in the Appendix).
Vertical bars indicate 95-percent confidence intervals.Dependent variables: Stability of attitudes toward same-sex marriage.Independent variables: Respondent’s time to answer the questions
related to the same-sex marriage issue in 2004.Controls: Education, Political information and Political interest.
106
Figure 5.2: The Effect of Issue Salience: Issue publics?
Attitude toward Moral Issues
Atti
tude
tow
ard
the
Con
serv
ativ
es
Progressive mean Traditional
Neg
ativ
em
ean
Pos
itive
(a)
Degree of Environmentalism
Atti
tude
tow
ard
the
Gre
en P
arty
Less mean More
Neg
ativ
em
ean
Pos
itive
(b)
Source: Canadian Election Study (CES), 2004 and 2008 (Pooled).Method : Least Squares Regression (Full results in Table 16 in the Appendix). Predicted values.Vertical bars indicate 95-percent confidence intervals.Dependent variables: Attitude(Conservative), Attitude(Green). Factor scales.Independent variables: Issue scales (a) Moral Issues (Position and Salience);
(b) Environment (Position and Salience).See Tables 2 to 6 in the Appendix for details.
Controls: Age, Income, Education, Political information and Political interest.Interactions (Position X Salience): Moral issues (p < .01); Environment (p < .01).The darker lines represent the predicted level of attachment to a given party when the issue is salient for voters,and the lighter lines when the issue is not salient.
107
environmental issue and their evaluation of the Green Party. On the graphs presented in
Figure 5.2, the darker lines that represent the voters that accord a high level of salience
to the issue have a steeper slope than the lighter lines representing the other voters.
There is a statistically significant interaction effect (p < .01). Heterogeneity appears to
influence how issue attitudes can matter for electoral politics. The results in Figure 5.2,
then, provide some support for the issue-public hypothesis. It is possible that these results
might mask the effects of elite-based heterogeneity in political sophistication. Issue voting,
after all, is more pronounced among those with higher levels of expertise (Goren, 1997).
Is it possible that general expertise about politics matters more than specific expertise
on an issue? The results reported in Figure 5.3 indicate that elite-based heterogeneity
also matters. The significant finding that emerges from those data is that the personal
salience accorded to an issue has a greater interactive effect than different measures of
political sophistication.1
5.5 Discussion
The findings presented in this chapter suggest that positional issue effects vary as a
function of the extent to which an individual cares about a particular issue. While different
positional issues might have a negligible effect on voting behaviour at large, they seem
to have substantial effects on the voting behaviour of the particular groups to whom
they are salient. This heterogeneity of issue effects can thus be labeled ‘salience-based
heterogeneity’. Characterizations of electoral dynamics such as the brokerage-politics
note that when vote choice is used as a dependent variable, the substantive results are the same.1There is a debate in the literature concerning how to measure political sophistication (see Luskin,
1987). We adopt the skeptical view that advanced education does not automatically lead to political in-terest and political information (Neuman, 1986). Consequently, the components of political sophisticationare tested separately.
108
Figure 5.3: Elites or Issue Publics?
Attitude toward Moral Issues
Atti
tude
tow
ard
the
Con
serv
ativ
es
Progressive mean Traditional
Neg
ativ
em
ean
Pos
itive
(a) Salience
Attitude toward Moral Issues
Atti
tude
tow
ard
the
Con
serv
ativ
es
Progressive mean Traditional
Neg
ativ
em
ean
Pos
itive
(b) Education
Attitude toward Moral Issues
Atti
tude
tow
ard
the
Con
serv
ativ
es
Progressive mean Traditional
Neg
ativ
em
ean
Pos
itive
(c) Political interest
Attitude toward Moral Issues
Atti
tude
tow
ard
the
Con
serv
ativ
es
Progressive mean Traditional
Neg
ativ
em
ean
Pos
itive
(d) Political information
Degree of Environmentalism
Atti
tude
tow
ard
the
Gre
en P
arty
Less mean More
Neg
ativ
em
ean
Pos
itive
(e) Salience
Degree of Environmentalism
Atti
tude
tow
ard
the
Gre
en P
arty
Less mean More
Neg
ativ
em
ean
Pos
itive
(f) Education
Degree of Environmentalism
Atti
tude
tow
ard
the
Gre
en P
arty
Less mean More
Neg
ativ
em
ean
Pos
itive
(g) Political interest
Degree of Environmentalism
Atti
tude
tow
ard
the
Gre
en P
arty
Less mean More
Neg
ativ
em
ean
Pos
itive
(h) Political information
Source: Canadian Election Study (CES), 2004 and 2008 (Pooled).Method : Least Squares Regression. Predicted values.Vertical bars indicate 95-percent confidence intervals.Dependent variables: Attitude(Conservative), Attitude(Green). Factor scales.Independent variables: Issue scales (a) (b) (c) (d) Moral issues (Salience and Position);
(e) (f) (g) (h) Environment (Salience and Position).See Tables 2 to 6 in the Appendix for details.
Controls: Age, Income, Education, Political information and Political interest.Interacting variables: Salience (High salience); Education (University education);
Political interest (High political interest); Political information (High political information).The darker lines represent the predicted level of attachment to a given party when the level of the interactingvariable is high, and the lighter lines when its level is not high.
model tend to overlook the heterogeneity of issue effects and the ability of political parties
to target specific groups of citizens.
The data also demonstrate that there is an unequal distribution of issue attitudes among
citizens. That is to say, following the issue-publics hypothesis, people differ in the extent
to which they have sophisticated issue attitudes. This attitudinal heterogeneity, however,
does not simply reflect the classic elite-mass divide on political sophistication. The black-
109
and-white model of the electorate elaborated by Converse (1970) has been shown to be
more complex. Citizens’ knowledge about different political issues varies as a function of
extent to which they care about those issues. Thus, political expertise can be fragmented
and dispersed across various issue publics.
Despite the existence of a horizontal fragmentation of political sophistication, an elitist
view of the electorate still holds. Variables measuring political sophistication are found to
all consistently impact voters’ choices. Certainly, the effects of structural variables such
as education must be considered when attempting to uncover the underlying composition
of voting behaviour. However, it is reasonable to suppose that the fragmentation of the
workplace and the media environment have corresponding effects that make the electorate
less homogeneous. In a multichannel universe, voters have more opportunities to avoid
topics that do not interest them and focus on topics that do interest them. Exposure to
mass media narrows the knowledge gap between the elites and the general public (Kwak,
1999). And it is possible, as Baum (2002) argues, that soft news motivates politically
uninvolved voters to become more interested in specific political issues such as foreign
crises. Even Zaller (1998) acknowledges that his previous works might have exaggerated
citizens’ lack of competence. After seeing Bill Clinton’s approval rating improve in the
midst of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Zaller concluded that citizens might actually be
better at handling political substance than he had originally thought. Moreover, Kuklinski
and Segura (1995) show that concerns over some issues such as abortion can emerge from
the grassroots level. The voice of the people might thus be more than an echo. In any
case, if positional issues matter for some voters, political parties have an incentive to
care about them. And brokerage parties’ strategies of avoiding taking clear stances on
issues might be suboptimal. The next two chapters explore the possibility that positional
issues were used by political parties in recent Canadian elections to increase their support
110
among specific groups.
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Chapter 6
Detecting Potential for Growth:
Immigrants as Targetable
Segments
Political parties increasingly develop campaign strategies that target small electoral seg-
ments (Hillygus, 2007). Some recent research has shown that such targeting strategies
can effectively influence voter behaviour (Alvarez, Hopkins and Sinclair, 2010). But how
do positional issues fit into this landscape? The previous chapters have suggested that
positional issues matter to voters more than is conventionally assumed by the literature on
voting behaviour and brokerage politics, especially when we consider the salience-based
heterogeneity of the electorate. These findings provide some support for the effective
use of political marketing strategies and tactics such as micro-targeting. If different issues
matter to different voters, parties are well-advised to use market research to evaluate their
potential for growth. Such market research would entail identifying profitable groups to
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target. Like the Columbia and Michigan theories, political marketing theory is skeptical
about the ability of political parties to change voters’ preferences. At the core of politi-
cal marketing is the idea that political offers can be adapted to voters’ needs and wants
(O’Shaughnessy, 1990). Political parties are also subordinate to voters, not the other way
around. Political marketing approaches grant parties more control over their electoral
fates than do the Michigan and Columbia school voting models. Parties might not be
able to change voters’ preferences, but they can change their political offer to attract
certain groups of voters. Positional issues might be used to attract groups of voters to the
party, resulting in the party’s expansion of its electoral base. Inversely, positional issues
might lead parties to lose support among certain electoral segments, as the Tea Party
has done among more moderate Republicans. The conception of electoral dynamics in
political marketing theory is in line with the idea that “social groups need to be treated
as live social forces, not static categories” (Blais et al., 2002, 96).
An instance of a political party changing its political offer in order to attract particular
sub-segments of the population might be found in the positioning of the Conservative
Party of Canada during the 2011 Canadian federal election. Shortly after the election,
Flanagan (2011) suggested that the Conservative Party of Canada endeavoured to target
immigrants specifically. Such a claim runs contrary to the conventional voting wisdom in
Canada, which has historically considered immigrants to be very strong Liberal partisans
(Bilodeau and Kanji, 2010). Indeed, immigrants have been considered to have contributed
to several past electoral successes of the Liberal Party of Canada (Blais, 2005; Harrell,
2013). Nevertheless, Flanagan is not alone in believing the Conservatives successfully
courted immigrants on the eve of the 2011 election; authors such as Friesen and Sher
(2011) and Payton (2012) make similar claims. Given that immigrants are popularly
thought to hold right-wing views on many issues (Bricker and Ibbitson, 2013; Flanagan,
113
2011), it would make sense for the Conservatives to endeavour to target these voters.
Such targeting would allow Conservatives to move ahead of their principal historical
opponents, the Liberals, while remaining close to their ideological core (Pare and Berger,
2008). But immigrants are not a homogeneous group of citizens. Though they all share
the fact of being immigrants, they also come from different cultural backgrounds and
belong to different racial groups. As such, different issues might be important to different
immigrants.
This chapter examines different explanations for the alleged recent shift of immigrant
voters from the Liberal party to the Conservative party. Racial explanations appear
more convincing than structural explanations that are based on the fact of having immi-
grated. More importantly, the results support the idea that positional issues and targeting
strategies might have played a role in the success of the Conservatives in attracting some
traditional Liberal voters. Ultimately, it seems as though the Conservatives successfully
exploited an opportunity for growth by successfully attracting immigrant voters to the
party. These voters appear to have been drawn to the party moreso because of their
proximity to the party on issues than because of their race or a unique immigrantness
trait.
6.1 Theory
6.1.1 Immigrantness and the Welcoming Effect
The logic of the welcoming effect is based on the literature on incumbency effects. Put
simply, uninformed citizens can rely on incumbents’ past performance in office as an
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information shortcut to help them decide whether to support that party in future elections
(Fiorina, 1981). Positive retrospective evaluations favor the party in power. It is easy to
derive from this logic an application for the case of immigrant voters: perhaps immigrant
voters, thinking retrospectively, support the party that was in power at the moment
of their arrival in the country (Wiseman, 2007). For uninformed, non-partisan voters,
incumbency can represent a useful cue for competence and stability. For immigrants,
an incumbency effect might be more pronounced, as these voters are socialized into a
country’s political environment later in their lives and have weaker partisan ties than do
native-born voters (Black, Niemi and Powell, 1987; White et al., 2008). Indeed, in Canada,
“immigration has added a higher proportion of voters with no established party ties to the
electorate than in any other established democracy” (Carty, 2002, 727). If a welcoming
effect exists, then Liberal popularity among immigrants would be in part a reflection
of having been the party in power during the most important waves of immigration to
Canada. Indeed, the Liberals have for long been considered to be Canada’s “natural
governing party” and have been in power for a substantial portion of Canada’s history
(Carty, Young and Cross, 2000). The welcoming-party effect might concomitantly explain
the alleged recent increase in numbers of immigrants voting for the Conservative Party
since it gained office in 2006.
The debate around the effect of the party in power on the immigrant voters has theoretical
and practical consequences. One implication is that all immigrants, regardless of their
ethnic background or time of arrival, are affected by the same structural factors inherent to
moving. The voters’ immigrantness would be an independent cause of their vote decision,
and their ethnic origins or the parties’ policies would be largely irrelevant. On the eve of
an election, the favoured parties would simply have to activate their immigrant electoral
base and get them out to vote. This view fits into the theoretical frameworks that assume
115
that positional issues have minimal effects on vote choice. Immigrant voters share a
common immigrant experience, which results in similar behavioural characteristics.
6.1.2 Minority Issues and the Alienation of Racial Minority Vot-
ers
The welcoming effect assumes that issues have very little impact on the vote. Its un-
derlying incumbency logic minimizes the impetus for voters to reason about issues when
evaluating parties. In such a theory, what parties stand for is secondary. Yet in reality,
parties do hold positions on immigration issues. And they hold positions on minority
rights issues too. It is reasonable to presume that such issues, which clearly pertain to
many immigrants’ lives, would in fact be salient to immigrants and racial minorities. It
is possible that immigrant voters have more in common than just the simple fact of all
having moved from one country to another.
In Canada, immigrants and racial minorities are typically thought of as a Liberal electoral
base (Blais, 2005; Blais et al., 2002). But the origins and causes of the relationship
between the Liberal party and minority groups is less clear. It is possible that immigrant
voters inclination to vote for the Liberals rather than the Conservatives is attributable
to factors other than immigrantness. Given that many immigrants are also members of
racial minorities, it is possible that racial factors might influence voting patterns.1 While
immigrant and racial categories overlap (Bilodeau and Kanji, 2010), they are obviously
not the same. Unlike welcoming effects, racial effects imply that party positions on issues
119.1% of Canadians identify as belonging to a racial minority. Of these, 65.1% are immigrants. Thecomposition of the Canadian immigrant population has changed significantly over the last few decades.While 78.3% of immigrants were of European origin before 1971, 86.3% of immigrants that have arrivedbetween 2006 and 2011 are of non-European descent (Statistics Canada, National Household Survey,2011).
116
matter. If racial considerations are at play because racial minorities care about minority
rights issues, these voters need at the very minimum to be able to distinguish parties’
positions on those issues. As Lewis-Beck et al. (2008) points out, the perceived difference
between parties on an issue is a precondition for that issue to impact vote choice.
There has traditionally been a sharp contrast between Canadian parties on the minority
rights issue. The Liberal Party is clearly associated with the idea of multiculturalism,
which was enshrined in law by that party through the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms
(Clarkson, 2005). It should thus not come as a surprise that the Liberals are perceived by
voters as better suited to protect minority rights and promote cultural diversity than are
the Conservatives.1 When asked to evaluate parties’ policy positions on those issues in the
1984 and 1993 Canadian Election Study, Canadians consistently rate the Conservatives
as the least concerned about racial minorities (see Figure 7 in the Appendix). There is
also a sharp contrast between immigrants’ and ethnic minorities’ perceptions and other
voters’ perceptions of party capacities to handle minority rights issues. Immigrants and
ethnic minorities tend to perceive the Liberal party more favourably and the Conservative
party more negatively.
The Conservatives’ reputation on minority rights has deep historical roots (Wiseman,
2007). However, the era between 1993 and 2004 when the Reform Party and Canadian
Alliance replaced the Progressive-Conservatives as the main Canadian conservative forces
certainly worsened that reputation. Before then, Mulroney’s Conservatives saw the poten-
tial for growth represented by racial minorities and made efforts to attract these voters: as
Loney (1998) points out, “The Conservatives under Brian Mulroney also saw the electoral
1For the 1965-1988 period, ‘Conservatives’ refers to the Progressive-Conservative Party. Between1993 and 2000: the Progressive-Conservative party and the Reform Party (1993,1997)/Canadian Alliance(2000). And after 2000: the Conservative Party of Canada.
117
advantages to be gained by promoting links with ethnic groups and promoting multicul-
turalism policies” (Loney, 1998, 148). These efforts resulted in the enactment in 1988 of
the Canadian Multiculturalism Act, which legislated government assistance for the pro-
motion and enhancement of multicultural diversity. However, these Conservative efforts
to attract racial minorities were annihilated by the advent of the Reform Party, which
replaced the Progressive Conservative Party as the main vehicule for conservative ideas in
the country. In 1993, the newly created Reform Party advocated the disbanding of official
multiculturalism and a reduction in annual immigration quotas, while being highly critical
of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Ellis and Archer, 1997; Laycock, 2002). Such is-
sue positions contributed to the party’s reputation as being “too extreme” (Nevitte et al.,
2000). This image stuck to the party even after its metamorphosis into the Canadian
Alliance, which, after merging with the remnants of the Progressive-Conservative Party,
became the present Conservative Party of Canada (Greenspon, 2001).
The Conservative Party’s historically divergent position on minority rights issues might
have led to their disfavour among racial minorities. Operating unlike a wedge issue, which
attracts voters to a party that would typically not receive their vote (see Hillygus and
Shields, 2008), the minority rights issue might have driven potentially conservatively-
minded racial minorities away from the Conservative Party. The possibility thus arises
that immigrants are attracted to the Liberals and deterred by the Conservatives not
because of immigrantness, but because of racial factors.
6.1.3 Cross-Pressured Targetable Segments
The Conservatives have recently made noticeable efforts to improve their branding on
racial minority issues (Wells, 2006). According to Flanagan (2011), Conservative strate-
118
gists focused their efforts on the “immigrant voter” after several failed attempts to rally
francophone Quebec voters in 2006 and 2008. Immigrant and racial minorities were of
particular strategic interest to the Conservatives because many of these voters have con-
servative positions on issues such as the economy, law and order, and moral questions
(Bricker and Ibbitson, 2013). Considering that these voters tend to support more leftist
parties such as the Liberals (Bilodeau and Kanji, 2010), immigrant and racial minor-
ity voters can be considered cross-pressured.1 Therefore, there was a clear opportunity
for the Conservatives to enlarge their electoral base without alienating their traditional
voting base. After all, Lusztig and Wilson (2008) show that nativist or anti-immigrant
sentiments are not a major cause of division among conservative voters in Canada. If
the Conservatives could distance themselves from the extremist and intolerant image
they inherited from their Reform/Alliance past, they might be able to turn immigrants
and racial minorities into natural Conservative voters. Such a conjecture assumes a dy-
namic relationship between voters and parties, one in which positional issues play a major
role.
The advent of micro-targeting technologies and the change in the socio-economic environ-
ment has increased the importance of segmentation-based strategies in American politics
(Schantz, 1996a). Increasing cultural and ethnic diversity has also encouraged “the kind
of special interest centeredness characteristic of so much contemporary American election-
eering” (Gimpel, 1999, 237). Indeed, the tendency to target ethnic communities has been
increasingly present in the United States (Leighley, 2001). And “new immigrants have
proven capable of influencing the electoral calculations of party leaders” (Tichenor, 2002,
7). It seems that the Republicans are in fact making great efforts to change their image
1Hillygus and Shields (2008) consider that to be considered cross-pressured, “an individual must notonly disagree with the position taken by her own party but also agree with the position of the oppositionparty.” (Hillygus and Shields, 2008, 56)
119
and increase their appeal among racial minorities (Marbut, 2004; Philpot, 2008). Some of
these efforts are targeted toward the Hispanic minority. As the largest minority group in
the United States, Hispanic Americans necessarily represent a strategic electorate segment
that Republicans cannot ignore. Yet there is more. Hispanic voters are also thought to
be cross-pressured : these traditional Democratic supporters are more ideologically con-
servative (de la Garza and Cortina, 2007; DeSipio, 1996) and tend to care more about
traditional conservative issues like morality and national security than other voters (Abra-
jano, Alvarez and Nagler, 2008). As such, these voters are members of issue publics that
represent subtantial room for Republican growth. Accordingly, Hispanic Americans have
increasingly been the target of direct mail, door canvassing and other micro-targeting
techniques by Republicans in recent years (de la Garza and DeSipio, 2004).
Micro-targeting strategies are not limited to the United States. The Conservatives have
already shown their ability to elaborate strategies that involve targeting specific electorate
segments. In 2006, they rebranded their party to fit their electoral goals in part by target-
ing different segments. At the time, Quebec ridings were appealing to Conservatives who
hoped to recreate a nation-wide conservative coalition (Hebert, 2007).1 But their image
in the province had been sullied by the anti-Quebec sentiments that the Reform Party
espoused. The Conservatives repositioned their party in order to attempt to tap the Que-
bec issue public. They promised, for example, an “open federalism” that would provide
more recognition and autonomy for the province. The Conservatives also promised to ad-
dress the possible fiscal imbalance problem between federal and provincial governments,
a problem especially important to Quebec at the time. The Quebec issue was not the
1According to some observers, Brian Mulroney led the Progressive-Conservative Party to two succes-sive electoral majorities by bringing together different types of conservative voters: Western Reformists,Ontarian Red Tories, Quebec Bleus, and Blue Grit Maritimers (Watt, 2006). The constitutional debatesof the era may have contributed to the implosion of the Mulroney Coalition and the subsequent emergenceof the Reform Party and the Bloc Quebecois.
120
only issue on which the Conservatives repositioned between the 2004 and 2006 elections
(Clarke et al., 2006). They also repositioned on support for universal, publicly-funded
healthcare and the firm intention to not legislate on abortion rights in order to be more
appealing to potential voters (Pare and Berger, 2008). The Conservatives’ attempt to
rally French-Speaking Quebeckers is known to have failed after the party cut funding to
the arts and to culture on the eve of the 2008 election (Hebert, 2007). The subsequent
electoral disappointment the party faced motivated them to turn their strategic focus away
from Francophone Quebeckers and toward immigrant minorities (Flanagan, 2011).
The use of positional issues to target voters who disagree with a party’s position might
be a way for parties to enlarge their bases of support. These strategies appear to be
working. According to Hillygus and Shields (2008), the more information voters receive
about issues on which their attitudes diverge from the position of the party they typically
support, the more likely these cross-pressured voters are to defect. Similarly, Stimson
(2004) calls conflicted conservatives those voters who say they are conservative but hold
liberal positions on specific issues. These voters represent a major source of movement
in public opinion because they can be appealed to by all sides of the political spectrum.
In Canada, some racial minorities are thought to be cross-pressured voters that represent
room for growth for the Conservatives. There is some evidence that the Conservatives,
like the American Republicans, have targeted racial minorities in recent years. In a
package sent by mistake to a political opponent, Conservatives explicitly mention their
intention to target ten “very ethnic” ridings during the 2011 election based on an analysis
of voting patterns among different racial communities (de Souza, 2011). According to
this document, the Conservatives planned to reach targeted issue publics among these
communities with massive advertisement buys in ethnic media.
121
Conservative efforts to reach racial minorities might have had some success. Some of
the implications of the results presented in the previous chapters is consistent with that
interpretation. Different voters care about different issues. If a party targets appropri-
ate issue-public segments, it can impact political attitudes and ultimately, vote choices.
From such a perspective, the possibility emerges that the vote choices of immigrants or
racial minorities are less a reflection of their immigrantness or race than they are of their
community’s political views and priorities.
6.2 Hypotheses
The different lines of reasoning found in the literature explaining immigrants’ political
behaviour are amenable to empirical investigation:
Hypothesis 1 : Immigrants tend to support the party that was in power at the
time of their arrival
Hypothesis 2 : Racial factors explain voting behaviour better than immigrantness
Hypothesis 3 : Immigrant and racial minorities are cross-pressured issue publics
targeted by the Conservatives
6.3 Methodology and Data
The different research hypotheses are tested using Canadian Election Study (CES) sur-
veys. The data from thirteen waves of the CES1 allow the analysis to extend over a
1More precisely, this analysis uses the CES data collected during these thirteen federal elections:1965, 1968, 1974, 1979, 1984, 1988, 1993, 1997, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2011. The 1972 data are not
122
wide time span and reveal changes in trends. Despite there being different investigators
and some variance in question wordings, the different CES waves were conducted using
similar methods of investigation and include comparable sets of questions. These ques-
tions provide the sociodemographic and attitudinal information required to conduct the
following analysis. The questions of particular importance–those regarding ethnicity and
year of immigration–were asked in all CES waves since 1974. Finally, the longevity of the
CES gives it an advantage over other data sources; it is amenable to the pooling of data
samples and permits cross-time comparisons.
In addition to the CES datasets, the present analysis uses the 2011 Vote Compass (VC)
data. These data were gathered from a voter engagement application that was devel-
oped in co-operation with CBC/Radio-Canada, Canada’s public broadcaster and largest
news media corporation. In addition to thirty positional issue questions, a set of ques-
tions capturing users’ sociodemographic backgrounds and political preferences were asked.
Moreover, VC data also include party positions on the same thirty positional issues. Party
positions were determined by analyzing publicly available party statements. These state-
ments were sent to the parties for review and confirmation. This information permits a
unique comparison of voter-party proximity on positional issues. However, despite their
obvious assets, these types of data must be treated with care. In order to deal with
potential selection bias, all analyses using these data must take into account users’ so-
ciodemographic backgrounds such as age, education, income, gender, language, riding of
residence, and their levels of political interest. Despite the selection bias pitfall associated
with VC data, this dataset still has obvious advantages. The nearly two million responses
collected during the 2011 Canadian federal election campaign are useful for studying small
available. For the 1974-1979-1980 CES panel, only the first respondents’ survey was kept. The 1980 CEShas not been used because no new respondents were added to that sample.
123
electoral subgroups. The present analysis uses these new forms of data cautiously: the
use of VC data is restricted to supporting or enlarging results of analyses conducted using
CES data.
6.4 Results
Do immigrants and racial minorities actually have a special attachment to the Liberal
party and/or an aversion to the Conservative Party?1 This conventional belief can be
observed in Figure 6.1 that shows Canadian minorities’ partisan support since 1965. The
Liberals historical advantage with the immigrant vote can clearly be seen. However, a
Conservative disadvantage does not appear quite so strongly. Nevertheless, the Conserva-
tives seem to have noticeably improved their vote share among immigrants in the recent
election, a finding that is consistent with aforementioned targeting speculations. In the
2011 federal election, a greater proportion of immigrants than non-immigrants voted for
the Conservatives.2 Despite this fact, a greater division appears among racial minorities.3
And this time, the Conservatives’ disadvantage is clear.
Since 1993, the year that saw the emergence of the Reform Party, Liberal support from
both minority groups shows a similar pattern. This observed similarity might explain
why these two types of voters are often considered as a single category (see Bilodeau
and Kanji, 2010). However, apart from this period, the difference between the voting
1For simplicity’s sake, this analysis focuses primarily on the Conservative Party and their mainhistorical opponent, the Liberal Party of Canada. Most results concerning the New Democratic Partycan be found in the Appendix.
2This finding can also be observed in IPSOS-Reid 2011 Exit Poll data. According to this survey, theConservatives scored better than the Liberals in 2011 among both recent and older cohorts of immigrants.Only the NDP had better results among immigrants arriving to Canada in the last ten years.
3Immigrant voters are those not born in Canada. Racial minorities are those respondents who indicatethat their ancestors’ origins are non-European (Russians are considered Europeans).
124
Figure 6.1: Minorities’ Partisan Support Over Time
0
25
50
75
100
1965
1968
1974
1979
1984
1988
1993
1997
2000
2004
2008
2011
Per
cent
age
of v
ote
Conservatives
0
25
50
75
100
1965
1968
1974
1979
1984
1988
1993
1997
2000
2004
2008
2011
Per
cent
age
of v
ote
Liberals
(a) Immigrants
0
25
50
75
100
1965
1968
1974
1979
1984
1988
1993
1997
2000
2004
2008
2011
Per
cent
age
of v
ote
Conservatives
0
25
50
75
100
1965
1968
1974
1979
1984
1988
1993
1997
2000
2004
2008
2011
Per
cent
age
of v
ote
Liberals
(b) Racial minority
Source: Canadian Election Study (CES), 1965 to 2011.Note: The black line represents (i) immigrant and (ii) racial minorities, respectively. The dashed line representsall other voters. Immigrant voters are those not born in Canada. Racial minorities are those respondents whoindicate that their ancestors’ origins are non-European.
125
patterns of immigrants and racial minorities is clear, especially when looking at support
for the Conservatives. It is therefore relevant to explore the factors explaining the voting
behaviour of these two groups separately. This section tests three hypotheses related to
immigrantness, race, and issue publics.
6.4.1 A Welcoming Effect?
The defining characteristic of an immigrant is the fact of not having been born in the
country where one lives. Therefore, the effect of being an immigrant on the vote should
be related to that specific characteristic and not to other factors such as race or culture.
Many studies indeed show that immigrantness has an independent effect on the vote and
on party affiliation (Black, Niemi and Powell, 1987; White et al., 2008; Wong, 2000).
Another expectation related to immigrantness is that immigrants support the party that
was in power at the time of their arrival in the country. Given the Liberals’ long reign
during the most important waves of immigration to Canada, it is expected that most
immigrants would have historically voted Liberal. Yet now that the Conservatives are in
power, they should be the ones benefiting from this welcoming-party advantage. Such an
explanation only holds if a welcoming-party effect endures.
If immigrants vote in gratitude to the party that was in power when they arrived, there
should be differences in voting patterns among immigrants based on their year of arrival.
Also, an increase in immigrant support for the Conservatives should be perceivable since
the moment the Conservatives took office in 2006.
In order to examine these possibilities, all immigrants have been assigned to a party ac-
cording to their year of arrival. Unfortunately, the data do not permit us to determine
126
whether immigrants who immigrated during an electoral year arrived before or after elec-
tion day.1 Therefore, those who arrived during an election year that experienced a change
of government are dropped for the analysis as it was impossible to determine which party
was in power at their arrival. The CES data from all available electoral years have been
pooled in order to increase the sample size and maximize statistical power. This method-
ological choice also follows the stipulation of the welcoming-party effect is structural and
consequently, time insensitive. The need to distinguish between the immigrants that ar-
rived during the Conservative reign from those who have been welcomed by a Liberal
government is consequential. Yet if immigrants indeed tend to favour the party that was
in power at the time of their arrival, this effect might be undetectable in conventional
models that include only one variable for immigrants. With some immigrants support-
ing one party, and others opposing it, the immigrantness effect would be cancelled-out.
The welcoming-party effect would be hidden by the aggregation of these two types of
immigrants into the same variable. Instead of looking at the effect of being an immigrant
on voting for a party, the models presented in Table 6.1 look at the welcoming-party
effect.
The results shown in Table 6.1 could not be clearer: there is no detectable welcoming-party
effect. This finding applies both to voting intentions and to feelings toward the Liberals
and the Conservatives. Thus, immigrants do not seem to express electoral gratitude
toward the party that was in office at the time they moved to Canada. These results show
little support for the idea that new immigrants would simply endorse the Conservatives
because they were in power at the moment of their arrival.2 The next section explores the
possibility that “racial” elements play a greater role than “immigrantness” in Canadian
1The CES questionnaire only asks the year that an immigrant immigrated, not the month and day.2These analyses do not include non-citizen immigrants as the CES only surveys those eligible to vote
in Canada.
127
Table 6.1: The Welcoming-Party Effect: A Bonus for the Party in Power?
Focal party
Liberals Conservatives
Vote Feeling Vote Feeling
Welcominga -0.04 -0.00 -0.00 -0.00Focal party in powerb 0.72∗∗∗ 0.02 -0.47∗∗∗ -0.01Welcoming X Focal party in powerc 0.03 0.01 0.05 -0.00
ControlsQuebec 0.29∗∗ 0.01 -0.39∗∗∗ -0.02∗
West -0.67∗∗∗ -0.04∗∗∗ 0.40∗∗∗ 0.02∗∗
Maritimes -0.09∗ -0.01 0.18 -0.02Woman 0.08 0.01 -0.04 -0.02∗∗∗
French language -0.36∗ -0.01 -0.03 -0.01Other language 0.13∗ 0.01∗ 0.11† 0.02Catholic 0.30∗∗ 0.05∗∗∗ 0.12 0.01∗∗∗
Protestant -0.21∗ -0.00 0.89∗∗∗ 0.11∗∗∗
Other religion 0.42∗∗∗ 0.05∗∗∗ 0.15 0.04∗∗∗
Less than 34 years-old -0.12 0.00 -0.11 0.01More than 55 years-old 0.04 0.00 -0.06 0.01Below High School 0.15† 0.03∗∗ -0.26∗∗ 0.00University Degree -0.10 0.02∗∗∗ 0.13† 0.02Low Income -0.01 -0.01 0.17∗ 0.02High Income 0.10 0.00 0.18 0.01Urban 0.19∗∗ 0.02∗∗∗ -0.12† -0.01Years in country -0.01∗∗∗ -0.00∗∗∗ 0.01∗∗ -0.00
(Intercept) -0.71∗∗∗ 0.48∗∗∗ -0.88∗∗∗ 0.41∗∗∗
N 5536 5505 5536 5505Source: Canadian Election Study, 1965-2011 (Pooled and imputed data).
Note: The data only include immigrant respondents. The models also include controls
for the 13 waves of the CES survey (not shown).
Method : Logistic regression (Vote) and least squares regression (Feeling).
Dependent variables: Which party did you vote for? (Vote); How do you feel about [party]? (Feeling)aA variable that matches the party in power in the election study and the party in power upon
arrival (i.e., A dummy variable that reads 1 if the party in power at the moment of the survey is
the same as the party in power on arrival and 0 otherwise). Its coefficient represents the average
welcoming effect for the Conservatives (if the focal party is the Liberals) and for the Liberals (if
the focal party is the Conservatives); bA dummy variable that indicates whether the focal party is
in power at the moment of the survey. Its coefficient represents the fixed effect for the general
effect of the focal party being in power among all immigrants in average; cThe coefficient resulting
from this interaction represents the marginal effect when the focal party is the welcoming party.† significant at p < .10; ∗p < .05; ∗∗p < .01; ∗∗∗p < .001
voting behaviour.
128
6.4.2 Immigrantness Versus Race
Recall the timelines shown in Figure 6.1. These graphs show that the sharpest contrasts in
voting patterns are found between ethnic voters and non-ethnic voters. Note the variation
in racial minorities’ support for the Liberals and the Conservatives before and after the
entrenchment of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982. Before 1982, the Liberals
enjoyed a clear advantage among visible minorities. The highest support for the Liberals
among ethnic voters was on the eve of the 1982 Charter entrenchment.1 But quickly after,
Liberal support began to fade. At the same time, Mulroney’s Conservatives were trying
to strengthen the Conservative Party’s ethnic constituency by enacting, for example, the
Canadian Multiculturalism Act (Loney, 1998). The implosion of Mulroney’s party and
the advent of the Reform Party as the principal vehicle of Conservative ideology in Canada
makes it practically impossible to determine if Mulroney’s strategy could have translated
into an enduring shift in racial minorities’ voting patterns.2 It is somewhat doubtful given
the Reform Party’s positions and its members’ comments, which allowed opponents to
portray the party as hostile to racial minorities. It seems reasonable to link the decline in
ethnic support for the Conservatives during these years to an image problem. Previous
CES studies showed that the Reform Party and the Canadian Alliance both suffered from
being perceived as intolerant and extreme parties (Blais et al., 2002; Nevitte et al., 2000).
Nevertheless, there is observable growth in immigrant and visible minorities’ support for
the Conservatives between the 2008 and 2011 elections. The question is: why?
Comparing immigrants’ and visible minorities’ voting patterns side by side is not sufficient
1The 1980 CES data show similar results, which is not surprising given the fact that the 1980 samplewas constituted exclusively of 1979 CES respondents. The 1980 CES data were not included in thisanalysis to avoid autocorrelation problems.
2For the 1993, 1997 and 2000 Elections, this analysis merges the information for the Progressive-Conservative Party and the Reform Party/Canadian Alliance. In December 2003, the Canadian Allianceand the Progressive-Conservative Party merged to become the current Conservative Party of Canada.
129
to determine the independent effects of each of these factors on vote choice. Especially
since these two categories strongly overlap (Bilodeau and Kanji, 2010). Moreover, it is
possible that immigrants and racial minorities share common sociodemographic charac-
teristics that predispose them to vote a certain way, meaning that their behaviour is not
necessarily determined by race per se. For example, the fact that immigrants tend to be
more educated and come from various religious and ethnic backgrounds might better ex-
plain their voting patterns than the experience of having left their country of birth. In this
case, the independent effect of being an immigrant–immigrantness–on vote choice needs
to be distinguished from the voting behaviour of immigrants as a social group. To assess
the independent effects of immigrantness and race on the vote for each party, we turn to
regression analyses. Figure 6.2 shows the effect of immigrantness and ethnicity on the
propensity to vote for the Conservatives and the Liberals from 1968 to 2011 controlling
for sociodemographic factors.1
The results illustrate the importance of distinguishing between the effect of race and
immigrantness. The Liberal advantage appears to be driven principally by race, not
immigrantness. When race is not controlled for, the effect of being an immigrant has
a significant independent effect on voting for the Liberals during the elections following
the entrenchment of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Results shown in the Table 17
in the Appendix). The effect disappears, however, once race is taken into account. In
fact, once race is taken into account, the independent effect of immigrantness on the vote
is never statistically significant in any year for either party between 1968 to 2011. The
results also confirm the Conservative Party’s difficulties in attracting racial minorities.
As expected, these difficulties improved in 1988, when Mulroney made efforts to reach
1Summaries of the results for all the variables included in these models can be found in the Tables17, 18 and 19 in the Appendix.
130
Figure 6.2: Independent Effects of Immigrantness and Race on the Vote
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
−0.10
−0.05
0.00
0.05
0.10
0.15
1968
1974
1979
1984
1988
1993
1997
2000
2004
2006
2008
2011
Year
Effe
ct o
n V
ote
Liberals
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
● ●
●
●
●
−0.15
−0.10
−0.05
0.00
0.05
0.10
1968
1974
1979
1984
1988
1993
1997
2000
2004
2006
2008
2011
Year
Effe
ct o
n V
ote
Conservatives
(a) Immigrantness
●
●
●
●
●
●●
●
●●
●●
−0.2
0.0
0.2
0.4
1968
1974
1979
1984
1988
1993
1997
2000
2004
2006
2008
2011
Year
Effe
ct o
n V
ote
Liberals
●
●
●
●
●
●
● ●
●
●
●●
−0.2
0.0
0.2
1968
1974
1979
1984
1988
1993
1997
2000
2004
2006
2008
2011
Year
Effe
ct o
n V
ote
Conservatives
(b) Racial minority
Source: Canadian Election Study (CES), 1965 to 2011.Method : Least-squares regression. Vertical bars indicate 95% confidence intervals, which reflecta significance level of 0.05Dependent variable: Which party did you vote for?
131
racial minorities, and worsened in 1993 with the advent of the Reform Party. Statistically
significant negative effects of race on the Conservative vote are actually just found for
the years following 1993. However, the independent negative effect of race on voting for
the Conservatives did not decrease in 2011 as was expected. That said, when a model is
estimated to uncover the determinants of being a new Conservative voter in 20111, race
does appear as a significant factor (see Table 6.2). While immigrantness does not on its
own appear to be a statistically significant influence on the vote, the interaction between
race and immigrantness–being an immigrant and a racial minority–is a strong predictor
of being a new Conservative voter in 2011.
Is it then possible that factors other than race pushed some immigrant minorities to
vote for the Conservatives in 2011? And is it also possible that some members of racial
minorities were more sensitive to the Conservative Party’s appeals than others? If the
Conservatives actually targeted racial minorities only in a select few ridings, it is not
surprising that racial effects are not present in analyses that examine the electorate as a
whole. The next section examines these possibilities and takes a closer look at specific,
allegedly targeted ridings.
6.4.3 Racial Minorities as Targeted Cross-Pressured Voters
How fixed is the negative relationship between racial minorities and the Conservatives?
The different theories in the literature discussed above offer different answers to that
question. More structural explanations, which examine the common experience shared
by immigrants—or immigrantness—assume that immigrants’ relationships with parties
1New Conservative voters are those who voted for the Conservatives in 2011, but recall to have votedotherwise in 2008.
132
Table 6.2: Who Shifted? The New Conservative Voters of the 2011 Election
Shifted for the Conservatives in 2011
(1) (2) (3) (4)
Immigrant 0.25 — 0.17 -0.25Race — 0.49† 0.45 -0.77Immigrant X Race — — — 2.22∗∗
ControlsQuebec -0.21 -0.18 -0.19 -0.20West -0.06 -0.04 -0.03 -0.04Maritimes 0.34 0.32 0.32 0.25Woman 0.23 0.23 0.23 0.26†
French language -0.09 -0.08 -0.10 -0.14Other language 0.58∗ 0.60∗∗ 0.55∗ 0.54∗
Catholic 0.03 0.08 0.07 0.09Protestant 0.07 0.11 0.10 0.10Other religion -0.17 -0.10 -0.18 -0.30Less than 34 years-old 0.29 0.32 0.34 0.37More than 55 years-old -0.35∗ -0.28 -0.30† -0.25Below High School 0.48∗ 0.53∗ 0.55∗ 0.55∗
University Degree -0.38∗ -0.38∗ -0.38∗ -0.41∗
Low Income 0.11 0.06 0.07 0.07High Income -0.07 -0.02 -0.04 -0.02Urban -0.01 0.00 -0.02 -0.06
(Intercept) -2.58∗∗∗ -2.58∗∗∗ -2.68∗∗∗ -2.64∗∗∗
N 2705 2685 2667 2667Source: Canadian Election Study, 2011.† significant at p < .10; ∗p < .05; ∗∗p < .01; ∗∗∗p < .001
Method : Logistic regression. The coefficients represent effects on log odds.
Full results with standard errors presented in Table 20 in the Appendix.
Note: The dependent variable is a dichotomous variable comprising those who
voted Conservative in 2011, but recall to have voted otherwise in 2008.
emerge from their time of arrival in the country. Yet this explanation does not satisfacto-
rily explain the recent increase in minority support for the Conservative Party.1 It seems
1It does not mean that such structural explanations are not useful to explain some other aspectsof immigrants’ political attitudes and behaviour. As specified by White et al. (2008), different theoriesare relevant to different approaches to an object under study: “Some focus on such orientations as theacquisition of partisan identification or interest in politics, while others focus on such behaviors as thedecision to vote or not. There is no reason to presume that the pathways to adaptation will be identicalfor each dimension of engagement” (White et al., 2008, 270).
133
that race matters more than immigrantness in explaining the recent increase in Conser-
vative support among minorities. The Conservative Party’s past positions on minority
issues had undoubtedly alienated racial minority electoral segments. But given that the
Conservatives have made great efforts to court the minority vote in recent years, might
we expect a change in the sociodemographic profile of their supporters? It is possible
that the Conservatives’ history of negatively positioning themselves on minority issues
prevented some racial minority voters who otherwise agree with the party to not vote for
it. Figure 6.3 explores this possibility.
Figure 6.3: Immigrant and Racial Minorities’ Ideological Positions and Resistance to theConservatives
0.0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
Leftist Centrist Rightist
Ideological Scale
Den
sity
(a) Distribution (b) Vote by ideology
Source: Vote Compass, 2011 Canadian Federal Election.Note: The dashed and dotdashed lines represent (i) immigrant and (ii) racial minorities, respectively. The solidline represents all the other voters. Immigrant voters are those not born in Canada. racial minorities are thosewho indicate that their ancestors’ origins are non-European. The left-right ideological factor scale is made up of23 items measuring positional issue attitudes on a five-point scale (see Table 22 in the Appendix for details).The probability of voting Conservative is based on respondents’ personal evaluation of their probability of votingfor the party. The question was posed as “What is the probability that you will vote for the Conservative Party?”
The two graphs presented in Figure 6.3 use VC data to suggest that racial minorities
134
might be cross-pressured voters who could represent potential for Conservative growth.
These voters form a substantial targetable electoral segment. Despite their conservative
attitudinal inclinations, these targetable voters had previously not voted Conservative
because of the party’s positions on minority issues. Figure 6.3 (a) shows the distribu-
tion on an aggregate issue scale1 for immigrants, racial minorities, and other Canadians.
This graph provides support for the idea that neither immigrant nor racial minorities sit
on the left side of the political spectrum, compared to other Canadians. Despite being
traditionally associated with the Liberals, many racial minorities actually hold conser-
vative positions on key issues. The average ideological position for the three groups is
very similar.2 However, the shape of the distributions shows that immigrant and racial
minorities are slightly less polarized than other Canadians; a non-negligible portion of
immigrant and racial minority groups is positioned at the centre-right of the political
spectrum, while the mode of the distribution for other Canadians is clearly situated at
the centre-left. When we look at voting patterns for the Conservatives in relation to these
aggregate issue positions, Figure 6.3 (b) indicates that the Conservatives had difficulties
with racial minorities—but not immigrants—positioned at the centre-right of the politi-
cal spectrum. These descriptive statistics support the idea that the Conservatives have a
strategic incentive to advertise their positional issues to these cross-pressured racial mi-
norities. The large Canadian ethnic population might represent great potential for growth
for the Conservative Party.
According to the political marketing literature, a micro-campaign targeting cross-pressured
racial minorities that care about and hold positions on issues favourable to the Conserva-
1The left-right ideological factor scale is made up of 23 items measuring positional issue attitudes ona five-point scale (see Table 22 in the Appendix).
2On a scale to 0-1 (0 representing the most leftist position and 1, the most rightist), the averageposition for immigrants is 0.33 (s.d.=0.13); 0.32 (s.d.=0.13) for racial minorities; and 0.34 (s.d.=0.12) forother Canadians
135
tive Party could have benefits for that party. As previously discussed, the Conservatives
targeted ten “very ethnic” ridings in the 2011 federal election. Flanagan (2011) argues
that the Conservatives began to target various ethnic groups such as Korean, Chinese,
Vietnamese, and Filipino groups following the 2008 election. The political behaviour of
these voters does not necessarily spring from their immigrantness per se or from their
race. The Conservatives saw these communities as being potentially more receptive to
conservative ideas because many of the communities’ constituents are fairly religious and
have Christian backgrounds. An example of Conservative “ethnic” targeting is found in
the case where, on the eve of the 2011 election, the Conservatives advertised their position
on same-sex marriage in some but not all ethnic newspapers distributed in the region of
Toronto. But did this Conservative targeting strategy work? A perspective attempting to
answer that question by focusing on electoral strategy theory is difficult to demonstrate
empirically. Moreover, combining considerations of the dynamic nature of social groups,
the heterogeneous distribution of individual issue salience and between-campaign party
positioning complicates the developement of statistical models.
Micro-campaigning effects are expected to distort the effects of these factors in the tar-
geted ridings. It is reasonable to assume that heterogeneous campaign efforts result in
stronger independent effects on the vote of the factors primed by the micro-campaign
in targeted ridings than in non-targeted ridings. For example, if the Conservatives sys-
tematically targeted racial minorities—regardless of racial minorities’ positions on issues
and their issue salience—in some ridings more than others, the independent effect of race
on the vote should be significantly stronger in these targeted ridings. Similarly, if the
Conservatives had only presented their issue positions in advertisements in targeted rid-
ings, the effect of positional issues should be different in these ridings. As specified in
the previous chapter, interactive terms can be used in statistical models to capture such
136
heterogeneous effects. In order to capture micro-campaign effects, the next model of the
probability of voting for the Conservatives includes interactive terms between a dummy
variable representing the targeted ridings and the different factors of interest: race and
two different issue-proximity measures.
The two different measures of proximity are distinct. The first measure looks at the prox-
imity of the respondents and the Conservatives on all issues.1 The second measure focuses
on the proximity between the issue that the Conservative Party and respondents deemed
most important.2 This second proximity measure is more in line with the purpose of
detecting micro-campaign effects. As discussed throughout the thesis, a micro-campaign
implies detecting and targeting segments of the population that are most susceptible to
influence. If the Conservatives’ micro-campaign was successful in reaching the specific
issue publics that it targeted, the effect of issue-public proximity should be stronger in
targeted ridings.
The results show that the effect of race is not statistically different in the targeted rid-
ings than elsewhere. Given the popular discourse about Conservatives’ targeting of “very
ethnic” ridings, this result might seem surprising. But recall that the expectations about
the Conservatives’ micro-campaign were that racial minorities were targeted because of
their positions on issues, not because of their race per se. However, the aggregate prox-
imity measure does not appear to have more of a significantly different effect in “very
ethnic” targeted ridings than elsewhere. This last result does not mean that aggregate
1The steps taken to build this aggregate proximity measure are as follows: 1) The difference betweenrespondents and the Conservatives is calculated for each of the 23 main VC positional issue questions; 2)These single-issue differences are then summed into an aggregate difference measure; and 3) The measureis reversed in order to transform the maximum score on the aggregate difference measure into the lowestscore on the aggregate proximity measure, and vice versa.
2This second proximity measure is calculated like the aggregate proximity one, but it takes intoconsideration only the VC questions that relate to the issue that respondents identified as the mostimportant to them personally.
137
Table 6.3: Targeted Ridings: Race, Proximity on All Issues, or Issue Publics?
Probability of Voting Conservative
(1) (2) (3)
Targeted ridings X Race −0.006Targeted ridings X Proximity −0.002Targeted ridings X Issue Public 0.059∗∗∗
N 483, 552 483, 552 483, 552
Source: Vote Compass, 2011 Canadian Federal Election.
Method : Least squares regression. Full regression results, including statistical
controls, are presented in Table 21 in the Appendix.
Note: The Targeted ridings represent the “very ethnic” ridings targeted by
the Conservatives in 2011: Elmwood-Transcona (MB); York Centre (ON);
Richmond Hill (ON); Brampton-Springdale (ON); Eglinton-Lawrence (ON);
Vancouver South (BC); Bramalea-Gore-Malton (ON); Burnaby-Douglas (BC);
Newton-North Delta (BC); and Mount Royal (PQ).
The probability of voting Conservative is based on respondents’ personal
evaluation of their probability of voting for the party. The question was posed
as “What is the probability that you will vote for the Conservative Party?”∗p < .1; ∗∗p < .05; ∗∗∗p < .01
issue proximity does not matter; actually, it appears as the most important determinant
in the model (see results in the Table 21 in the Appendix). This effect is just not unique
to targeted ridings. Finally, the most significant variable for our purpose, the issue-public
proximity, has a significantly different and positive effect on the probability of voting for
the Conservatives in targeted ridings, when compared to other ridings. This last result
provides some support for the success of a Conservative issue-based targeting strategy
in these ridings. But it does not definitively determine that the targeting strategy was
successful in attracting new Conservative voters. Issue-based micro-targeting tactics like
direct mail are not limited to only those voters who represent potential for party growth.
Especially in close-race ridings, these tactics are also used to encourage voters that are
already Conservative partisans to get out and vote (Dale and Strauss, 2009; Parry et al.,
2008).
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Figure 6.4: Riding-Level Effect of Issue-Public Proximity on Being a New ConservativeVoter
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0.0
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Electoral Ridings
Pos
ition
al Is
sue
Effe
ct
Source: Vote Compass, 2011 Canadian Federal Election.Dependent variable: Being a new Conservative voter: A dichotomous variable comprising thosewho voted Conservative in 2011, but recall to have voted otherwise in 2008.Method : Least squares regression (308 iterations).Note: The black lines represent the “Very ethnic” ridings targeted by the Conservatives in 2011:From right to left, Elmwood-Transcona (MB); York Centre (ON); Richmond Hill (ON); Brampton-Springdale (ON); Eglinton-Lawrence (ON); Vancouver South (BC); Bramalea-Gore-Malton (ON);Burnaby-Douglas (BC); Newton-North Delta (BC); and Mount Royal (PQ). The grey lines representthe other ridings.
139
6.5 Discussion
This chapter explored whether the behaviour of Canadian political parties can be said
to deviate from the brokerage politics model, wherein positional issues are cast aside
in favour of valence issues and leader images. It suggested that, contrary to what the
brokerage model might expect, Canadian parties indeed use positional issues in their
electoral strategies. Specifically, they seem to use these issues to leverage support among
the groups to which the issues are salient, by way of micro-targeting strategies.
The difficulty of distinguishing between the effects of campaign strategies on different
types of voters demonstrates the limits of currently available public opinion data. Larger
datasets allow for more fine-grained, micro-level analyses. For instance, Figure 6.4 shows
the independent effects of issue-public proximity on the probability of being a new Con-
servative voter in 308 Canadian ridings. The independent effect of issue-public proximity
is significant in nearly all ridings. The black lines represent the ten targeted ridings.
Note that the Conservatives won seven of these targeted “very ethnic” ridings. And the
three ridings that they failed to win—Mount Royal, Newton-North Delta, and Burnaby-
Douglas—are also those where the effect of issue-public proximity is weakest of the ten
targeted ridings. However, even the VC sample is not large enough to detect significant
results in comparisons of campaign effects between individual ridings. Still, the results
presented in this chapter offer a useful starting point for future research. More effort
certainly needs to be put into uncovering the effect of modern campaigning:
The question “do campaigns matter?” has long been debated in the political
science literature. We consider this a settled question: of course campaigns
“matter,” but the more interesting issues are for whom and under what con-
140
ditions campaigns matter. (Hillygus and Jackman, 2003, 583)
Further research could triangulate public opinion data with analyses of parties’ micro-
campaign messages. Moreover, large-sample surveys should add questions probing whether
respondents were contacted by specific political parties over the course of the campaign
and whether respondents know the parties’ positions on issues. Such information would
render possible a more direct study of the effects of campaign tactics on voters. Ultimately,
collecting larger samples would allow for more fine-grained analyses, which could in turn
provide more empirical evidence for micro-campaign effects at the individual-riding level.
It could also enable the study of even smaller electorate subgroups. Further analyses of
VC data actually show a difference in issue attitudes between Hispanic and Asian Cana-
dians (see Figure 10 in the Appendix). But even larger samples would make it possible
to study more directly the effect of different issues on different racial minorities in differ-
ent ridings. These research opportunities are especially relevant as they relate to current
political party behaviour. As previously discussed, Flanagan (2011) argues that the Con-
servatives targeted specific racial minority groups, but not others. The precise reasons
behind such a decision and the various effects that this decision had on voters should be
further analyzed. Conservative targeting efforts were also not limited to racial minori-
ties. Religious minorities that are not traditional Conservative electoral segments, such
as Jews, have also been in the party’s sights over the last few years (Martin, 2010). This
fact further reinforces the idea that what matters to understanding campaign strategy,
more than immigrantness and race, is detecting targetable communities that represent
potential for electoral growth. The last chapter further explores such a possibility.
141
Chapter 7
Digging Deeper: The
Micro-Targeting of Jewish and
Muslim Voters
The results presented in the previous chapter indicate that race matters more than im-
migrantness in explaining voting behaviour in Canada. Although the initial supposition
might be that racial minorities’ voting behaviour is homogenously influenced by individ-
uals having had a common racial experience, the empirical evidence seems to suggest
otherwise. Specifically, more detailed analyses reveal that there is a heterogeneity in the
influences driving the voting behaviour of various racial groups. The results demonstrate
the need to fragment large concepts such as immigrantness and race into subcategories
that allow us to examine smaller, more specific communities. Recall the distinction in
issue attitudes between Hispanic and Asian Canadians. Such differences in attitudes seem
much less probably attributable to racial genes than to these individuals being members
142
of distinct cultural communities. Indeed, the various cultural communities of Canada are
not all alike. Just like women are concerned about issues that relate more specifically
to their unique social experiences (O’Neill, 2002), so different cultural groups cultivate
unique political behaviours in their constituents. This situation explains why members of
different cultural communities do not care about the same issues. Identifying what mat-
ters to different communities can be useful for political parties seeking room for growth.
According to Flanagan (2011), Conservatives indeed targeted fiscally conservative ethnic
and religious communities during the 2011 Canadian federal election campaign. And dur-
ing the same-sex marriage debate in Parliament, the Conservative party advertised its
position on same-sex marriage in select ethnic newspapers.
From the perspective of political marketing, the fact of psychological attachment to a
targetable group is more important than the specific characteristics that define different
groups.1 Given this idea, Jewish and Muslim cultural communities can be studied in a way
similar to the way groups based on country of origin have heretofore been studied.
This chapter aims to push further the ideas already developed in this thesis through an
examination of the recent evolution of the Muslim and Jewish vote. It is known that the
Conservative party has targeted the Jewish community in the past by making the Israeli
cause a cornerstone of their foreign policy: “Though Muslims outnumbered Jews by two
to one in Canada, the Jewish community was more politically impactful. Harper was
aware, for example, that he stood to gain a major advantage in the Canadian media with
1This conception of a social group is similar to the one described by Lewis-Beck et al. (2008). For theseauthors, group identity can prompt political behaviour: “The reality of a group can be psychological,and that reality can change our behaviour. When we feel close to our union, that gives the union aseparate existence, and it affects our actions. [...] These psychological interpretations color our attitudesand acts. If we know that the union opposes NAFTA, we as individuals will tend to oppose it, becauseof our feelings for the union” (Lewis-Beck et al., 2008, 306).
143
his position” (Martin, 2010, 82).1 According to Flanagan (2011), the consequence of such
a one-sided position on the Israeli issue was the alienation of the Muslim community.
It is reasonable to assume that citizens who identify with the Muslim or Jewish com-
munities are likely to care more about the government’s position on the Israeli question
than are members of other ethnic or religious groups. Members of these two religious
communities are more likely to form an issue public based on that particular political
issue. This does not mean that all members of those two ethnic groups care about the
issue nor that all non-members do not care. Nevertheless, ethnic communities might be
profitable electoral segments for parties to target, especially because community members
are often concentrated in specific geographic areas where they share a community space
and a media sphere. The Israeli issue was used as a wedge issue to attract voters from
the Jewish community who typically vote Liberal. Interestingly, the only Quebec riding
that the Conservatives targeted before the 2011 election was the riding of Mount Royal,
which is home to the second largest Jewish population in Canada and which is on the list
of the ten “very ethnic” ridings targeted by the party. The riding with the largest Jewish
population in Canada, Thornhill in Ontario, which was once a Liberal stronghold, was
won by the Conservatives in 2008 and has since been retained.
A quick glance at the ideological distribution of Jewish and Muslim voters in Figure 7.1
reveals that there is a clear ideological divide between these two religious communities.
While Muslims are more ambivalent on issues and are more centrist, Jews are more left-
wing. However, when asked to evaluate the probability of voting for the Conservatives,
the two religious groups are polarized. Notwithstanding ideology, Jewish voters are always
more willing to vote for the Conservatives than are other Canadians, and Muslim voters
1Actually, according to the 2011 Canadian National Household Survey, there are 329,500 Jews and1,053,945 Muslims in Canada.
144
Figure 7.1: Jewish and Muslim Voters’ Ideology and Propensity to Vote Conservative
0.0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
Leftist Centrist Rightist
Ideological Scale
Den
sity
(a) Distribution (b) Vote by ideology
Source: Vote Compass, 2011 Canadian Federal Election.Note: The dashed and dotdashed lines represent, respectively, respondents identifying as (a) Muslim and(b) Jewish. The solid line represents all the other voters. The left-right ideological factor scale is made upof 23 items measuring positional issue attitudes on a five-point scale (see Table 22 in the Appendix for details).The probability of voting Conservative is based on respondents’ personal evaluation of their probability of votingfor the party. The question was posed as “What is the probability that you will vote for the Conservative Party?”
are always less willing to vote for the Conservatives.
It is impossible to demonstrate conclusively that the apparent polarization of Jewish and
Muslim voters on the propensity to vote Conservative is a result of the Israeli issue. Some
scholars believe that this might be the case (see Srebrnik, 2014). However, this issue
question has not been asked in public opinion studies large enough to allow investigation
at such a micro-subgroup level. Nevertheless, it is still possible to probe the question
using indirect means. If the recent positioning of the Conservatives on the Israeli issue
caused some of the apparent polarization between Jewish and Muslim voters, we should
be able to detect a change in support for the Conservatives among these groups in time.
145
We should expect that Jewish voters have become more supportive of the Conservatives
over the years while Muslim voters have become less supportive. Despite sample size
problems, different CES waves can be used to test this possibility. Table 7.1 shows the
effect of being Jewish and Muslim on the vote when controlling for other sociodemographic
factors.
Table 7.1: The Canadian Jewish and Muslim Vote (1968-2011)
Vote choice (CES) Vote intention (VC)
1968-1988 1993-2000 2004-2006 2008-2011 2011
LiberalsJewish 1.12∗∗∗ 0.10 2.01∗∗ -0.32 -0.27∗∗∗
Muslim -0.14 0.23 12.80∗∗∗ 2.92∗∗ 0.91∗∗∗
New DemocratsJewish 0.74∗ 1.50∗∗ 0.78 1.52 -0.17∗
Muslim -0.82 0.48 11.44∗∗∗ -0.96 0.78∗∗∗
N 6941 4037 3044 3581 105 903Source: Canadian Election Study, 1968-2011. Vote Compass, 2011 Canadian Federal Election.
Method : Multinomial logistic regression (Base category: Conservatives). The coefficients
represent effects on log odds.
Note: The models also include a set of socio-demographic controls (not shown).† significant at p < .10; ∗p < .05; ∗∗p < .01; ∗∗∗p < .001
The small number of Jewish and Muslim voters present in each CES sample requires a
pooling of many CES samples taken over time.1 Despite the lack of precise information for
each election, some trends are apparent. First, Jewish and Muslim voters have contrasting
political behaviour. Second, the Conservative party’s long-standing difficulty with minori-
ties is apparent. Being a Muslim voter is a very strong predictor of not voting for the
Conservatives. This result is strongest and most statistically significant during the period
for which we have the most recent data.2 Jewish voters seem more volatile and seem to1When models are estimated for every CES wave separately, the results are similar, despite the
large standard errors of the coefficients for the variables representing Jews and Muslims. Linear regres-sion models also provide similar results, which are summarized graphically in Figures 11,12, and 13 inAppendix.
2Reflecting Canadian demography at the time, very few Muslim voters were included in older CESsurveys.
146
have oscillated from the Liberals to the NDP during the 1993-2000 period. Nevertheless,
they exhibit a relatively consistent negative relationship with the Conservative party. It is
perhaps interesting to note that the relationship between being Jewish and voting Conser-
vative reversed during the 2008-2011 period. The lack of statistical significance indicates
that these coefficients cannot be considered statistically different from zero, and that it is
ultimately impossible to determine the direction of the relationship between Jewish voters
and any of the main federal political parties during the 2008-2011 period. Although the
2008-2011 result fails to attain statistical significance, it still suggests that Jewish voters
moved from opposition to the Conservative party to greater acceptance of it during that
period. The small number of Jewish and Muslim respondents in the CES data and the
pooling into time periods precludes the direct observation of these subgroups’ political
behaviours during the 2011 election campaign. For that reason, we turn again to the
larger Vote Compass data.
A voting model is estimated using VC data. This model is nearly identical to the ones run
with the CES data; it is presented in Table 7.1. Its results do not contradict those emerg-
ing from CES models. One main advantage of VC data is their ability to allow for the
examination of subgroups; specifically, the 2011 VC data include 2924 respondents iden-
tifying as Jewish or Muslim.1 It should thus come as no surprise that VC data can detect
statistically significant effects for smaller groups better than can surveys the size of the
CES. Some scholars have already shown that the validity of multivariate results estimated
with VC data is comparable to the validity of the results obtained from more traditional
surveys (Fournier, Gelineau and Harell, 2014). The results of the VC model support the
idea of a new Jewish-Muslim polarization, yet one that favours the Conservatives. More-
1In comparison, the number of CES respondents identifying as Jewish or Muslim is much smaller:189 (1968-1988), 167 (1993-2000), 103 (2004-2006), and 140 (2008-2011).
147
over, the relationships fit the expectations for support of the various parties: all other
factors held constant, Muslim voters clearly oppose the Conservatives, while Jewish voters
clearly support them. The inverse relationship is found for support for the Liberals. The
effect of being Muslim is particularly substantive; it is the strongest sociodemographic
predictor for voting for the Liberals and against the Conservatives.
Often, in conventional voting models, the effect of being a member of a particular commu-
nity is obscured by the use of different variables that encompass both immigrantness and
ethnicity. The effect is also obscured by the fact that ethnic respondents have religions
other than Protestantism and Catholicism or speak languages other than English and
French. A single variable indicating voters from ‘other religions’ would never capture the
alleged widening polarisation between voters of Jewish and Muslim faiths. By definition,
if there was a polarisation, the positions of Jews and Muslims would simply cancel out
because the effects are in opposite directions.1 There are therefore clear advantages to
considering different ethnic or religious groups independently of one another. However,
it is important to avoid essentialistic conceptualizations of social groups. These groups
are vehicles of socialization and their members should not be considered as having fixed
characteristics. Ultimately, these conceptual challenges add to the problems of sample
size that are often encountered when dealing with subgroups. Conclusions about the ef-
ficacy of the Conservative targeting strategy must therefore rest on indirect evidence, in
particular, on the polarization effect that the Conservatives’ foreign policy is alleged to
have had on Jewish and Muslim voters.
Why is there an independent effect of being a member of a religious community on the
vote? One possibility is that religious communities have specific political interests that
1Of course, cancelling-out effects also depend on the strengths of the relationships and the sizes ofeach of the social groups.
148
may or may not correspond to different parties’ political offers. Positional issues might
be what link these voters to political parties. As it so happens, when measures of re-
spondents’ positions and personal saliences on foreign policy are added to the previous
regression model (see Table 23 in the Appendix), the effects of community membership
are greatly reduced.1 That finding is consistent with the interpretation that positional
issues matter to the voters that care about them. Such an idea constitutes the core of
the issue-public hypothesis. Given the Conservative party’s general position on foreign
policy, the relationship appears to be in the right direction: the greater one’s support
for military involvement abroad, the more likely one is to vote Conservative. Also, the
significant interaction between personal salience and one’s position on the foreign policy
issue supports to some degree the idea of salience-based heterogeneity in the effect of
positional issues. In future research, more precise questions that tap the Israel issue more
directly are expected to provide even clearer results.
1The positional issue measure for foreign policy is a question regarding the military involvementof Canada abroad. The individual salience measure is a single question directly tapping respondents’self-reported interest in foreign issues.
149
Chapter 8
Conclusion
The Canadian political landscape has traditionally been considered as characterized by
a system of brokerage politics. In a brokerage politics system, political parties do not
take strong, ideological positions on issues in order to avoid alienating portions of a
highly fragmented electorate (Bickerton and Gagnon, 2004a; Carty, Young and Cross,
2000). Instead of campaigning on positional issues, parties campaign on leader images
and valence issues—issues about which there is no disagreement, such as having a good
economy or low crime rates (Clarke et al., 1984). Given that political parties do not
pronounce themselves on issues, it is difficult for issues to impact citizens’ vote choices.
The irrelevance of issues is exacerbated by citizens’ general lack of political sophistication.
People are considered to be insufficiently informed about politics to have concrete issue
positions upon which they can base vote choices (Converse, 1964). Although the news
media place significant emphasis on issues, the empirical evidence for their relevance is
uneven at best. The conventional wisdom is that positional issues do not matter much
to citizens. Coupled with the idea that voters have strong partisan biases, this wisdom
leaves little room for party’s positions on issues to affect electoral outcomes (Berelson,
Lazarsfeld and McPhee, 1954; Campbell et al., 1960; Converse, 1964). There is some
150
empirical support for the consistency of these discouraging findings over time (Lewis-
Beck et al., 2008; Miller and Shanks, 1996) and across contexts (Blais et al., 2002; Butler
and Stokes, 1969; Converse and Pierce, 1986).
Despite the early recognition of the limits of citizens’ political competence, many studies
since have tempered or contradicted the conclusion that citizens are largely politically
unsophisticated. Some scholars contend that the measurement methodologies used by
these early studies exaggerate the inconsistency of citizens’ issue attitudes (Achen, 1975;
Ansolabehere, Rodden and Snyder Jr., 2008). Others suggest that although voters might
not have full political information, they can still engage in valence-issue voting and handle
retrospective incumbent evaluations (Fiorina, 1981; Key Jr., 1966). And not all scholars
dismiss the importance of positional issues. An entire literature focusing on the positions
of voters and parties on issues has developed parallel to the Columbia and Michigan
school models (see Budge et al., 2001; Downs, 1957; Enelow and Hinich, 1984; Rabinowitz
and Macdonald, 1989). The debate about positional issues became more nuanced when
the conditions necessary for positional issues to matter were relaxed. In part, these
conditions were relaxed with some scholars contending that issues could be conceptualized
into different types, such as “easy issues” or “wedge issues” (Carmines and Stimson, 1980;
Hillygus and Shields, 2008). The conditions were further relaxed when some authors
argued that not all voters care about and are affected by the same issues (Krosnick,
1990), and that the effect of issues can differ depending on the competitive or economic
context of the voter (Vavreck, 2009). Ultimately, the cumulative literature on positional
issues is very fragmented. One needs to take a genuine leap of faith to answer even the
simplest of questions: do positional issues matter?
This thesis has aimed to show that positional issues can matter and that political parties
151
indeed have an incentive to elaborate electoral strategies based on positional issues, and to
not simply engage in brokerage-party type of behaviour. The results show that positional
issues can affect voting behaviour and are thus fundamental tools in the toolboxes of
political parties. Different tests suggest that previous work might have underestimated the
importance of positional issues because of a lack of attention to measurement issues and to
the heterogeneity of mass publics. Methodologically, the effect and stability of positional
issues is substantially increased once issues are operationalized using multi-item scales
and once measurement error is taken into consideration. The impact of scaling might
explain in part the sharp contrast between the statistical relevance of values and that of
positional issues found in previous studies. While values are usually operationalized using
scales, positional issues are typically operationalized using single-items. This method of
measurement might have led to the underestimation of the impact of positional issues
compared to values. The effect of positional issues can also be redeemed by considering
the presence of salience-based heterogeneity in the electorate. The political behaviour
literature typically conceptualizes the heterogeneous effects of issues on the vote in a
dichotomous way: issues can matter to politically-informed elites and cannot matter
to the uninformed masses (Converse, 1964; Zaller, 1992). The analyses presented in
this thesis suggest that, despite the undeniable structural effects of education, political
information, and political interest on overall sophistication, political expertise might be
more fragmented and widespread than has been previously considered. Indeed, the results
show that voters do not need to be political Einsteins to care about, know about and have
stable attitudes about a small set of issues.
There is reason to believe that the aforementioned results regarding measurement of
positional issues and salience-based heterogeneity are generalizable outside the Canadian
context. The results showing the effects of issue scales are already a reproduction of
152
results that were initially observed in the American context by Ansolabehere, Rodden
and Snyder Jr. and published in the American Political Science Review in 2008. There is
no theoretical reason to believe that these Canadian and American results, as the results
about salience-based heterogeneity, would not also be observed in other democracies.
The findings presented in this thesis are also consequential because of their potential
impact on electoral strategy research. Indeed, the thesis validates some assumptions about
public opinion underlying political marketing theory, which tends to be more in line with
the behaviour of electoral practitioners. It validates the political marketing notion that
political parties–contrary to what is expected of brokerage parties–take position on issues
in order to attract voters (Gould, 1998; Pare and Berger, 2008). It also validates the
assumption that modern political leaders are more likely to adapt their political offers to
the demands and positions of potential party voters (Geer, 1996). And it gives credence
to the idea that most campaign strategies are no longer built around a single campaign
theme. Instead, they are increasingly based on targeting tactics aimed at specific segments
of the voting public (Hillygus, 2007; Hillygus and Shields, 2008). Given that campaign
strategies ultimately depend on the nature of the electorate, it is important for parties to
identify which positional issues matter to whom, and when.
8.1 Macro- and Micro-Campaigns
Do the findings of this thesis regarding the relevance of positional issues and salience-based
heterogeneity undermine brokerage politics in Canada? Not necessarily. Political parties’
perceived ability to deal with such consensual issues has repeatedly been shown to matter
for vote choice. It would be naive to entirely contradict the basic assumptions of brokerage
153
politics. As repeated throughout the text, the findings of this thesis aim to add subtlety
to existing approaches to voting and party behaviour, not undermine them. The goal is
certainly not to tear down and replace well-established theories. To be clear, the existence
of issue publics does not undermine the need for political parties to elaborate strategies
based on valence issues or the state of the economy (Clarke, Kornberg and Scotto, 2008;
Vavreck, 2009). Political parties must still elaborate such strategies. However, they can,
at the same time, target precise voter segments, as Hillygus and Shields (2008) show.
Macro-campaigns that focus on country-wide strategies and micro-campaigns that target
specific issue publics can co-exist. Indeed, it is possible now more than ever for political
parties to reach individual voters. An increasingly fragmented political space, splintered
by various factors such as increasingly complex social, workplace and media environments,
creates greater opportunities for political parties to communicate with specific groups. It
is hard to believe that the advent of social media and other communication technologies
has had no impact on electoral politics, especially given the big impact the invention
public opinion polls had on politics in the 1940s (Geer, 1996; Jacobs and Shapiro, 1994).
Communication changes increase the ability of parties to reach citizens and to develop
more complex electoral strategies. Consequently, parties are no longer limited to nation-
wide campaigning and positional issues have become fundamental elements in parties’
toolboxes.
The brokerage model was developed to account for the way that Canadian political parties
focused on valence issues to avoid alienating segments of a highly fragmented electorate
(Carty, 2013; Clarke et al., 1984). Discouraging potential voters from turning away from
one’s party is still a good way to achieve electoral goals. However, parties can now also
try to achieve their goals by elaborating messages that target precise voter segments.
Because positional issues do not all have the same effects on the same voters, parties
154
can target certain voters by priming certain positional issues. Such a strategy might be
considered as belonging to a different type of brokerage politics, one that still implies
valence issues at the macro-level, but uses positional issues at the micro-level to broker to
disparate interests. Given that positional issues can be electorally profitable, analyzing
them in a fine-grained manner represents a fruitful way to evaluate a party’s potential
for growth. As such, positional issues are undoubtedly important elements in political
parties’ strategic toolboxes.
The approach adopted by this thesis is subject to certain limits. Close inspection of the
concept of heterogeneity raises some questions. For instance, how do we trace the con-
tours of the heterogeneity of issue effects? The literature shows that divisional lines can
be drawn along various cleavages such as geography (Henderson, 2004), partisanship (Ne-
undorf, Stegmueller and Scotto, 2011), race (Peffley and Hurwitz, 2007), and personality
traits (Gerber et al., 2010). Defining the concept of heterogeneity must be done with great
care. For that reason, this thesis has restricted its analysis of heterogeneity to the het-
erogeneity of positional issue effects. However, the concept of heterogeneity can quickly
turn into a threat to the parsimony of voting theories. It is true that public opinion has
become so complex that more exploratory research on its intricacies is justified. But too
deeply examining the causal mechanisms that underly heterogeneity might lead to more
confusion instead of to a better understanding of voting behaviour.
This thesis argues that the concept of heterogeneity complements the framework of po-
litical marketing. However, the internal consistency of political marketing theory must
be enhanced for this to be undeniably true. Political marketing theory must reconcile
itself with the findings of mainstream voting theories. At this stage, political market-
ing has suffered from undertheorization. Undertheorization has rendered the precepts of
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political marketing difficult to falsify and has affected the parsimony of the framework,
thereby diminishing its potential for generalization. It has also led to a paradox in the
political marketing model arising from its ambition to reconcile rational-choice and so-
ciological models. Treating voters as unique and rational individuals while also arguing
that they can be standardized into segments creates obvious operationalization problems.
Ultimately, an amalgam between models that belong to different epistemological frame-
works might result in the development of theoretical weaknesses instead of the creation
of a new and more accurate model. That said, this thesis shows that political marketing
can potentially become an integrative framework for studying modern campaign strate-
gies.
8.2 Potential for Future Research
The evidence presented in this thesis emerges from data collected during election cam-
paigns. Future research might consider reproducing these findings with data collected
between elections. In electoral democracies, campaigns are prime moments during which
parties attempt to convince citizens to vote for them. Because political strategies are
most intensely employed during election periods, it is natural to look to campaigns when
investigating the effects of political strategies. The fact that most voting behaviour data
are collected during elections likely reinforces a campaign-period research focus. However,
parties do not only strategize during election campaigns. In fact, most party reposition-
ing occurs between elections, when parties are elaborating their platforms for following
elections. And voting intentions do not only shift during election campaigns. Indeed,
Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet (1948) note in their study of the 1940 American election
that the events occurring before the campaign changed “over twice as many votes as all the
156
events of the campaign” (Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet, 1948, 102). According to these
authors, campaigns simply serve to activate existing latent political preferences.
This thesis has also considered elite- and salience-driven heterogeneity while leaving the
door open to eventually testing other types of heterogeneity. It intends to pave the way
for further investigation of the potential impact of issue attitudes. It also intends to pave
the way for further investigation into the way that these attitudes are distributed in the
electorate.
The cognition-based heterogeneity proposed by Bartle (2005) speaks to the distribution of
attitudes, as it involves different ways of cognitively organizing political belief systems,
but it is more complex and amorphous than the two types of heterogeneity explored in
this thesis. A separate body of research can be dedicated to exploring the bases and
implications of this third kind of heterogeneity. Under cognition-based heterogeneity, the
assumption of the homogeneity of the population is far more relaxed. But the circum-
stances under which one expects to find cognition-based heterogeneity are more difficult
to pin down and thus require further investigation. Cognition-based heterogeneity fol-
lows from other concepts in the literature that describe the ways that voters organize
their beliefs about the political world: belief systems (Converse, 1964), conceptual maps
(Axelrod, 1973), schemas (Conover and Feldman, 1984), frames (Minsky, 1975), or shared
understandings (Goldberg, 2011). These concepts all endeavour to account for how beliefs
are structured and to illustrate the associational nature of attitudes.
Different groups of people organize their political ideas in different ways. Belief systems
influence how different stimuli prompt different behaviours or different attitudes in peo-
ple. Assessing the different ways in which issue positions are organized can help us to
better explain how interpretive frames are distributed in the population. It might be that
157
some issues, such as those related to the environment or immigration, are more ideologi-
cally versatile than other issues (see Inglehart, 1998). The fact that these issues are less
well-defined by traditional left-right cleavages might allow them to fit into various politi-
cal frames. The integration of environmental concern into the extreme-right discourse of
Europe is a point in case (Olsen, 1999), as is the increase in liberally-framed criticisms
of multiculturalism (Joppke, 2004). In Canada, we might expect to discover cognition-
based heterogeneity on immigration issues, particularly in Quebec, where there has been
significant debate about reasonable accommodation for religious minorities (see Gias-
son, Brin and Sauvageau, 2010). The debate over reasonable accommodation revolves in
part around two competing liberal values and interpretive frames: religious tolerance and
equality between men and women. Liberal-minded voters make different arguments de-
pending on the interpretive frame they use to reason about the debate. The consequences
of such heterogeneity might be particularly relevant if one is interested in studying more
abstract concepts such as ‘tolerance toward ethnic minorities’ or ‘xenophobia.’ To that
end, cognition-based heterogeneity has the potential to uncover positional-issue effects
confined to specific groups of voters.
Cognition-based heterogeneity implies a profound reconceptualization of the mass pub-
lic as far more complex and fragmented than salience-based heterogeneity believes it to
be. Bartle (2005) points out that no single equation can describe the complex processes
underlying a type of heterogeneity defined by different reasoning processes. But there
is support for the idea that “theory should be just as complicated as all our evidence
suggest” (King, Keohane and Verba, 1994, 20). More effort is required to find methodolo-
gies better suited for this type of research object. For Lane (1962), contextual analyses
that include in-depth interviews are necessary to understanding the variance in the polit-
ical ideas of the public (Lane, 1962). For others, like Stimson (1975), exploratory factor
158
analyses might uncover attitude ‘structures’ beyond those accounted for by the standard
elite-ideological dimension. New methodologies that have been developed to deal with
the challenge of capturing heterogeneous attitudinal structures, such as Relational Class
Analysis (Goldberg, 2011), also seem quite promising. The idea underlying these new
methods is the simultaneous use of clustering and relational methodologies. Yet in the
absence of a general theory of heterogeneity it will remain difficult to study political
behaviour in this way (Bartle, 2005, 657).
The rehabilitation of positional issues might also open up other research opportunities.
More attention ought to be paid to contextual factors that favour positional issues mat-
tering. Whether positional issues play different roles in federal, provincial, and municipal
elections might be examined, for instance. Considering that party identification in Cana-
dian municipal politics is weak, if not non-existent, it is likely that positional issues are
therein important. Some argue that positional issues are indeed important in munici-
pal politics: “Although suburban politics are routinely characterized as issueless, we find
that issue positions are the strongest predictor of vote choice” (Oliver and Ha, 2007, 402).
Obviously, such research is contingent on data collection at the municipal level.
This thesis demonstrates the importance of putting greater effort into data collection.
The assumed unimportance of positional issues leaves the research community, especially
in Canada, with few issue items. The items that exist are often limited to public issues
of the day and do not have consistent question wordings between survey waves. The use
of multi-item issue scales would entail the inclusion in surveys of more questions tapping
attitudes about the same issues. Similarly, more rigourous study of the heterogeneity of
the electorate would require larger datasets that include various issue topics.
159
8.3 Normative Implications
Citizens voting according to their policy preferences is arguably good for democracy. Such
a proposition is more encouraging for proponents of classical democratic theory than is a
perspective that depicts citizens principally as partisan followers. Or brokerage politics
that results in “elections [deciding] who shall govern, but not the substance of public
policy” (Clarke et al., 1984, 172). However, there is doubt that fragmented political
interests and micro-campaigning are good for democracy. Detectable heterogeneneity in
the population might encourage political parties to segment the electorate and target
specific groups while ignoring broader interests. From a strictly economic perspective,
segmenting and targeting strategies respond more efficiently to voters’ needs and wants.
Like commerce is about giving consumers what they want, democracy is about giving
voters what they want. But politics differ from the commercial market in the sense
that they are based on the common good. The clientelist aspect of political marketing
precludes the idea of democratic deliberation and the search for consensus. This type
of market-oriented politics might lead to the isolation of voters that have less strategic
value to parties. It might be argued that majorities have always had more access to
political parties’ ears and that this even defines democracy. Micro-campaigning tactics
might have the effect of increasingly isolating voting segments that have no strategic value
to political parties. If Canadian political parties were to engage in political marketing
more intensively, it would be interesting to see whether the structural effect of party
competition would lead to a greater fragmentation or a greater polarization of the party
system.
160
Appendix: Figures
161
Fig
ure
1:E
ffec
tof
issu
eson
vote
choi
ce(B
reak
dow
nby
issu
es)
(a)
●●●● ●●●
(Ite
ms)
Sca
les
0.00.40.8E
cono
my
Statistical significance (p−value)
●● ●●●
(Ite
ms)
Sca
les
0.00.40.8
Env
ironm
ent
Statistical significance (p−value)
(Ite
ms)
Sca
les
0.00.40.8
For
eign
/US
rel
atio
ns
Statistical significance (p−value)
(Ite
ms)
Sca
les
0.00.40.8
Law
and
ord
er
Statistical significance (p−value)
●
(Ite
ms)
Sca
les
0.00.40.8M
inor
ity is
sues
Statistical significance (p−value)
(Ite
ms)
Sca
les
0.00.40.8
Soc
ial p
rogr
ams
Statistical significance (p−value)
● ● ● ●●●● ● ●●● ● ● ● ●
●●●●
(Ite
ms)
Sca
les
0.00.40.8
Mor
al is
sues
Statistical significance (p−value)
● ●●●●● ●
(Ite
ms)
Sca
les
0.00.40.8
Wom
en is
sues
Statistical significance (p−value)
(b)
●● ●●● ●
(Ite
ms)
Sca
les
0246810
Eco
nom
y
Effect on vote (|Beta coefficients|)
(Ite
ms)
Sca
les
0246810
Env
ironm
ent
Effect on vote (|Beta coefficients|)
●●
(Ite
ms)
Sca
les
0246810
For
eign
/US
rel
atio
ns
Effect on vote (|Beta coefficients|)
● ●●
(Ite
ms)
Sca
les
0246810
Law
and
ord
er
Effect on vote (|Beta coefficients|)
● ● ●●● ●
(Ite
ms)
Sca
les
0246810
Min
ority
issu
es
Effect on vote (|Beta coefficients|)
● ●
(Ite
ms)
Sca
les
0246810
Soc
ial p
rogr
ams
Effect on vote (|Beta coefficients|)
●●
(Ite
ms)
Sca
les
0246810
Mor
al is
sues
Effect on vote (|Beta coefficients|)
● ●
● ●● ●●● ●
(Ite
ms)
Sca
les
0246810
Wom
en is
sues
Effect on vote (|Beta coefficients|)
Source:
Can
ad
ian
Ele
ctio
nS
tud
y(C
ES
),2004
an
d2008.
Method
:B
inary
logis
tic
regre
ssio
n(s
um
mary
of
2808
mod
els)
.F
act
or
scalin
g.
Depen
den
tva
riables
:V
ote
(Con
serv
ati
ve)
,V
ote
(Lib
eral)
,V
ote
(ND
P).
Indepen
den
tva
riables
:Is
sue
scale
s[in
clu
ded
ind
ivid
ually]
(See
Ap
pen
dix
for
det
ails.
)Controls
:1)
SE
Son
ly(4
68
mod
els)
;2)
(...)
+V
alu
es(4
68
mod
els)
;3)
(...)
+P
art
yid
enti
fica
tion
(468
mod
els)
;4)
(...)
+E
con
om
icp
erce
pti
on
(468
mod
els)
;5)
(...)
+L
ead
erev
alu
ati
on
(468
mod
els)
;6)
(...)
+In
cum
ben
tev
alu
ati
on
(468
mod
els)
.Note
:T
he
thre
ever
tica
llin
esin
gra
ph
ic(a
)re
pre
sent
the
stati
stic
al
sign
ifica
nce
level
s:fr
om
bott
om
toto
p,p<
.001;p<
.05;p<
.1.
162
Figure 2: Effect of issues, values and partisan identifications on vote choice (Breakdownby values and party identifications)
(a)
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●●
●
●●
●
●
●●●●
●●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●●
●
●●
●
●
●
●
●
●●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●●
●
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
Significance of issues and values, 2004 and 2008
Sta
tistic
al s
igni
fican
ce (
p−va
lue)
(Items) Scales Religious Post−Mat Right Cynicism Liberal Id NDP Id Cons Id
(b)
●●●●●●
●●●
02
46
810
Strength of issues, values and party identification, 2004 and 2008
Effe
ct o
n vo
te (
|Bet
a co
effic
ient
s|)
(Items) Scales Religious Post−Mat Right Cynicism Liberal Id NDP Id Cons Id
Source: Canadian Election Study (CES), 2004 and 2008.Method : Binary logistic regression (summary of 2808 models). Factor scaling.Dependent variables: Vote(Conservative), Vote(Liberal), Vote(NDP).Independent variables: (Items) (Issue items [included individually]); Scales (Issue scales [included individually]);
Religious. (Religiosity); Post-mat. (Post-materialism [4-item index]);Right (Right-Left self-placement); Cynicism (Cynicism); Liberal Id (Liberal partisan);NDP Id (NDP partisan); Cons Id (Conservative partisan);
Controls: 1) SES only (468 models); 2) (...) + Values (468 models); 3) (...) + Party identification (468 models);4) (...) + Economic perception (468 models); 5) (...) + Leader evaluation (468 models);6) (...) + Incumbent evaluation (468 models).
Note: The three vertical lines in graphic (a) represent the statistical significance levels:from bottom to top, p < .001; p < .05; p < .1.
163
Figure 3: Evolution of voters’ most important issue
0
20
40
60
1965
1968
1974
1979
1984
1988
1993
1997
2000
200420
0620
0820
11
% m
ost i
mpo
rtan
t iss
ue
EconomyEnvironmentForeign/US relationsLaw and orderMinority issuesMoral issuesOtherSocial programsWomen issues
Source: Canadian Election Study (CES), 1965-2011.Question: What is the most important issue to you personally in this federal election?Note: Most important issues relative to the Free-Trade Agreement debate with theUnited States are considered in the category Foreign/US relations. This issue waslargely the most salient in the 1988 election.
164
Figure 4: The effect of voters’ most important issue
(a) Average Effect
●
●
●●
●
●
● ●
●
●
●
●
●
0.00
0.01
0.02
0.03
0.04
0.05
1965
1968
1974
1979
1984
1988
1993
1997
2000
200420
0620
0820
11
Exp
lain
ed v
aria
nce
of is
sues
(b) Party
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●●
●
●
●●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
0.00
0.01
0.02
0.03
0.04
0.05
1965
1968
1974
1979
1984
1988
1993
1997
2000
200420
0620
0820
11
Exp
lain
ed v
aria
nce
of is
sues
Source: Canadian Election Study (CES), 1965-2011.Method : Linear regression models are used in order to facilitate the direct comparisonsbetween coefficients from different years.Question: What is the most important issue to you personally in this federal election?Note: The explained variance of issues is calculated from the difference in adjusted R-squaredof fully-specified models including and excluding the issue variables. Solid line = Conservatives;Dashed line = Liberals; Dotted line = New Democrats.
165
Figure 5: Increase in Issue Impact? (1)
●
●
0.00
0.25
2008 2011
|Coe
ffici
ent|
Conservatives
●
●
0.00
0.25
2008 2011
|Coe
ffici
ent|
Liberals
●
●
0.00
0.25
2008 2011
|Coe
ffici
ent|
New Democrats
Economy
●
●
0.00
0.25
2008 2011
|Coe
ffici
ent|
Conservatives
●
●
0.00
0.25
2008 2011
|Coe
ffici
ent|
Liberals
● ●
0.00
0.25
2008 2011
|Coe
ffici
ent|
New Democrats
Environment
●
●
0.00
0.25
2008 2011
|Coe
ffici
ent|
Conservatives
● ●
0.00
0.25
2008 2011
|Coe
ffici
ent|
Liberals
● ●
0.00
0.25
2008 2011
|Coe
ffici
ent|
New Democrats
Foreign/US relations
●
●
0.00
0.25
2008 2011
|Coe
ffici
ent|
Conservatives
●
●
0.00
0.25
2008 2011
|Coe
ffici
ent|
Liberals
●
●
0.00
0.25
2008 2011
|Coe
ffici
ent|
New Democrats
Law and order
Source: Canadian Election Study (CES), 2004, 2008 and 2011.Note: The 2004 election is the base category.
166
Figure 6: Increase in Issue Impact? (2)
●
●
0.00
0.25
2008 2011
|Coe
ffici
ent|
Conservatives
●
●
0.00
0.25
2008 2011
|Coe
ffici
ent|
Liberals
●
●0.00
0.25
2008 2011
|Coe
ffici
ent|
New Democrats
Minority issues
●●0.00
0.25
2008 2011
|Coe
ffici
ent|
Conservatives
●
●
0.00
0.25
2008 2011
|Coe
ffici
ent|
Liberals
●●
0.00
0.25
2008 2011
|Coe
ffici
ent|
New Democrats
Moral issues
●●
0.00
0.25
2008 2011
|Coe
ffici
ent|
Conservatives
●●
0.00
0.25
2008 2011
|Coe
ffici
ent|
Liberals
●
●
0.00
0.25
2008 2011
|Coe
ffici
ent|
New Democrats
Social programs
●
●
0.00
0.25
2008 2011
|Coe
ffici
ent|
Conservatives
●●
0.00
0.25
2008 2011
|Coe
ffici
ent|
Liberals
●
●
0.00
0.25
2008 2011
|Coe
ffici
ent|
New Democrats
Women issues
Source: Canadian Election Study (CES), 2004, 2008 and 2011.Note: The 2004 election is the base category.
167
Figure 7: How Citizens Perceive Parties’ Stands on Minority Matters
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
All Immigrants Visible minority
Con
cern
abo
ut r
acia
l min
oriti
es
(a) 1984
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
All Immigrants Visible minority
Con
cern
abo
ut r
acia
l min
oriti
es
(b) 1993
Source: Canadian Election Study (CES), 1984 and 1993.Question wording: I’ll read a word or phrase, and I’d like you to tell me how well it fits or describeseach of the parties: Concerned with the interests of ethnic minority groups (1984)Does the [federal party] want to do much more, for racial minorities, somewhat more, about the sameas now, somewhat less, or much less? (1993)Note: The bars represent, from left to right, Conservatives, Liberals and New Democrats. The term‘Conservatives’ refers to the Progressive-Conservative party in 1984 and to the Progressive-Conservativeparty and the Reform Party in 1993.
168
Figure 8: Minorities’ Partisan Support Through Time (Three main parties)
0
25
50
75
100
1965
1968
1974
1979
1984
1988
1993
1997
2000
2004
2008
2011
Per
cent
age
of v
ote
Conservatives
0
25
50
75
100
1965
1968
1974
1979
1984
1988
1993
1997
2000
2004
2008
2011
Per
cent
age
of v
ote
Liberals
0
25
50
75
100
1965
1968
1974
1979
1984
1988
1993
1997
2000
2004
2008
2011
Per
cent
age
of v
ote
New Democrats
(a) Immigrants
0
25
50
75
100
1965
1968
1974
1979
1984
1988
1993
1997
2000
2004
2008
2011
Per
cent
age
of v
ote
Conservatives
0
25
50
75
100
1965
1968
1974
1979
1984
1988
1993
1997
2000
2004
2008
2011
Per
cent
age
of v
ote
Liberals
0
25
50
75
100
1965
1968
1974
1979
1984
1988
1993
1997
2000
2004
2008
2011
Per
cent
age
of v
ote
New Democrats
(b) Racial minority
Source: Canadian Election Study (CES), 1965 to 2011.Note: The black line represents, accordingly, (a) immigrant and (b) racial minorities. The dashed line representsall the other voters. Immigrant voters are those not born in Canada. Racial minorities are those respondents whoindicate that their ancestors’ origins are non-European.
169
Figure 9: Effect of Positional Issues on Issue publics in “very ethnic” targeted ridings
Degree of Proximity on Issues
Pr(
Vot
ing
Con
serv
ativ
es)
0 0.25 0.5 0.75 1
00.
250.
50.
751
(a) Issue Publics
Degree of Proximity on Issues
Pr(
Vot
ing
Con
serv
ativ
es)
0 0.25 0.5 0.75 1
00.
250.
50.
751
(b) Proximity
Source: Vote Compass, 2011 Canadian Federal Election.Note: The black line represents the “very ethnic” ridings targeted by the Conservatives in 2011: Elmwood-Transcona (MB); York Centre (ON); Richmond Hill (ON); Brampton-Springdale (ON); Eglinton-Lawrence(ON); Vancouver South (BC); Bramalea-Gore-Malton (ON); Burnaby-Douglas (BC); Newton-North Delta(BC); and Mount Royal (PQ). The grey lines represent the other ridings. The grey line represents all theother ridings.
170
Figure 10: East-Asian and Hispanic Canadians’ Ideological Positions and Resistance toConservatives
0.0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
Leftist Centrist Rightist
Ideological Scale
dens
ity
(a) Distribution (b) Vote by ideology
Source: Vote Compass, 2011 Canadian Federal Election.Note: The dashed and dotdashed lines represent, accordingly, respondents of (a) Hispanic and (b) East-Asianorigins. The solid line represents all the other voters. The left-right ideological factor scale is made up of 23items measuring positional issue attitudes on a five-point scale (see Table 22 for details).The probability of voting Conservative is based on respondents’ personal evaluation of their probability of votingfor the party. The question was posed as “What is the probability that you will vote for the Conservative Party?”
171
Figure 11: Evolution of the effect of being Jewish/Muslim on the vote for the Conserva-tives
(a) Jewish
−1.0
−0.5
0.0
0.5
1.0
1965
1968
1974
1979
1984
1988
1993
1997
2000
200420
0620
0820
11
Pr(
Vot
e)
Conservatives
(b) Muslim
−1.0
−0.5
0.0
0.5
1.0
1965
1968
1974
1979
1984
1988
1993
1997
2000
200420
0620
0820
11
Pr(
Vot
e)
Conservatives
Source: Canadian Election Study (CES), 1965-2011.Method : Ordinary least squares regression.Dependent variable: Vote(Conservative).
Figure 12: Evolution of the effect of being Jewish/Muslim on the vote for the Liberals
(a) Jewish
−1.0
−0.5
0.0
0.5
1.0
1965
1968
1974
1979
1984
1988
1993
1997
2000
200420
0620
0820
11
Pr(
Vot
e)
Liberals
(b) Muslim
−1.5
−1.0
−0.5
0.0
0.5
1.0
1.5
1965
1968
1974
1979
1984
1988
1993
1997
2000
200420
0620
0820
11
Pr(
Vot
e)
Liberals
Source: Canadian Election Study (CES), 1965-2011.Method : Ordinary least squares regression.Dependent variable: Vote(Liberal).
172
Figure 13: Evolution of the effect of being Jewish/Muslim on the vote for the NDP
(a) Jewish
−1.0
−0.5
0.0
0.5
1.0
1965
1968
1974
1979
1984
1988
1993
1997
2000
200420
0620
0820
11
Pr(
Vot
e)
NDP
(b) Muslim
−1.0
−0.5
0.0
0.5
1.0
1965
1968
1974
1979
1984
1988
1993
1997
2000
200420
0620
0820
11
Pr(
Vot
e)NDP
Source: Canadian Election Study (CES), 1965-2011.Method : Ordinary least squares regression.Dependent variable: Vote(NDP).
173
Appendix: Tables
Table 1: United States vs. Canada: The effect of scales on explained variance
ANES 1992 ANES 1996 CES 2004 CES 2008 CES 2011
Baseline model (Pseudo-R2) 0.570 0.590 0.386 0.394 0.465
Scales (2)† + 0.090 + 0.070 + 0.013 + 0.004 + 0.004
Scales (8)† - - + 0.050 + 0.077 + 0.051
Source: American National Election Study (ANES), 1992 and 1996. Canadian Election Study (CES), 2004-2011.Method : Probit regression (Adjusted Pseudo-R2).Note: The “baseline” models include only Party ID and ideology scale as independent variables.† Ansolabehere et al. (2008) results are only based on two issue scales: Economy (13 items) and Moral (6 items).The authors also tried “adding a Foreign Policy Scale but it was never statistically or substantively significant in1992 or 1996” (Ansolabehere et al, 2008: 226). Contrary to these results, all eight positional issue scales arestatistically or substantively significant in Canada in at least one of the elections under study.
174
Tab
le2:
Issu
esc
ales
info
rmat
ion
(1)
Issu
esc
ales
Issu
eit
ems
Fact
or
load
ings
Eco
nom
yW
hen
bu
sin
esse
sm
ake
alo
tof
mon
ey,
ever
yon
e0.6
9(2
004)
(Pos
itio
n:
Fre
em
arke
t)b
enefi
ts,
incl
ud
ing
the
poor.
0.6
2(2
008)
α=
0.59
(200
4);
0.62
(200
8)H
owm
uch
con
fid
ence
hav
ein
:B
igb
usi
nes
s.0.6
6(2
004)
Eigen
values†
=2.
03(2
004)
;2.
11(2
008)
0.5
8(2
008)
Ove
rall
,fr
eetr
ad
ew
ith
the
U.S
.h
as
bee
ngood
for
0.6
4(2
004)
the
Can
ad
ian
econ
om
y.0.6
9(2
008)
Inte
rnati
on
al
trad
ecr
eate
sm
ore
job
sin
Can
ad
ath
an0.5
8(2
004)
itd
estr
oys.
0.5
5(2
008)
An
dco
rpora
teta
xes
:sh
ou
ldco
rpora
teta
xes
be
0.5
3(2
004)
incr
ease
d,
dec
rease
dor
kep
tab
ou
tth
esa
me?
0.6
1(2
008)
Ifp
eop
leca
n’t
fin
dw
ork
inth
ere
gio
nw
her
eth
eyli
ve,
0.3
1(2
004)
they
shou
ldm
ove
tow
her
eth
ejo
bs
are
.0.5
0(2
008)
Envir
onm
ent
...
the
Envir
on
men
t?S
hou
ldth
eF
eder
al
gov
ern
men
t0.7
9(2
004)
(Pos
itio
n:
Envir
onm
enta
list
)sp
end
more
,le
ss,
or
ab
ou
tth
esa
me
as
now
?0.7
9(2
008)
α=
0.40
(200
4);
0.41
(200
8)P
rote
ctin
gth
een
vir
on
men
tis
more
imp
ort
ant
than
0.7
9(2
004)
Eigen
values
(1stfactor)
=1.
25(2
004)
;1.
26(2
008)
crea
tin
gjo
bs.
0.7
9(2
008)
Source:
Can
ad
ian
Ele
ctio
nS
tud
y(C
ES
),2004
an
d2008.
†E
igen
valu
esfo
rth
efi
rst
fact
ors
.
175
Tab
le3:
Issu
esc
ales
info
rmat
ion
(2)
Issu
esc
ales
Issu
eit
ems
Fact
or
load
ings
For
eign
/US
rela
tion
sH
owd
oyo
ufe
elab
ou
tth
eU
nit
edS
tate
s?0.7
1(2
004)
(Pos
itio
n:
Mor
ein
volv
emen
t,cl
oser
ties
)0.6
3(2
008)
α=
0.54
(200
4);
0.51
(200
8)D
oyo
uth
ink
Can
ad
a’s
ties
wit
hth
eU
nit
edS
tate
ssh
ou
ld0.6
4(2
004)
Eigen
values
=1.
74(2
004)
;1.
76(2
008)
be
much
close
r,so
mew
hat
close
r,ab
ou
tth
esa
me
as
now
,0.7
1(2
008)
som
ewh
at
more
dis
tant
or
mu
chm
ore
dis
tant?
...
Def
ence
?[O
r..
.Mil
itary
]sp
end
ing?
Sh
ou
ldth
eF
eder
al
0.6
4(2
004)
gov
ern
men
tsp
end
more
,le
ss,
or
ab
ou
tth
esa
me
as
now
?0.6
0(2
008)
How
mu
chco
nfi
den
ceh
ave
in:
Th
earm
edfo
rces
.0.4
6(2
004)
0.7
2(2
008)
Can
ad
ash
ou
ldpart
icip
ate
inp
eace
keep
ing
op
erati
on
s0.4
5(2
004)
ab
road
even
ifit
mea
ns
pu
ttin
gth
eli
ves
of
Can
ad
ian
0.3
5(2
008)
sold
iers
at
risk
.
Law
and
ord
erD
oyo
ufa
vou
ror
op
pose
the
dea
thp
enalt
yfo
rp
eop
le0.7
5(2
004)
(Pos
itio
n:
Tou
ghon
crim
e)co
nvic
ted
of
mu
rder
?0.7
2(2
008)
α=
0.61
(200
4);
0.63
(200
8)W
hat
isth
eb
est
way
tod
eal
wit
hyo
un
goff
end
ers
0.7
4(2
004)
Eigen
values
=1.
68(2
004)
;1.
70(2
008)
wh
oco
mm
itvio
lent
crim
e:O
ne,
giv
eth
emto
ugh
er0.7
8(2
008)
sente
nce
s;or
Tw
o,
spen
dm
ore
on
reh
ab
ilit
ati
ng
them
?
We
mu
stcr
ack
dow
non
crim
e,ev
enif
that
mea
ns
that
0.7
4(2
004)
crim
inals
lose
thei
rri
ghts
.0.7
6(2
008)
Source:
Can
ad
ian
Ele
ctio
nS
tud
y(C
ES
),2004
an
d2008.
†E
igen
valu
esfo
rth
efi
rst
fact
ors
.
176
Tab
le4:
Issu
esc
ales
info
rmat
ion
(3)
Issu
esc
ales
Issu
eit
ems
Fact
or
load
ings
Min
orit
yis
sues
Imm
igra
nts
make
an
imp
ort
ant
contr
ibu
tion
toth
is0.7
0(2
004)
(Pos
itio
n:
Mor
eac
cep
tan
ce)
cou
ntr
y.0.6
7(2
008)
α=
0.76
(200
4);
0.76
(200
8)T
oo
many
rece
nt
imm
igra
nts
just
don
’tw
ant
tofi
tin
to0.6
7(2
004)
Eigen
values
=3.
00(2
004)
;2.
95(2
008)
Can
ad
ian
soci
ety.
[Rev
erse
d]
0.6
9(2
008)
We
shou
ldlo
ok
aft
erC
an
ad
ian
sb
orn
inth
isco
untr
y0.6
6(2
004)
firs
tan
doth
ers
seco
nd
.[R
ever
ved
]0.6
9(2
008)
...
an
dra
cial
min
ori
ties
?U
seany
nu
mb
erfr
om
zero
to0.6
4(2
004)
on
ehu
nd
red
.0.6
2(2
008)
Do
you
thin
kC
an
ad
ash
ou
ldadm
it:
more
imm
igra
nts
,0.6
2(2
004)
few
erim
mig
rants
,or
ab
ou
tth
esa
me
as
now
?0.6
3(2
008)
Wh
ich
state
men
tco
mes
close
stto
you
row
nvie
w:
0.5
8(2
004)
1)
IfA
bori
gin
al
peo
ple
str
ied
hard
er,
they
cou
ldb
eas
0.5
1(2
008)
wel
loff
as
oth
erC
an
ad
ian
s:2)
Soci
al
an
dec
on
om
icco
nd
itio
ns
make
italm
ost
imp
oss
ible
for
most
Ab
ori
gin
al
peo
ple
sto
over
com
ep
over
ty;
3)
Not
sure
.
How
do
you
feel
ab
ou
tab
ori
gin
al
peo
ple
s?0.5
4(2
004)
0.5
2(2
008)
Itis
more
diffi
cult
for
non
-wh
ites
tob
esu
cces
sfu
lin
0.4
4(2
004)
Can
ad
ian
soci
ety
than
itis
for
wh
ites
.0.4
9(2
008)
Source:
Can
ad
ian
Ele
ctio
nS
tud
y(C
ES
),2004
an
d2008.
†E
igen
valu
esfo
rth
efi
rst
fact
ors
.
177
Tab
le5:
Issu
esc
ales
info
rmat
ion
(4)
Issu
esc
ales
Issu
eit
ems
Fact
or
load
ings
Soci
alp
rogr
ams
Th
ew
elfa
rest
ate
makes
peo
ple
less
wil
lin
gto
look
0.6
2(2
004)
(Pos
itio
n:
No
cut)
aft
erth
emse
lves
.[R
ever
sed
]0.6
5(2
008)
α=
0.56
(200
4);
0.57
(200
8)..
.W
elfa
re?
Sh
ou
ldth
eF
eder
al
gov
ern
men
tsp
end
more
,0.6
1(2
004)
Eigen
values
=1.
96(2
004)
;1.
98(2
008)
less
,or
ab
ou
tth
esa
me
as
now
?0.6
5(2
008)
...
Hea
lth
Care
?S
hou
ldth
eF
eder
al
gov
ern
men
tsp
end
0.6
0(2
004)
more
,le
ss,
or
ab
ou
tth
esa
me
as
now
?0.4
7(2
008)
How
mu
chd
oyo
uth
ink
shou
ldb
ed
on
eto
red
uce
0.5
7(2
004)
the
gap
bet
wee
nth
eri
chan
dth
ep
oor
inC
an
ad
a:
0.6
4(2
008)
mu
chm
ore
,so
mew
hat
more
,ab
ou
tth
esa
me
as
now
,so
mew
hat
less
,or
mu
chle
ss?
...
Ed
uca
tion
?S
hou
ldth
eF
eder
al
gov
ern
men
tsp
end
0.5
5(2
004)
more
,le
ss,
or
ab
ou
tth
esa
me
as
now
?0.4
8(2
008)
Do
you
favo
ur
or
op
pose
hav
ing
som
ep
riva
tehosp
itals
0.4
8(2
004)
inC
an
ad
a?
0.5
1(2
008)
Source:
Can
ad
ian
Ele
ctio
nS
tud
y(C
ES
),2004
an
d2008.
†E
igen
valu
esfo
rth
efi
rst
fact
ors
.
178
Tab
le6:
Sca
ling
info
rmat
ion
(5)
Issu
esc
ales
Issu
eit
ems
Fact
or
load
ings
Mor
alis
sues
Do
you
favo
ur
or
op
pose
sam
e-se
xm
arr
iage,
or
do
you
0.8
7(2
004)
(Pos
itio
n:
Tra
dit
ion
al)
hav
en
oop
inio
non
this
?0.8
8(2
008)
α=
0.80
(200
4);
0.80
(200
8)G
ays
an
dle
sbia
ns
shou
ldb
eallow
edto
get
marr
ied
.0.8
9(2
004)
Eigen
values
=2.
57(2
004)
;2.
55(2
008)
[Rev
erse
d]
0.9
1(2
008)
...
an
dgay
san
dle
sbia
ns?
Use
any
nu
mb
erfr
om
zero
0.8
3(2
004)
toon
ehu
nd
red
.0.7
9(2
008)
Do
you
thin
kit
shou
ldb
e:ve
ryea
syfo
rw
om
ento
get
0.5
7(2
004)
an
ab
ort
ion
,qu
ite
easy
,qu
ite
diffi
cult
,or
ver
yd
ifficu
lt?
0.5
7(2
008)
Wom
en’s
issu
esT
he
fem
inis
tm
ovem
ent:
1)
Ju
sttr
ies
toget
equ
al
0.7
1(2
004)
(Pos
itio
n:
Fem
inis
t)tr
eatm
ent
for
wom
en;
2)
Pu
tsm
end
own
0.7
3(2
008)
α=
0.62
(200
4);
0.63
(200
8)T
he
fem
inis
tm
ovem
ent
enco
ura
ges
wom
en:
1)
To
be
0.7
1(2
004)
Eigen
values
=2.
27(2
004)
;2.
26(2
008)
indep
end
ent
an
dsp
eak
up
for
them
selv
es;
2)
To
be
0.7
2(2
008)
selfi
shan
dth
ink
on
lyof
them
selv
es
How
mu
chd
oyo
uth
ink
shou
ldb
ed
on
efo
rw
om
en:
0.5
6(2
004)
mu
chm
ore
,so
mew
hat
more
,ab
ou
tth
esa
me
as
now
,0.5
1(2
008)
som
ewh
at
less
,or
mu
chle
ss?
Th
eb
est
way
top
rote
ctw
om
en’s
inte
rest
sis
toh
ave
0.5
5(2
004)
more
wom
enin
Parl
iam
ent
0.5
3(2
008)
...
an
dfe
min
ists
?U
seany
nu
mb
erfr
om
zero
toon
e0.5
4(2
004)
hu
nd
red
.0.5
5(2
008)
Dis
crim
inati
on
makes
itex
trem
ely
diffi
cult
for
wom
ento
0.5
3(2
004)
get
job
seq
ual
toth
eir
ab
ilit
ies.
0.5
1(2
008)
Soci
ety
wou
ldb
eb
ette
roff
ifm
ore
wom
enst
ayed
hom
e0.3
0(2
004)
wit
hth
eir
chil
dre
n.
0.3
3(2
008)
Source:
Can
ad
ian
Ele
ctio
nS
tud
y(C
ES
),2004
an
d2008.
†E
igen
valu
esfo
rth
efi
rst
fact
ors
.
179
Table 7: Evolution of the Effect of the Economy Issue Position on Attitudes TowardPolitical Parties
Attitude toward political parties
Conservatives Liberals New Democrats
Economy (Issue position) 0.247∗∗∗ 0.128∗∗∗ −0.085∗∗∗
(0.027) (0.026) (0.026)Maritimes −0.009 0.025∗ 0.050∗∗∗
(0.014) (0.014) (0.014)West −0.007 −0.028∗∗∗ −0.023∗∗
(0.010) (0.010) (0.010)Quebec 0.012 −0.048∗∗∗ −0.019
(0.018) (0.018) (0.018)French −0.044∗∗ −0.004 0.020
(0.018) (0.018) (0.018)Other language 0.040∗∗ 0.011 −0.016
(0.016) (0.016) (0.016)Catholic 0.060∗∗∗ −0.007 −0.020∗
(0.012) (0.012) (0.012)Protestant 0.071∗∗∗ −0.002 −0.038∗∗∗
(0.012) (0.011) (0.011)Other religion 0.010 −0.006 −0.001
(0.020) (0.019) (0.020)Immigrant −0.036∗∗∗ −0.024∗ 0.012
(0.014) (0.014) (0.014)Woman −0.006 0.001 0.028∗∗∗
(0.008) (0.008) (0.008)Less than 34 y-o 0.022∗ 0.031∗∗ 0.039∗∗∗
(0.013) (0.012) (0.013)More than 55 y-o −0.003 −0.010 −0.014
(0.009) (0.009) (0.009)Less than high school −0.005 −0.038∗∗∗ −0.022
(0.014) (0.014) (0.014)University degree −0.029∗∗∗ 0.051∗∗∗ 0.044∗∗∗
(0.009) (0.009) (0.009)Urban −0.013 0.014 0.014
(0.010) (0.009) (0.009)Low income −0.021∗ −0.017 −0.022∗∗
(0.011) (0.011) (0.011)High income 0.013 0.006 −0.032∗∗∗
(0.010) (0.010) (0.010)Liberal partisan −0.063∗∗∗ 0.228∗∗∗ 0.004
(0.011) (0.011) (0.011)NDP partisan −0.114∗∗∗ 0.001 0.267∗∗∗
(0.015) (0.015) (0.014)Conservative partisan 0.256∗∗∗ −0.110∗∗∗ −0.099∗∗∗
(0.011) (0.011) (0.011)2008 0.044∗∗ 0.078∗∗∗ 0.054∗∗∗
(0.020) (0.020) (0.020)2011 −0.150∗∗∗ 0.012 0.135∗∗∗
(0.026) (0.025) (0.025)2008 X Economy −0.016 −0.129∗∗∗ 0.009
(0.045) (0.044) (0.045)2011 X Economy 0.230∗∗∗ −0.068 −0.129∗∗∗
(0.051) (0.050) (0.050)constant 0.328∗∗∗ 0.398∗∗∗ 0.472∗∗∗
(0.018) (0.018) (0.018)N 2, 963 2, 980 2, 911R2 0.376 0.274 0.255Adjusted R2 0.371 0.268 0.248
Source: Canadian Election Study (CES), 2004, 2008 and 2011 (Issue Scales).∗p < .1; ∗∗p < .05; ∗∗∗p < .01
180
Table 8: Evolution of the Effect of the Environment Issue Position on Attitudes TowardPolitical Parties
Attitude toward political parties
Conservatives Liberals New Democrats
Environment (Issue position) −0.073∗∗ 0.050∗ 0.138∗∗∗
(0.029) (0.028) (0.028)Maritimes −0.005 0.018 0.028∗∗
(0.014) (0.013) (0.013)West −0.005 −0.030∗∗∗ −0.032∗∗∗
(0.010) (0.010) (0.010)Quebec 0.002 −0.059∗∗∗ −0.016
(0.017) (0.016) (0.017)French −0.016 0.008 0.015
(0.017) (0.016) (0.017)Other language 0.044∗∗∗ 0.016 −0.016
(0.015) (0.015) (0.015)Catholic 0.060∗∗∗ 0.009 −0.011
(0.012) (0.011) (0.012)Protestant 0.084∗∗∗ 0.005 −0.031∗∗∗
(0.011) (0.011) (0.011)Other religion 0.013 −0.011 −0.005
(0.019) (0.018) (0.018)Immigrant −0.021 −0.019 −0.002
(0.013) (0.013) (0.013)Woman −0.018∗∗ 0.001 0.034∗∗∗
(0.008) (0.008) (0.008)Less than 34 y-o 0.029∗∗ 0.037∗∗∗ 0.033∗∗∗
(0.013) (0.012) (0.012)More than 55 y-o −0.004 −0.006 −0.022∗∗
(0.009) (0.009) (0.009)Less than high school −0.002 −0.036∗∗∗ −0.019
(0.014) (0.013) (0.013)University degree −0.018∗∗ 0.047∗∗∗ 0.040∗∗∗
(0.009) (0.009) (0.009)Urban −0.012 0.016∗ 0.011
(0.009) (0.009) (0.009)Low income −0.023∗∗ −0.021∗∗ −0.016
(0.011) (0.010) (0.011)High income 0.027∗∗∗ 0.007 −0.036∗∗∗
(0.010) (0.009) (0.009)Liberal partisan −0.053∗∗∗ 0.238∗∗∗ 0.005
(0.011) (0.010) (0.010)NDP partisan −0.143∗∗∗ −0.001 0.271∗∗∗
(0.015) (0.014) (0.014)Conservative partisan 0.286∗∗∗ −0.093∗∗∗ −0.098∗∗∗
(0.011) (0.010) (0.011)2008 0.031 −0.060∗ 0.095∗∗∗
(0.034) (0.032) (0.033)2011 0.080∗∗∗ −0.030 0.035
(0.028) (0.027) (0.027)2008 X Environment 0.003 0.134∗∗∗ −0.049
(0.051) (0.048) (0.049)2011 X Environment −0.145∗∗∗ 0.041 0.049
(0.042) (0.040) (0.040)constant 0.448∗∗∗ 0.403∗∗∗ 0.356∗∗∗
(0.025) (0.023) (0.024)N 3, 255 3, 275 3, 200R2 0.345 0.286 0.256Adjusted R2 0.340 0.281 0.250
Source: Canadian Election Study (CES), 2004, 2008 and 2011 (Issue Scales).∗p < .1; ∗∗p < .05; ∗∗∗p < .01
181
Table 9: Evolution of the Effect of the Foreign/US Relations Issue Position on AttitudesToward Political Parties
Attitude toward political parties
Conservatives Liberals New Democrats
Foreign/US relations (Issue position) 0.394∗∗∗ 0.149∗∗∗ 0.059(0.039) (0.038) (0.039)
Maritimes −0.004 0.023∗ 0.038∗∗∗
(0.014) (0.013) (0.013)West 0.002 −0.032∗∗∗ −0.032∗∗∗
(0.010) (0.009) (0.010)Quebec 0.025 −0.052∗∗∗ −0.016
(0.017) (0.016) (0.017)French −0.0004 0.008 0.015
(0.017) (0.016) (0.017)Other language 0.060∗∗∗ 0.021 −0.018
(0.015) (0.015) (0.015)Catholic 0.044∗∗∗ 0.001 −0.013
(0.012) (0.011) (0.012)Protestant 0.062∗∗∗ 0.003 −0.033∗∗∗
(0.011) (0.011) (0.011)Other religion 0.007 −0.009 −0.005
(0.019) (0.018) (0.018)Immigrant −0.016 −0.020 −0.001
(0.013) (0.013) (0.013)Woman 0.001 0.006 0.034∗∗∗
(0.008) (0.008) (0.008)Less than 34 y-o 0.037∗∗∗ 0.036∗∗∗ 0.034∗∗∗
(0.012) (0.012) (0.012)More than 55 y-o −0.005 −0.009 −0.018∗∗
(0.009) (0.009) (0.009)Less than high school 0.004 −0.036∗∗∗ −0.031∗∗
(0.013) (0.013) (0.013)University degree −0.013 0.055∗∗∗ 0.044∗∗∗
(0.009) (0.008) (0.009)Urban −0.013 0.020∗∗ 0.016∗
(0.009) (0.009) (0.009)Low income −0.023∗∗ −0.016 −0.018∗
(0.011) (0.010) (0.011)High income 0.018∗ 0.009 −0.036∗∗∗
(0.009) (0.009) (0.009)Liberal partisan −0.063∗∗∗ 0.232∗∗∗ 0.012
(0.010) (0.010) (0.010)NDP partisan −0.137∗∗∗ −0.001 0.276∗∗∗
(0.014) (0.014) (0.014)Conservative partisan 0.260∗∗∗ −0.103∗∗∗ −0.107∗∗∗
(0.011) (0.011) (0.011)2008 0.060 0.148∗∗∗ 0.169∗∗∗
(0.037) (0.036) (0.037)2011 −0.117∗∗∗ 0.108∗∗∗ 0.167∗∗∗
(0.033) (0.033) (0.033)2008 X Foreign/US relations −0.035 −0.218∗∗∗ −0.195∗∗∗
(0.063) (0.062) (0.063)2011 X Foreign/US relations 0.180∗∗∗ −0.203∗∗∗ −0.186∗∗∗
(0.056) (0.055) (0.056)constant 0.176∗∗∗ 0.347∗∗∗ 0.409∗∗∗
(0.027) (0.026) (0.027)N 3, 290 3, 305 3, 234R2 0.383 0.279 0.248Adjusted R2 0.379 0.274 0.242
Source: Canadian Election Study (CES), 2004, 2008 and 2011 (Issue Scales).∗p < .1; ∗∗p < .05; ∗∗∗p < .01
182
Table 10: Evolution of the Effect of Law and Order Issue Position on Attitudes TowardPolitical Parties
Attitude toward political parties
Conservatives Liberals New Democrats
Law and order (Issue position) 0.087∗∗∗ −0.055∗∗∗ −0.083∗∗∗
(0.020) (0.018) (0.019)Maritimes −0.001 0.017 0.030∗∗
(0.014) (0.013) (0.013)West −0.004 −0.029∗∗∗ −0.032∗∗∗
(0.010) (0.009) (0.010)Quebec 0.008 −0.053∗∗∗ −0.012
(0.017) (0.016) (0.017)French −0.028 0.002 0.011
(0.017) (0.016) (0.017)Other language 0.037∗∗ 0.021 −0.015
(0.016) (0.015) (0.015)Catholic 0.061∗∗∗ 0.012 −0.009
(0.012) (0.011) (0.011)Protestant 0.078∗∗∗ 0.011 −0.029∗∗∗
(0.011) (0.011) (0.011)Other religion 0.010 −0.003 −0.007
(0.019) (0.018) (0.018)Immigrant −0.024∗ −0.019 −0.0003
(0.014) (0.013) (0.013)Woman −0.017∗∗ −0.001 0.032∗∗∗
(0.008) (0.008) (0.008)Less than 34 y-o 0.030∗∗ 0.035∗∗∗ 0.030∗∗
(0.013) (0.012) (0.012)More than 55 y-o −0.003 −0.012 −0.029∗∗∗
(0.009) (0.009) (0.009)Less than high school −0.005 −0.035∗∗∗ −0.024∗
(0.014) (0.013) (0.013)University degree −0.002 0.037∗∗∗ 0.028∗∗∗
(0.009) (0.009) (0.009)Urban −0.008 0.015∗ 0.006
(0.009) (0.009) (0.009)Low income −0.024∗∗ −0.015 −0.020∗
(0.011) (0.010) (0.011)High income 0.025∗∗∗ 0.003 −0.035∗∗∗
(0.010) (0.009) (0.009)Liberal partisan −0.044∗∗∗ 0.235∗∗∗ 0.002
(0.010) (0.010) (0.010)NDP partisan −0.137∗∗∗ 0.001 0.273∗∗∗
(0.014) (0.014) (0.014)Conservative partisan 0.287∗∗∗ −0.080∗∗∗ −0.098∗∗∗
(0.011) (0.010) (0.011)2008 0.032 0.063∗∗∗ 0.061∗∗∗
(0.020) (0.019) (0.019)2011 −0.052∗∗∗ 0.048∗∗∗ 0.093∗∗∗
(0.018) (0.016) (0.017)2008 X Law and order 0.013 −0.070∗∗ 0.009
(0.032) (0.030) (0.030)2011 X Law and order 0.067∗∗ −0.108∗∗∗ −0.055∗∗
(0.028) (0.026) (0.026)constant 0.349∗∗∗ 0.462∗∗∗ 0.497∗∗∗
(0.019) (0.018) (0.018)N 3, 308 3, 328 3, 250R2 0.346 0.296 0.261Adjusted R2 0.341 0.291 0.255
Source: Canadian Election Study (CES), 2004, 2008 and 2011 (Issue Scales).∗p < .1; ∗∗p < .05; ∗∗∗p < .01
183
Table 11: Evolution of the Effect of Minority Issues Position on Attitudes Toward PoliticalParties
Attitude toward political parties
Conservatives Liberals New Democrats
Minority issues (Issue position) −0.078∗∗ 0.170∗∗∗ 0.256∗∗∗
(0.037) (0.035) (0.035)Maritimes −0.009 0.021 0.035∗∗
(0.015) (0.014) (0.014)West −0.005 −0.029∗∗∗ −0.027∗∗∗
(0.010) (0.010) (0.010)Quebec −0.003 −0.052∗∗∗ −0.012
(0.018) (0.017) (0.017)French −0.017 0.011 0.020
(0.018) (0.017) (0.018)Other language 0.049∗∗∗ 0.016 −0.013
(0.016) (0.015) (0.016)Catholic 0.059∗∗∗ 0.007 −0.011
(0.013) (0.012) (0.012)Protestant 0.083∗∗∗ 0.011 −0.029∗∗
(0.012) (0.011) (0.011)Other religion 0.015 −0.001 −0.012
(0.020) (0.019) (0.019)Immigrant −0.020 −0.024∗ −0.006
(0.014) (0.013) (0.013)Woman −0.021∗∗ −0.001 0.030∗∗∗
(0.008) (0.008) (0.008)Less than 34 y-o 0.025∗ 0.037∗∗∗ 0.036∗∗∗
(0.013) (0.012) (0.013)More than 55 y-o −0.005 −0.015 −0.028∗∗∗
(0.010) (0.009) (0.009)Less than high school 0.001 −0.027∗∗ −0.015
(0.014) (0.014) (0.014)University degree −0.009 0.033∗∗∗ 0.022∗∗
(0.010) (0.009) (0.009)Urban −0.011 0.016∗ 0.004
(0.010) (0.009) (0.009)Low income −0.028∗∗ −0.013 −0.017
(0.012) (0.011) (0.011)High income 0.024∗∗ 0.010 −0.038∗∗∗
(0.010) (0.009) (0.009)Liberal partisan −0.048∗∗∗ 0.232∗∗∗ −0.002
(0.011) (0.010) (0.010)NDP partisan −0.132∗∗∗ −0.009 0.264∗∗∗
(0.015) (0.014) (0.014)Conservative partisan 0.294∗∗∗ −0.085∗∗∗ −0.099∗∗∗
(0.012) (0.011) (0.011)2008 0.081∗∗ 0.028 0.098∗∗∗
(0.039) (0.036) (0.037)2011 0.080∗∗ −0.061∗ 0.056∗
(0.033) (0.031) (0.032)2008 X Minority issues −0.083 −0.010 −0.063
(0.063) (0.060) (0.060)2011 X Minority issues −0.155∗∗∗ 0.094∗ 0.010
(0.055) (0.052) (0.052)constant 0.444∗∗∗ 0.340∗∗∗ 0.311∗∗∗
(0.026) (0.024) (0.024)N 3, 043 3, 062 2, 989R2 0.341 0.288 0.267Adjusted R2 0.335 0.282 0.261
Source: Canadian Election Study (CES), 2004, 2008 and 2011 (Issue Scales).∗p < .1; ∗∗p < .05; ∗∗∗p < .01
184
Table 12: Evolution of the Effect of Moral Issues Position on Attitudes Toward PoliticalParties
Attitude toward political parties
Conservatives Liberals New Democrats
Moral issues (Issue position) −0.301∗∗∗ −0.033 0.200∗∗∗
(0.036) (0.034) (0.034)Maritimes 0.006 0.022 0.028∗∗
(0.014) (0.014) (0.013)West −0.017∗ −0.026∗∗∗ −0.021∗∗
(0.010) (0.010) (0.010)Quebec −0.015 −0.050∗∗∗ −0.005
(0.017) (0.017) (0.017)French −0.022 0.002 0.016
(0.018) (0.017) (0.017)Other language 0.038∗∗ 0.011 −0.015
(0.016) (0.015) (0.015)Catholic 0.079∗∗∗ 0.002 −0.022∗
(0.012) (0.012) (0.012)Protestant 0.085∗∗∗ 0.002 −0.037∗∗∗
(0.011) (0.011) (0.011)Other religion 0.027 −0.007 −0.012
(0.019) (0.019) (0.019)Immigrant −0.026∗ −0.022∗ −0.004
(0.014) (0.013) (0.013)Woman −0.006 0.002 0.019∗∗
(0.008) (0.008) (0.008)Less than 34 y-o 0.023∗ 0.037∗∗∗ 0.037∗∗∗
(0.013) (0.012) (0.013)More than 55 y-o 0.003 −0.006 −0.026∗∗∗
(0.009) (0.009) (0.009)Less than high school 0.004 −0.035∗∗∗ −0.020
(0.014) (0.013) (0.013)University degree −0.015∗ 0.055∗∗∗ 0.040∗∗∗
(0.009) (0.009) (0.009)Urban −0.006 0.016∗ 0.015∗
(0.009) (0.009) (0.009)Low income −0.016 −0.013 −0.025∗∗
(0.011) (0.011) (0.011)High income 0.010 0.008 −0.028∗∗∗
(0.010) (0.009) (0.009)Liberal partisan −0.056∗∗∗ 0.238∗∗∗ 0.003
(0.010) (0.010) (0.010)NDP partisan −0.118∗∗∗ −0.004 0.252∗∗∗
(0.015) (0.014) (0.014)Conservative partisan 0.260∗∗∗ −0.095∗∗∗ −0.085∗∗∗
(0.011) (0.011) (0.011)2008 0.099∗∗ −0.058 0.042
(0.042) (0.041) (0.041)2011 0.034 −0.068∗∗ 0.012
(0.035) (0.034) (0.034)2008 X Moral issues −0.092 0.129∗∗ 0.032
(0.060) (0.059) (0.058)2011 X Moral issues −0.056 0.101∗∗ 0.078
(0.050) (0.049) (0.048)constant 0.595∗∗∗ 0.450∗∗∗ 0.315∗∗∗
(0.028) (0.027) (0.027)N 3, 150 3, 164 3, 097R2 0.372 0.275 0.272Adjusted R2 0.367 0.269 0.266
Source: Canadian Election Study (CES), 2004, 2008 and 2011 (Issue Scales).∗p < .1; ∗∗p < .05; ∗∗∗p < .01
185
Table 13: Evolution of the Effect of Social Programs Issue Position on Attitudes TowardPolitical Parties
Attitude toward political parties
Conservatives Liberals New Democrats
Social programs (Issue position) 0.083∗∗∗ −0.037∗∗ −0.136∗∗∗
(0.018) (0.017) (0.017)Maritimes −0.005 0.036∗∗∗ 0.018∗
(0.011) (0.011) (0.011)West 0.002 −0.024∗∗∗ −0.029∗∗∗
(0.008) (0.008) (0.008)Quebec −0.008 −0.015 −0.018
(0.013) (0.012) (0.012)French −0.028∗∗ −0.022∗ −0.0002
(0.013) (0.012) (0.012)Other language 0.039∗∗∗ 0.019 −0.018
(0.013) (0.012) (0.012)Catholic 0.045∗∗∗ 0.005 0.003
(0.010) (0.009) (0.009)Protestant 0.061∗∗∗ 0.007 −0.010
(0.009) (0.009) (0.009)Other religion 0.003 0.009 −0.007
(0.015) (0.014) (0.014)Immigrant −0.031∗∗∗ 0.003 0.018∗
(0.011) (0.011) (0.011)Woman −0.008 −0.003 0.020∗∗∗
(0.007) (0.006) (0.006)Less than 34 y-o 0.018∗∗ 0.023∗∗∗ 0.039∗∗∗
(0.009) (0.008) (0.008)More than 55 y-o −0.009 0.005 −0.011
(0.008) (0.007) (0.007)Less than high school −0.023∗∗ −0.031∗∗∗ −0.012
(0.011) (0.010) (0.010)University degree −0.014∗∗ 0.055∗∗∗ 0.038∗∗∗
(0.007) (0.007) (0.007)Urban −0.007 0.015∗∗ 0.009
(0.007) (0.007) (0.007)Low income −0.026∗∗∗ −0.008 −0.011
(0.009) (0.008) (0.008)High income 0.023∗∗∗ 0.007 −0.030∗∗∗
(0.008) (0.007) (0.007)Liberal partisan −0.050∗∗∗ 0.225∗∗∗ −0.012
(0.008) (0.008) (0.008)NDP partisan −0.142∗∗∗ −0.013 0.256∗∗∗
(0.012) (0.011) (0.011)Conservative partisan 0.274∗∗∗ −0.079∗∗∗ −0.089∗∗∗
(0.009) (0.009) (0.009)2008 0.029∗∗ 0.053∗∗∗ 0.061∗∗∗
(0.015) (0.014) (0.014)2011 0.001 0.014 0.057∗∗∗
(0.012) (0.011) (0.011)2008 X Social programs 0.025 −0.027 0.003
(0.029) (0.028) (0.028)2011 X Social programs 0.003 −0.068∗∗∗ −0.023
(0.025) (0.023) (0.023)constant 0.387∗∗∗ 0.428∗∗∗ 0.492∗∗∗
(0.014) (0.013) (0.013)N 5, 235 5, 289 5, 149R2 0.308 0.252 0.255Adjusted R2 0.304 0.248 0.251
Source: Canadian Election Study (CES), 2004, 2008 and 2011 (Issue Scales).∗p < .1; ∗∗p < .05; ∗∗∗p < .01
186
Table 14: Evolution of the Effect of Women Issues Position on Attitudes Toward PoliticalParties
Attitude toward political parties
Conservatives Liberals New Democrats
Women issues (Issue position) −0.107∗∗∗ 0.067∗ 0.216∗∗∗
(0.037) (0.035) (0.035)Maritimes 0.007 0.017 0.031∗∗
(0.014) (0.013) (0.013)West 0.004 −0.028∗∗∗ −0.030∗∗∗
(0.010) (0.010) (0.010)Quebec −0.003 −0.058∗∗∗ −0.012
(0.018) (0.017) (0.017)French −0.015 0.007 0.014
(0.018) (0.017) (0.017)Other language 0.040∗∗ 0.013 −0.019
(0.016) (0.015) (0.015)Catholic 0.068∗∗∗ 0.006 −0.012
(0.012) (0.012) (0.011)Protestant 0.080∗∗∗ 0.007 −0.024∗∗
(0.012) (0.011) (0.011)Other religion 0.009 −0.007 −0.003
(0.020) (0.019) (0.019)Immigrant −0.019 −0.016 0.010
(0.014) (0.013) (0.013)Woman −0.011 −0.004 0.014∗
(0.008) (0.008) (0.008)Less than 34 y-o 0.024∗ 0.038∗∗∗ 0.042∗∗∗
(0.013) (0.012) (0.012)More than 55 y-o 0.003 −0.008 −0.021∗∗
(0.009) (0.009) (0.009)Less than high school 0.00004 −0.037∗∗∗ −0.035∗∗∗
(0.014) (0.013) (0.013)University degree −0.020∗∗ 0.055∗∗∗ 0.038∗∗∗
(0.009) (0.009) (0.009)Urban −0.004 0.014 0.013
(0.009) (0.009) (0.009)Low income −0.023∗∗ −0.010 −0.015
(0.011) (0.011) (0.011)High income 0.025∗∗∗ 0.012 −0.033∗∗∗
(0.010) (0.009) (0.009)Liberal partisan −0.056∗∗∗ 0.232∗∗∗ 0.002
(0.011) (0.010) (0.010)NDP partisan −0.136∗∗∗ −0.00003 0.263∗∗∗
(0.015) (0.014) (0.014)Conservative partisan 0.284∗∗∗ −0.095∗∗∗ −0.099∗∗∗
(0.011) (0.011) (0.011)2008 0.083∗ 0.014 0.057
(0.045) (0.043) (0.043)2011 0.082∗∗ −0.026 0.022
(0.040) (0.038) (0.038)2008 X Women issues −0.080 0.017 0.007
(0.067) (0.063) (0.063)2011 X Women issues −0.149∗∗ 0.041 0.080
(0.060) (0.057) (0.057)constant 0.461∗∗∗ 0.388∗∗∗ 0.307∗∗∗
(0.029) (0.027) (0.027)N 3, 176 3, 192 3, 121R2 0.338 0.272 0.273Adjusted R2 0.333 0.266 0.267
Source: Canadian Election Study (CES), 2004, 2008 and 2011 (Issue Scales).∗p < .1; ∗∗p < .05; ∗∗∗p < .01
187
Table 15: Accessibility and Attitude Stability on the Same-Sex Marriage Issue
Attitude Stability
Response Time −0.610∗∗∗
(0.098)University degree 0.083∗∗∗
(0.022)Less than high school −0.011
(0.027)Interested 0.222∗∗∗
(0.039)Knowledgeable 0.138∗∗∗
(0.029)constant 0.105∗∗∗
(0.029)N 1, 820R2 0.085Adjusted R2 0.083
Source: Canadian Election Study (CES), 2004, 2008 and 2011.∗p < .1; ∗∗p < .05; ∗∗∗p < .01
188
Table 16: The Effect of Issue Salience: Full Regression Results
Moral issues Environment
InteractionsPosition X Salience 0.39*** 0.19**
(0.08) (0.07)Focal variables
Position 0.38*** 0.21***(0.02) (0.03)
Salience -0.12 0.33***(0.13) (0.06)
ControlsAge under 35 0.12* 0.22**
(0.05) (0.07)Age 55+ 0.02 -0.14*
(0.05) (0.06)High income 0.15*** -0.10
(0.04) (0.06)Low income -0.10* 0.05
(0.05) (0.06)University -0.15*** 0.18**
(0.04) (0.06)Less than high school -0.07 -0.12
(0.08) (0.08)Interested 0.48*** 0.26
(0.12) (0.14)Knowledgeable 0.05 0.14
(0.06) (0.09)
Adjusted R2 0.15 0.15N 2376 1564
Source: Canadian Election Study (CES), 2004 and 2008 (Pooled).Method : Least Squares Regression. Log odds (Robust standard errors).Dependent variables: Attitude(Conservative, Green). Factor scales.*p < .10. **p < .05. ***p < .01.
189
Tab
le17
:T
he
Eff
ect
ofIm
mig
rantn
ess
and
Eth
nic
ity
onth
eL
iber
alV
ote
1968-1
979
1984-2
000
2004-2
006
2008-2
011
Imm
igra
nt
0.1
0—
0.0
80.1
6∗
—0.0
40.0
7—
-0.0
80.0
2—
-0.0
4V
isib
leet
hn
icit
y—
0.4
3†
0.4
1†
—0.8
6∗∗∗
0.8
4∗∗∗
—0.6
8∗∗∗
0.7
0∗∗∗
—0.3
7∗
0.3
9∗
Controls
Qu
ebec
0.1
7†
0.1
60.1
6-0
.46∗∗∗
-0.4
7∗∗∗
-0.4
7∗∗∗
-0.1
7-0
.14
-0.1
6-0
.65∗∗∗
-0.6
3∗∗∗
-0.6
1∗∗∗
Wes
t-0
.55∗∗∗
-0.5
6∗∗∗
-0.5
6∗∗∗
-0.8
6∗∗∗
-0.8
5∗∗∗
-0.8
5∗∗∗
-0.8
3∗∗∗
-0.8
2∗∗∗
-0.8
1∗∗∗
-0.9
6∗∗∗
-0.9
5∗∗∗
-0.9
5∗∗∗
Mari
tim
es0.1
10.0
80.0
9-0
.09
-0.0
7-0
.07
0.3
1∗
0.2
80.2
80.6
9∗∗∗
0.6
9∗∗∗
0.7
0∗∗∗
Wom
an
0.1
7∗∗∗
0.1
7∗∗∗
0.1
7∗∗∗
0.1
3∗∗
0.1
5∗∗
0.1
4∗∗
0.1
10.1
00.1
00.0
00.0
00.0
0F
ren
chla
ngu
age
-0.2
1∗
-0.2
1∗
-0.2
0†
-0.4
0∗∗∗
-0.4
1∗∗∗
-0.4
1∗∗∗
-0.7
6∗∗∗
-0.8
2∗∗∗
-0.7
3∗∗∗
-0.1
9-0
.22
-0.2
0O
ther
lan
gu
age
0.1
2∗
0.1
3∗
0.1
4∗
0.2
6∗∗
0.2
2∗∗
0.2
1∗∗
0.2
9∗
0.2
20.2
60.0
3-0
.07
-0.0
2C
ath
olic
0.7
2∗∗∗
0.7
2∗∗∗
0.7
3∗∗∗
0.5
1∗∗∗
0.5
3∗∗∗
0.5
3∗∗∗
0.4
8∗∗∗
0.4
8∗∗∗
0.4
8∗∗∗
0.0
0-0
.01
-0.0
2P
rote
stant
-0.1
7-0
.17
-0.1
6-0
.18∗
-0.1
6∗
-0.1
6∗
-0.0
4-0
.00
-0.0
1-0
.30∗
-0.3
0∗
-0.3
0∗
Oth
erre
ligio
n0.3
8∗
0.4
1∗
0.4
1∗
0.2
8∗
0.1
10.1
20.8
9∗∗∗
0.8
0∗∗∗
0.8
1∗∗∗
0.1
40.0
50.0
3L
ess
than
34
yea
rs-o
ld-0
.20∗∗∗
-0.2
1∗∗∗
-0.2
0∗∗∗
-0.0
9-0
.08
-0.0
8-0
.14
-0.1
9-0
.19†
-0.1
9-0
.17
-0.2
0M
ore
than
55
yea
rs-o
ld-0
.04
-0.0
4-0
.04
0.2
5∗∗∗
0.2
9∗∗∗
0.2
8∗∗∗
0.3
2∗∗∗
0.3
2∗∗∗
0.3
3∗∗∗
0.3
5∗∗∗
0.3
8∗∗∗
0.3
6∗∗∗
Les
sth
an
hig
hsc
hool
0.0
40.0
40.0
5-0
.06
-0.0
8-0
.08
-0.1
0-0
.10
-0.1
4-0
.13
-0.1
3-0
.18
Un
iver
sity
Deg
ree
0.0
1-0
.01
0.0
10.0
80.0
60.0
60.1
7†
0.1
8∗
0.1
7†
0.4
2∗∗∗
0.4
0∗∗∗
0.4
2∗∗∗
Low
Inco
me
-0.1
5∗
-0.1
3∗
-0.1
3∗
0.0
80.0
50.0
60.2
8∗∗
0.2
7∗∗
0.2
8∗∗
0.0
60.0
7H
igh
Inco
me
0.2
4∗∗
0.2
4∗∗
0.2
4∗∗
0.1
0†
0.1
00.1
00.4
2∗∗∗
0.4
2∗∗∗
0.4
2∗∗∗
0.2
8∗∗
0.3
1∗∗
0.2
9∗∗
Urb
an
0.3
3∗∗∗
0.3
4∗∗∗
0.3
3∗∗∗
0.0
40.0
30.0
30.0
90.0
50.0
40.4
6∗∗∗
0.4
4∗∗∗
0.4
4∗∗∗
(Inte
rcep
t)-0
.35∗
-0.3
3∗
-0.3
7∗
-0.7
0∗∗∗
-0.7
2∗∗∗
-0.7
3∗∗∗
-1.0
4∗∗∗
-1.0
5∗∗∗
-1.0
5∗∗∗
-1.5
6∗∗∗
-1.5
9∗∗∗
-1.5
6∗∗∗
N7104
7017
6999
10124
9901
9876
3131
3091
3044
3615
3661
3581
AIC
9329.7
9212
9190.4
12070
11740
11715
3704.5
3627.5
3590.9
3549.6
3564.1
3513.6
Sou
rce:
Can
ad
ian
Ele
ctio
nS
tud
y,1965-2
011.
†si
gn
ifica
nt
atp<
.10;∗p<
.05;∗∗
p<
.01;∗∗∗p<
.001
190
Tab
le18
:T
he
Eff
ect
ofIm
mig
rantn
ess
and
Eth
nic
ity
onth
eC
onse
rvat
ive
Vot
e
1968-1
979
1984-2
000
2004-2
006
2008-2
011
Imm
igra
nt
-0.2
1∗∗
—-0
.19∗
-0.1
0—
-0.0
4-0
.28∗
—-0
.11
-0.1
3—
-0.0
8V
isib
leet
hn
icit
y—
-0.5
6†
-0.5
2—
-0.4
2∗∗∗
-0.4
1∗∗∗
—-0
.80∗∗∗
-0.7
8∗∗∗
—-0
.43∗∗
-0.4
2∗
Controls
Qu
ebec
-0.3
9∗∗∗
-0.3
9∗∗
-0.3
8∗∗
-0.1
4†
-0.1
7∗
-0.1
6∗
-0.8
4∗∗∗
-0.8
7∗∗∗
-0.8
7∗∗∗
-0.7
7∗∗∗
-0.7
9∗∗∗
-0.7
9∗∗∗
Wes
t0.2
3∗∗∗
0.2
3∗∗∗
0.2
4∗∗∗
0.4
6∗∗∗
0.4
5∗∗∗
0.4
5∗∗∗
0.5
8∗∗∗
0.6
0∗∗∗
0.5
9∗∗∗
0.3
9∗∗∗
0.3
9∗∗∗
0.3
9∗∗∗
Mari
tim
es0.4
4∗∗∗
0.4
9∗∗∗
0.4
6∗∗∗
0.0
80.0
40.0
4-0
.24
-0.2
3-0
.24
-0.4
7∗∗∗
-0.4
9∗∗∗
-0.5
0∗∗∗
Wom
an
-0.0
4-0
.02
-0.0
3-0
.26∗∗∗
-0.2
7∗∗∗
-0.2
7∗∗∗
-0.2
8∗∗∗
-0.2
6∗∗
-0.2
7∗∗
-0.2
2∗∗
-0.2
2∗∗
-0.2
2∗∗
Fre
nch
lan
gu
age
-0.1
1-0
.08
-0.1
2-0
.08
-0.1
0-0
.09
-0.1
6-0
.11
-0.1
4-0
.65∗∗∗
-0.6
4∗∗∗
-0.6
5∗∗∗
Oth
erla
ngu
age
0.0
50.0
50.0
5-0
.12
-0.1
0-0
.09
0.2
20.1
90.2
50.1
90.1
80.2
4†
Cath
olic
-0.2
8-0
.29†
-0.3
0†
-0.0
4-0
.06
-0.0
70.3
3∗∗
0.3
7∗∗
0.3
7∗∗
0.7
9∗∗∗
0.7
9∗∗∗
0.8
1∗∗∗
Pro
test
ant
0.6
6∗∗∗
0.6
6∗∗∗
0.6
4∗∗∗
0.5
8∗∗∗
0.5
7∗∗∗
0.5
7∗∗∗
0.8
3∗∗∗
0.8
4∗∗∗
0.8
5∗∗∗
1.0
1∗∗∗
1.0
1∗∗∗
1.0
2∗∗∗
Oth
erre
ligio
n0.0
30.0
10.0
50.0
00.0
60.0
60.0
40.1
70.1
70.5
8∗∗∗
0.7
2∗∗∗
0.7
0∗∗∗
Les
sth
an
34
yea
rs-o
ld-0
.04
-0.0
3-0
.01
-0.0
8-0
.09
-0.0
9†
-0.1
7-0
.15
-0.1
4-0
.05
-0.0
1-0
.02
More
than
55
yea
rs-o
ld0.2
6∗∗∗
0.2
5∗∗∗
0.2
6∗∗∗
-0.0
5-0
.06
-0.0
50.0
30.0
20.0
2-0
.01
-0.0
2-0
.02
Les
sth
an
hig
hsc
hool
-0.1
9∗∗
-0.1
9∗∗
-0.2
0∗∗
0.0
80.0
70.0
60.2
4∗
0.2
30.2
50.3
4∗∗
0.3
7∗∗
0.3
5∗∗
Un
iver
sity
Deg
ree
-0.0
4-0
.02
-0.0
3-0
.24∗∗∗
-0.2
3∗∗∗
-0.2
3∗∗∗
-0.3
6∗∗∗
-0.3
6∗∗∗
-0.3
6∗∗∗
-0.4
0∗∗∗
-0.3
9∗∗∗
-0.4
0∗∗∗
Low
Inco
me
0.2
0∗∗
0.1
9∗∗
0.2
0∗∗
-0.2
2∗∗∗
-0.2
0∗∗∗
-0.2
0∗∗∗
-0.2
0∗
-0.1
6-0
.19†
-0.3
0∗
-0.3
1∗∗
-0.3
1∗∗
Hig
hIn
com
e0.1
9∗
0.2
0∗
0.1
9∗
0.2
8∗∗∗
0.2
8∗∗∗
0.2
8∗∗∗
-0.0
30.0
0-0
.01
0.0
80.0
50.0
7U
rban
-0.2
9∗∗∗
-0.3
1∗∗∗
-0.3
0∗∗∗
0.0
00.0
00.0
0-0
.17†
-0.1
2-0
.13
-0.2
3∗∗
-0.2
0∗
-0.2
1∗
(Inte
rcep
t)-1
.05∗∗∗
-1.1
1∗∗∗
-1.0
3∗∗∗
-0.4
9∗∗∗
-0.4
7∗∗∗
-0.4
7∗∗∗
-0.7
5∗∗∗
-0.8
2∗∗∗
-0.7
9∗∗∗
-0.5
9∗∗∗
-0.5
9∗∗∗
-0.5
8∗∗∗
N7104
7017
6999
10124
9901
9876
3131
3091
3044
3615
3661
3581
AIC
7950.6
7868.7
7840.1
13058
12695
12675
3679.7
3612.7
3567.5
4389.3
4413.2
4340.8
Sou
rce:
Can
ad
ian
Ele
ctio
nS
tud
y,1965-2
011.
†si
gn
ifica
nt
atp<
.10;∗p<
.05;∗∗
p<
.01;∗∗∗p<
.001
191
Tab
le19
:T
he
Eff
ect
ofIm
mig
rantn
ess
and
Eth
nic
ity
onth
eN
DP
Vot
e
1968-1
979
1984-2
000
2004-2
006
2008-2
011
Imm
igra
nt
-0.0
2—
-0.0
20.0
2—
0.0
60.5
5∗∗∗
—0.5
3∗∗
0.1
7—
0.1
1V
isib
leet
hn
icit
y—
-0.5
6†
-0.0
1—
-0.3
7∗
-0.3
9∗
—0.0
3-0
.09
—0.3
7∗
0.3
8∗
Controls
Qu
ebec
-0.9
0∗∗∗
-0.8
8∗∗∗
-0.8
8∗∗∗
-0.6
5∗∗∗
-0.6
4∗∗∗
-0.6
3∗∗∗
-0.9
3∗∗∗
-0.9
4∗∗∗
-0.9
0∗∗∗
0.4
9∗∗
0.4
7∗∗
0.5
0∗∗
Wes
t0.1
30.1
20.1
20.3
2∗∗∗
0.3
2∗∗∗
0.3
2∗∗∗
0.2
0†
0.1
60.1
70.3
1∗∗
0.3
2∗∗
0.3
2∗∗
Mari
tim
es-1
.04∗∗∗
-1.0
4∗∗∗
-1.0
5∗∗∗
0.1
30.1
40.1
50.1
20.1
40.1
7-0
.01
0.0
40.0
2W
om
an
-0.3
2∗∗∗
-0.3
2∗∗∗
-0.3
3∗∗∗
0.1
8∗∗
0.1
7∗∗
0.1
7∗∗
0.2
1∗
0.2
1∗
0.2
2∗
0.2
2∗∗
0.2
2∗∗
0.2
2∗∗
Fre
nch
lan
gu
age
-0.0
6-0
.08
-0.0
7-0
.18
-0.2
2†
-0.2
1†
-0.2
6-0
.29
-0.2
9-0
.11
-0.1
6-0
.09
Oth
erla
ngu
age
-0.1
80.0
00.0
1-0
.19†
-0.1
5-0
.18
-0.6
9∗∗∗
-0.4
2∗
-0.7
0∗∗∗
-0.2
2-0
.16
-0.2
7†
Cath
olic
-0.7
7∗∗∗
-0.7
8∗∗∗
-0.7
8∗∗∗
-0.6
3∗∗∗
-0.6
1∗∗∗
-0.6
1∗∗∗
-0.7
2∗∗∗
-0.7
6∗∗∗
-0.7
3∗∗∗
-0.1
4-0
.14
-0.1
6P
rote
stant
-0.7
6∗∗∗
-0.7
8∗∗∗
-0.7
7∗∗∗
-0.6
1∗∗∗
-0.6
3∗∗∗
-0.6
3∗∗∗
-0.8
0∗∗∗
-0.8
4∗∗∗
-0.8
2∗∗∗
-0.4
0∗∗∗
-0.4
1∗∗∗
-0.4
2∗∗∗
Oth
erre
ligio
n-0
.53∗∗
-0.5
6∗∗
-0.5
4∗∗
-0.2
6†
-0.1
8-0
.18
-0.9
8∗∗∗
-1.0
2∗∗∗
-1.0
4∗∗∗
-0.2
0-0
.31†
-0.3
1†
Les
sth
an
34
yea
rs-o
ld0.2
0∗
0.2
2∗
0.2
1∗
0.1
4∗
0.1
2†
0.1
2†
0.2
00.2
2†
0.2
1†
-0.0
3-0
.05
-0.0
5M
ore
than
55
yea
rs-o
ld-0
.11
-0.1
2-0
.11
-0.1
7∗
-0.2
0∗
-0.2
0∗
-0.2
9∗
-0.2
4∗
-0.3
0∗
-0.1
0∗
-0.1
8∗
-0.1
8∗
Les
sth
an
hig
hsc
hool
0.1
00.1
10.1
10.1
00.1
00.1
00.1
40.1
60.1
9-0
.05
-0.0
5-0
.03
Un
iver
sity
Deg
ree
0.0
10.0
20.0
00.2
3∗∗
0.2
4∗∗
0.2
4∗∗
0.2
1†
0.2
3∗
0.2
0†
0.0
10.0
20.0
1L
ow
Inco
me
-0.2
1∗
-0.2
2∗
-0.2
3∗
0.0
60.0
70.0
70.0
90.0
50.0
80.0
50.0
70.0
7H
igh
Inco
me
-0.6
3∗∗∗
-0.6
3∗∗∗
-0.6
3∗∗∗
-0.5
0∗∗∗
-0.5
1∗∗∗
-0.5
1∗∗∗
-0.4
1∗∗
-0.4
6∗∗∗
-0.4
4∗∗∗
-0.2
6∗∗
-0.2
5∗∗
-0.2
4∗∗
Urb
an
0.3
6∗∗∗
0.3
6∗∗∗
0.3
6∗∗∗
0.2
3∗∗∗
0.2
4∗∗∗
0.2
4∗∗∗
0.2
4∗
0.2
7∗∗
0.2
6∗
-0.1
0-0
.07
-0.1
1(I
nte
rcep
t)-0
.91∗∗∗
-0.9
0∗∗∗
-0.9
1∗∗∗
-1.5
3∗∗∗
-1.5
1∗∗∗
-1.5
2∗∗∗
-1.0
4∗∗∗
-0.9
7∗∗∗
-1.0
2∗∗∗
-0.8
7∗∗∗
-0.9
0∗∗∗
-0.8
8∗∗∗
N7104
7017
6999
10124
9901
9876
3131
3091
3044
3615
3661
3581
AIC
5011.3
4965.7
4853.5
7522.3
7324.3
7321.8
2783
2721.3
2701.5
4198.7
4232
4151
Sou
rce:
Can
ad
ian
Ele
ctio
nS
tud
y,1965-2
011.
†si
gn
ifica
nt
atp<
.10;∗p<
.05;∗∗
p<
.01;∗∗∗p<
.001
192
Table 20: Who Shifted? The New Conservative Voters in the 2011 Election
Shifted for the Conservatives in 2011
Immigrant*Race — — — 2.22∗∗
— — — (0.72)Immigrant 0.25 — 0.17 -0.25
(0.25) — (0.26) (0.31)Race — 0.49† 0.45 -0.77
— (0.28) (0.30) (0.60)Controls
Quebec -0.21 -0.18 -0.19 -0.20(0.30) (0.29) (0.30) (0.30)
West -0.06 -0.04 -0.03 -0.04(0.20) (0.20) (0.20) (0.20)
Maritimes 0.34 0.32 0.32 0.25(0.24) (0.24) (0.24) (0.24)
Woman 0.23 0.23 0.23 0.26†
(0.15) (0.16) (0.16) (0.16)French language -0.09 -0.08 -0.10 -0.14
(0.30) (0.30) (0.31) (0.31)Other language 0.58∗ 0.60∗∗ 0.55∗ 0.54∗
(0.26) (0.23) (0.26) (0.34)Catholic 0.03 0.08 0.07 0.09
(0.23) (0.23) (0.24) (0.24)Protestant 0.07 0.11 0.10 0.10
(0.22) (0.23) (0.23) (0.23)Other religion -0.17 -0.10 -0.18 -0.30
(0.33) (0.33) (0.33) (0.34)Less than 34 years-old 0.29 0.32 0.34 0.37
(0.23) (0.23) (0.23) (0.24)More than 55 years-old -0.35∗ -0.28 -0.30† -0.25
(0,17) (0.18) (0.18) (0.18)Less than high school 0.48∗ 0.53∗ 0.55∗ 0.55∗
(0.22) (0.22) (0.22) (0.22)University Degree -0.38∗ -0.38∗ -0.38∗ -0.41∗
(0.18) (0.18) (0.18) (0.19)Low Income 0.11 0.06 0.07 0.07
(0.25) (0.25) (0.25) (0.25)High Income -0.07 -0.02 -0.04 -0.02
(0.18) (0.18) (0.18) (0.18)Urban -0.01 0.00 -0.02 -0.06
(0.17) (0.18) (0.18) (0.18)(Intercept) -2.58∗∗∗ -2.58∗∗∗ -2.68∗∗∗ -2.64∗∗∗
(0.28) (0.28) (0.28) (0.28)AIC 1406.2 1393.1 1380.4 1370.9N 2705 2685 2667 2667Source: Canadian Election Study, 1965-2011.† significant at p < .10; ∗p < .05; ∗∗p < .01; ∗∗∗p < .001
Method: Logistic regression. The coefficients represent effects on log odds.
Note: The dependent variable is a dichotomous variable considering those voters
who voted Conservatives in 2011, but recall to have voted otherwise in 2008.
193
Table 21: Targeted Ridings: Race, Proximity on All Issues, or Targeted Issue Publics?
Probability to vote for the Conservatives
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
Focal variables
Targeted ridings X Race −0.006(0.010)
Targeted ridings X Proximity −0.002(0.022)
Targeted ridings X Issue Public 0.059∗∗∗
(0.017)Controls
French −0.118∗∗∗ −0.118∗∗∗ −0.027∗∗∗ −0.027∗∗∗ −0.118∗∗∗ −0.118∗∗∗
(0.003) (0.003) (0.002) (0.002) (0.003) (0.003)Quebec −0.067∗∗∗ −0.067∗∗∗ −0.030∗∗∗ −0.030∗∗∗ −0.067∗∗∗ −0.067∗∗∗
(0.003) (0.003) (0.002) (0.002) (0.002) (0.002)Maritimes −0.019∗∗∗ −0.019∗∗∗ −0.015∗∗∗ −0.015∗∗∗ −0.022∗∗∗ −0.022∗∗∗
(0.002) (0.002) (0.002) (0.002) (0.002) (0.002)West 0.035∗∗∗ 0.035∗∗∗ 0.010∗∗∗ 0.010∗∗∗ 0.039∗∗∗ 0.039∗∗∗
(0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001)Catholic 0.071∗∗∗ 0.071∗∗∗ 0.015∗∗∗ 0.015∗∗∗ 0.065∗∗∗ 0.065∗∗∗
(0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001)Protestant 0.103∗∗∗ 0.103∗∗∗ 0.036∗∗∗ 0.036∗∗∗ 0.096∗∗∗ 0.096∗∗∗
(0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001)Other religion 0.001 0.001 −0.002 −0.002 0.0005 0.0005
(0.002) (0.002) (0.001) (0.001) (0.002) (0.002)Immigrant −0.020∗∗∗ −0.020∗∗∗ −0.018∗∗∗ −0.018∗∗∗ −0.024∗∗∗ −0.024∗∗∗
(0.002) (0.002) (0.001) (0.001) (0.002) (0.002)Woman −0.104∗∗∗ −0.104∗∗∗ −0.010∗∗∗ −0.010∗∗∗ −0.088∗∗∗ −0.088∗∗∗
(0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001)Less than 30 y-o −0.014∗∗∗ −0.014∗∗∗ 0.056∗∗∗ 0.056∗∗∗ −0.004∗∗∗ −0.004∗∗∗
(0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001)More than 65 y-o 0.022∗∗∗ 0.022∗∗∗ −0.012∗∗∗ −0.012∗∗∗ 0.014∗∗∗ 0.014∗∗∗
(0.002) (0.002) (0.001) (0.001) (0.002) (0.002)Less than high school 0.033∗∗∗ 0.033∗∗∗ −0.013∗∗∗ −0.013∗∗∗ 0.025∗∗∗ 0.025∗∗∗
(0.003) (0.003) (0.002) (0.002) (0.003) (0.003)University degree −0.052∗∗∗ −0.052∗∗∗ 0.013∗∗∗ 0.013∗∗∗ −0.047∗∗∗ −0.047∗∗∗
(0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001)Graduate degree −0.103∗∗∗ −0.103∗∗∗ 0.003∗∗∗ 0.003∗∗∗ −0.095∗∗∗ −0.095∗∗∗
(0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001)Urban −0.039∗∗∗ −0.039∗∗∗ −0.001 −0.001 −0.038∗∗∗ −0.038∗∗∗
(0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001)Low income −0.032∗∗∗ −0.032∗∗∗ −0.016∗∗∗ −0.016∗∗∗ −0.030∗∗∗ −0.030∗∗∗
(0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001)High income 0.046∗∗∗ 0.046∗∗∗ 0.018∗∗∗ 0.018∗∗∗ 0.039∗∗∗ 0.039∗∗∗
(0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001)Targeted ridings 0.029∗∗∗ 0.030∗∗∗ 0.013∗∗∗ 0.014 0.028∗∗∗ 0.002
(0.004) (0.004) (0.003) (0.010) (0.004) (0.008)Race 0.013∗∗∗ 0.013∗∗∗ −0.004∗∗∗ −0.004∗∗∗ 0.009∗∗∗ 0.009∗∗∗
(0.002) (0.002) (0.001) (0.001) (0.002) (0.002)Proximity on all issues 1.991∗∗∗ 1.991∗∗∗
(0.003) (0.003)Issue Public 0.423∗∗∗ 0.422∗∗∗
(0.003) (0.003)constant 0.436∗∗∗ 0.436∗∗∗ −0.530∗∗∗ −0.530∗∗∗ 0.246∗∗∗ 0.246∗∗∗
(0.002) (0.002) (0.002) (0.002) (0.002) (0.002)N 483, 552 483, 552 483, 552 483, 552 483, 552 483, 552R2 0.103 0.103 0.468 0.468 0.152 0.152Adjusted R2 0.103 0.103 0.468 0.468 0.152 0.152
Source: Vote Compass, 2011 Canadian Federal Election.∗p < .1; ∗∗p < .05; ∗∗∗p < .01
194
Tab
le22
:L
eft-
righ
tsc
ale
info
rmat
ion
Issu
eit
ems
Fact
or
load
ings
All
Can
adia
ntr
oop
ssh
ould
be
pu
lled
out,
ofA
fgh
an
ista
nim
med
iate
ly[R
ever
sed
]0.3
8
Can
ada
shou
ldin
crea
seit
sm
ilit
ary
pre
sen
cein
the
Arc
tic
0.3
1
How
mu
chsh
ould
the
gove
rnm
ent
spen
don
the
mil
itary
?0.5
6
Wh
enth
ere
isan
econ
omic
pro
ble
m,
gove
rnm
ent,
spen
din
gu
suall
ym
ake
sit
wors
e0.3
0
Th
efe
der
alb
ud
get
defi
cit
shou
ldb
ere
du
ced
,ev
enif
itle
ad
sto
few
erp
ub
lic
serv
ices
0.5
0
Can
ada
shou
ldse
ekcl
oser
econ
omic
rela
tion
sw
ith
the
US
A0.3
9
Th
een
vir
onm
enta
ld
amag
eca
use
dby
the
Alb
erta
oil
san
ds
ind
ust
ryis
exagger
ate
d0.6
6
Can
ada
shou
ldad
opt
aca
rbon
tax
[Rev
erse
d]
0.6
3
Envir
onm
enta
lre
gula
tion
shou
ldb
est
rict
er,
even
ifit
lead
sto
con
sum
ers
hav
ing
top
ayh
igh
erp
rice
s[R
ever
sed
]0.6
1
How
mu
chof
aro
lesh
ould
the
pri
vate
sect
orh
ave
inh
ealt
hca
re?
0.5
1
Th
ego
vern
men
tsh
ould
fun
dd
ayca
rein
stea
dof
giv
ing,m
on
eyd
irec
tly
top
are
nts
[Rev
erse
d]
0.4
9
Itsh
ould
be
easi
erto
qu
alif
yfo
rE
mp
loym
ent
Insu
ran
ce[R
ever
sed
]0.3
9
How
man
yn
ewim
mig
rants
shou
ldC
anad
aad
mit
?[R
ever
sed
]0.3
4
How
mu
chsh
ould
be
don
eto
acco
mm
od
ate
reli
gio
us
min
ori
ties
inC
an
ad
a?
[Rev
erse
d]
0.3
0
Vio
lent
you
ng
offen
der
ssh
ould
be
sente
nce
das
ad
ult
s0.5
2
Th
elo
ng
gun
regi
stry
shou
ldb
esc
rap
ped
0.5
8
Pos
sess
ion
ofm
arij
uan
ash
ould
be
acr
imin
aloff
ence
0.4
0
Th
ego
vern
men
tsh
ould
mak
eit
easi
erfo
ra
wom
an
toget
an
ab
ort
ion
[Rev
erse
d]
0.4
4
Mar
riag
esh
ould
only
be
bet
wee
na
man
and
aw
om
an
0.5
7
Ifth
eyso
wis
h,
term
inal
lyil
lp
atie
nts
shou
ldb
eab
leto
end
thei
row
nli
ves
wit
hm
edic
al
ass
ista
nce
0.2
7
How
mu
chsh
ould
wea
lth
ier
peo
ple
pay
inta
xes
?[R
ever
sed
]0.4
7
How
mu
chta
xsh
ould
corp
orat
ion
sp
ay?
[Rev
erse
d]
0.5
6
Source:
Vote
Com
pass
,2011
Can
ad
ian
Fed
eral
Ele
ctio
n.
Th
esc
ale
isb
uilt
usi
ng
the
fact
or
score
sfo
rth
efi
rst
fact
or
of
pri
nci
pal
fact
ors
fact
or
an
aly
ses.
Eig
envalu
efo
rth
efi
rst
fact
or
=5.8
7.
195
Table 23: Jewish and Muslim Effect on Conservative Vote: Religious or Issue-Public?
Vote for Conservatives
(1) (2) (3) (4)
Maritimes −0.278∗∗∗ −0.236∗∗∗ −0.237∗∗∗ −0.225∗∗∗
(0.027) (0.029) (0.029) (0.040)Quebec −0.404∗∗∗ −0.338∗∗∗ −0.338∗∗∗ −0.303∗∗∗
(0.042) (0.043) (0.043) (0.060)West 0.264∗∗∗ 0.286∗∗∗ 0.286∗∗∗ 0.267∗∗∗
(0.017) (0.018) (0.018) (0.024)French −0.683∗∗∗ −0.468∗∗∗ −0.468∗∗∗ −0.442∗∗∗
(0.044) (0.046) (0.046) (0.063)Immigrant −0.130∗∗∗ −0.002 −0.002 0.074∗∗
(0.021) (0.023) (0.023) (0.032)Woman −0.643∗∗∗ −0.517∗∗∗ −0.517∗∗∗ −0.460∗∗∗
(0.016) (0.017) (0.017) (0.024)Less than 30 y-o −0.291∗∗∗ −0.287∗∗∗ −0.287∗∗∗ −0.233∗∗∗
(0.027) (0.028) (0.028) (0.035)More than 65 y-o 0.277∗∗∗ 0.342∗∗∗ 0.342∗∗∗ 0.380∗∗∗
(0.018) (0.020) (0.020) (0.030)Less than high school 0.310∗∗∗ 0.407∗∗∗ 0.406∗∗∗ 0.406∗∗∗
(0.039) (0.043) (0.043) (0.065)University degree −0.706∗∗∗ −0.781∗∗∗ −0.781∗∗∗ −0.709∗∗∗
(0.016) (0.017) (0.017) (0.023)Urban −0.300∗∗∗ −0.309∗∗∗ −0.309∗∗∗ −0.291∗∗∗
(0.016) (0.017) (0.017) (0.023)Low income −0.265∗∗∗ −0.158∗∗∗ −0.157∗∗∗ −0.177∗∗∗
(0.023) (0.024) (0.024) (0.035)High income 0.258∗∗∗ 0.205∗∗∗ 0.205∗∗∗ 0.212∗∗∗
(0.016) (0.017) (0.017) (0.024)Politically Interested −0.202∗∗∗ −0.334∗∗∗ −0.334∗∗∗ −0.442∗∗∗
(0.029) (0.031) (0.031) (0.042)Jewish 0.218∗∗∗ 0.203∗∗∗ 0.199 0.351∗
(0.067) (0.071) (0.150) (0.203)Muslim −0.907∗∗∗ −0.686∗∗∗ 0.077 0.373
(0.128) (0.135) (0.280) (0.415)Troops out of Afghanistan −0.529∗∗∗ −0.528∗∗∗ −0.419∗∗∗
(0.006) (0.006) (0.016)Salience of foreign affairs issue 1.208∗∗∗
(0.059)Jewish X Troops out 0.002 −0.054
(0.052) (0.072)Muslim X Troops out −0.279∗∗∗ −0.379∗∗∗
(0.096) (0.138)Salience X Troops out −0.089∗∗∗
(0.018)N 105, 903 104, 520 104, 520 58, 427Log likelihood −55, 116.880 −49, 987.610 −49, 982.960 −26, 401.950AIC 110, 267.800 100, 011.200 100, 005.900 52, 847.910
Source: Vote Compass, 2011 Canadian Federal Election.∗p < .1; ∗∗p < .05; ∗∗∗p < .01
196
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