by Yannick Dufresne - University of Toronto T-Space · Yannick Dufresne Doctor of Philosophy...

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


5.4 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


6.4 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




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


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


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.

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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).

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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’

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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

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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).

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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)

●

●

●

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

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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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)

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.

83

Figure 4.3: Effect of Issue Items and Scales

(a)

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0.0

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02

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Strength of issues, 2004 and 2008

Effe

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|Bet

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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).


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

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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

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(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.

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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

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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


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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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Figure 5.3: Elites or Issue Publics?


Atti

tude

tow

ard

the

Con

serv

ativ

es


Neg

ativ

em

ean

Pos

itive

(a) Salience


Atti

tude

tow

ard

the

Con

serv

ativ

es


Neg

ativ

em

ean

Pos

itive

(b) Education


Atti

tude

tow

ard

the

Con

serv

ativ

es


Neg

ativ

em

ean

Pos

itive

(c) Political interest


Atti

tude

tow

ard

the

Con

serv

ativ

es


Neg

ativ

em

ean

Pos

itive

(d) Political information


Atti

tude

tow

ard

the

Gre

en P

arty

Less mean More

Neg

ativ

em

ean

Pos

itive

(e) Salience


Atti

tude

tow

ard

the

Gre

en P

arty

Less mean More

Neg

ativ

em

ean

Pos

itive

(f) Education


Atti

tude

tow

ard

the

Gre

en P

arty

Less mean More

Neg

ativ

em

ean

Pos

itive

(g) Political interest


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-

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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

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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,

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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

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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.

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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-

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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.

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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


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

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1968

1974

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1984

1988

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1997

2000

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2011

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cent

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ote

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(a) Immigrants

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25

50

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100

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1968

1974

1979

1984

1988

1993

1997

2000

2004

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2011

Per

cent

age

of v

ote

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50

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1984

1988

1993

1997

2000

2004

2008

2011

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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.

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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

●

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−0.10

−0.05

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Year

Effe

ct o

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ote

Liberals

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−0.15

−0.10

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1968

1974

1979

1984

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1993

1997

2000

2004

2006

2008

2011

Year

Effe

ct o

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ote

Conservatives

(a) Immigrantness

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−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

●

●

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●

● ●

●

●

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−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).

138

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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0.8

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


Ideological Scale

Den

sity


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

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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


(Ite

ms)

Sca

les

0.00.40.8

For

eign

/US

rel

atio

ns


(Ite

ms)

Sca

les

0.00.40.8

Law

and

ord

er


●

(Ite

ms)

Sca

les

0.00.40.8M

inor

ity is

sues


(Ite

ms)

Sca

les

0.00.40.8

Soc

ial p

rogr

ams


● ● ● ●●●● ● ●●● ● ● ● ●

●●●●

(Ite

ms)

Sca

les

0.00.40.8

Mor

al is

sues


● ●●●●● ●

(Ite

ms)

Sca

les

0.00.40.8

Wom

en is

sues


(b)

●● ●●● ●

(Ite

ms)

Sca

les

0246810

Eco

nom

y

Effect on vote (|Beta coefficients|)

(Ite

ms)

Sca

les

0246810

Env

ironm

ent


●●

(Ite

ms)

Sca

les

0246810

For

eign

/US

rel

atio

ns


● ●●

(Ite

ms)

Sca

les

0246810

Law

and

ord

er


● ● ●●● ●

(Ite

ms)

Sca

les

0246810

Min

ority

issu

es


● ●

(Ite

ms)

Sca

les

0246810

Soc

ial p

rogr

ams


●●

(Ite

ms)

Sca

les

0246810

Mor

al is

sues


● ●

● ●● ●●● ●

(Ite

ms)

Sca

les

0246810

Wom

en is

sues


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).


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 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


Ideological Scale

dens

ity


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

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008)

Can

ad

ash

ou

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icip

ate

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keep

ing

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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

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nd

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ved

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008)

...

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cial

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ori

ties

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nu

mb

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om

zero

to0.6

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004)

on

ehu

nd

red

.0.6

2(2

008)

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you

thin

kC

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ad

ash

ou

ldadm

it:

more

imm

igra

nts

,0.6

2(2

004)

few

erim

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rants

,or

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ou

tth

esa

me

as

now

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008)

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ich

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men

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mes

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w:

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004)

1)

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bori

gin

al

peo

ple

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ied

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er,

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cou

ldb

eas

0.5

1(2

008)

wel

loff

as

oth

erC

an

ad

ian

s:2)

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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

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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?

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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,

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ab

ou

tth

esa

me

as

now

?0.4

8(2

008)

Do

you

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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)

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sttr

ies

toget

equ

al

0.7

1(2

004)

(Pos

itio

n:

Fem

inis

t)tr

eatm

ent

for

wom

en;

2)

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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



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∗∗∗


(0.011) (0.010) (0.010)NDP partisan −0.143∗∗∗ −0.001 0.271∗∗∗


(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


181

Table 9: Evolution of the Effect of the Foreign/US Relations Issue Position on AttitudesToward Political Parties



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∗∗∗


(0.010) (0.010) (0.010)NDP partisan −0.137∗∗∗ −0.001 0.276∗∗∗


(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


182

Table 10: Evolution of the Effect of Law and Order Issue Position on Attitudes TowardPolitical Parties



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) (0.010) (0.010)NDP partisan −0.137∗∗∗ 0.001 0.273∗∗∗


(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


183

Table 11: Evolution of the Effect of Minority Issues Position on Attitudes Toward PoliticalParties



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∗∗∗


(0.012) (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


184

Table 12: Evolution of the Effect of Moral Issues Position on Attitudes Toward PoliticalParties



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) (0.010) (0.010)NDP partisan −0.118∗∗∗ −0.004 0.252∗∗∗


(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


185

Table 13: Evolution of the Effect of Social Programs Issue Position on Attitudes TowardPolitical Parties



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


(0.007) (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∗∗∗


(0.009) (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


186

Table 14: Evolution of the Effect of Women Issues Position on Attitudes Toward PoliticalParties



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∗∗∗


(0.009) (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∗∗∗


(0.011) (0.010) (0.010)NDP partisan −0.136∗∗∗ −0.00003 0.263∗∗∗


(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


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

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ote

1968-1

979

1984-2

000

2004-2

006

2008-2

011

Imm

igra

nt

0.1

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0.0

80.1

6∗

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0.4

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—0.8

6∗∗∗

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8∗∗∗

0.7

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7∗

0.3

9∗

Controls

Qu

ebec

0.1

7†

0.1

60.1

6-0

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-0.4

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1∗∗∗

Wes

t-0

.55∗∗∗

-0.5

6∗∗∗

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6∗∗∗

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5∗∗∗

-0.8

5∗∗∗

-0.8

3∗∗∗

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Mari

tim

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10.0

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.09

-0.0

7-0

.07

0.3

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80.6

9∗∗∗

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0.7

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Wom

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0.1

7∗∗∗

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0.7

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N7104

7017

6999

10124

9901

9876

3131

3091

3044

3615

3661

3581

AIC

9329.7

9212

9190.4

12070

11740

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190

Tab

le18

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he

Eff

ect

ofIm

mig

rantn

ess

and

Eth

nic

ity

onth

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ive

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1968-1

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1984-2

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011

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nt

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Controls

Qu

ebec

-0.3

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4†

-0.1

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0.2

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Les

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Les

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iver

sity

Deg

ree

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Low

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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

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