Elizabeth Goodyear-Grant

Gender Affinity Effects in Vote Choice in Westminster Systems: Assessing “Flexible” Voters in Canada

Under certain conditions, women are more likely than men to vote for women candidates, a phenomenon referred to as a “gender affinity effect.” Causal mechanisms connecting women voters to women candidates are gender consciousness, desire for descriptive representation, support for liberal social policy, the use of gender as a shortcut to vote choice among low-information voters, and a “party-sex overlap.” Existing work is focused on American elections, which tend to be candidate centered, so little is known about gender affinity effects between voters and candidates in other contexts. This article focuses on Westminster-style parliamentary systems, using the Canadian federal elections of 2000 and 2004 as test cases. Women in these systems have the same motivations to gravitate toward women candidates, for they are gender conscious and desire descriptive representation. But they do not have the same incentives to cast ballots for women because political institutions and practices tend to discourage candidate-based voting. The article pays particular attention to a segment of the electorate we call “flexible” voters, which is comprised of independents, leaners, and defectors. In Westminster systems, it is this group of voters who should be most sensitive to candidate-based considerations.

The courts/parliament trade-off: Canadian attitudes on judicial influence in public policy

Do citizens have meaningful attitudes – i.e. enduring, subjectively important and psychologically consequential evaluative orientations – regarding the relative roles of courts and legislatures in resolving contentious issues of public policy? If so, what explains these preferences? Using data from the Canadian Election Study, the authors find that Canadians possess meaningful attitudes on what they term the ‘courts/parliament trade-off’. They also find significant heterogeneity across levels of political knowledge in the nature of these attitudes. Further, most determinants of attitudes on the courts/parliament trade-off can be understood to reflect evaluations of political outcomes under the courts or Parliament, rather than assessments of processes within these institutions. Attitudes on the trade-off are largely interpretable as responses to dynamic features of party politics.

Digging Deeper into the Gender Gap: Gender Salience as a Moderating Factor in Political Attitudes

We know how sex (rather than gender) structures political preferences, but researchers rarely take into account the salience or importance of gender identity at the individual level. The only similar variable for which salience is commonly taken seriously is partisanship, for which direction and importance or strength are both considered imperative for measurement and analysis. While some scholars have begun to look at factors that may influence intragroup differences, such as feminism (Conover, 1988), most existing research implicitly assumes gender salience is homogenous in the population. We argue that both the content of gender identity (that is, what specifically is gender identity, as opposed to sex) as well its salience should be incorporated into analyses of how gender structures political behaviour. For some, gender simply does not motivate behaviour, and the fact that salience moderates the impact of gender on behaviour requires researchers to model accordingly. Using original data from six provincial election studies, we examine a measure of gender identity salience and find that it clarifies our understanding of genders impact on political attitudes.

Still Counting: Women in Politics Across Canada

Still Counting: Women in Politics Across Canada, Linda Trimble and Jane Arscott, Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2003. pp. xvi, 210 Numbers matter. This is Trimble and Arscotts fundamental message. The ratio of women in elected and appointed political posts to their proportion in the population at large is a measure of fairness in political representation that has obvious implications for womens impact on political processes and policy outcomes. Although Canadian in perspective, the authors draw international comparisons where appropriate and find Canada rather lacking. Perennial under-representation, despite marked improvements over the past three decades, is an evident problem and an issue worthy of investigation.

Voting for one’s own: racial group identification and candidate preferences

ABSTRACT We know that voters have a baseline preference for candidates with whom they share a racial background, but whether and why a shared racial identity influences political decisions is the critical question. This article examines how shared racial characteristics lead racial minority voters to vote for candidates of the same race. Using a unique online experiment, we test the social psychological bases for racial affinity. We expect that for higher status minority groups, identity- rather than interest-based motivations offer the greatest explanatory value. Our findings support this supposition. Our results provide new insights into the political behavior of racial minority voters, and have implications for theories of vote choice and affinity, as well as practical applications for party strategists and candidates.