Fred Cutler

The Challenge of Municipal Voting: Vancouver 2002

Municipal elections are the poor cousins in the study of elections and voting behaviour. In Canada there has been no municipal election study analogous to the Canadian Election Study or the much less frequent provincial studies. The reason is likely institutional. Most municipalities in Canada use a ward system and parties have not formed. This makes an election survey impractical, since voters face many low-profile candidates with little to tie them together across wards. Voting for mayor might have been the subject of a survey, but mayoral races in Canada would seem to be idiosyncratic affairs driven mostly by personalities, not by issues or ideology. In this light, municipal elections may have been seen as mere case studies from which little can be generalized. The result is only a tiny literature relevant to judging the character or quality of municipal electoral behaviour in Canada ~Winn and McMenemy, 1973; Kushner et al., 1997!. Yet students of voting and elections neglect municipal electoral politics at their peril. Municipal elections offer the electoral analyst crucial

The Space between Worlds: Federalism, Public Issues and Election Issues

This paper reconciles two strands of literature on federalism and mass political behaviour behaviour, but the reconciliation is not a happy one. One strand of literature pointed out optimistically that Canadians keep their two political worlds—provincial and federal—more separate than citizens in any other federation. Another strand points to the obvious difficulty citizens would have in separating the contribution of the two levels of government to policy results on the ground. Are these arguments fundamentally at odds? These two strands of literature can be reconciled by showing how federalism, particularly the Canadian version, forces parties, voters, and the media to make elections about issues that feature less intergovernmentalism. Unfortunately, these issues are usually of less concern to citizens than the highly intergovernmental policy areas systematically ignored in both federal and provincial elections. In short: Canadian elections are about the wrong things and federalism is to blame.

Patient-reported confidence in primary healthcare: are there disparities by ethnicity or language?

Objective To examine whether confidence in primary healthcare (PHC) differs among ethnic–linguistic groups and which PHC experiences are associated with confidence. Design A cross-sectional study where patient surveys were administered using random digit dialling. Regression models identify whether ethnic–linguistic group remains significantly associated with confidence in PHC. Setting British Columbia, Canada. Main outcome measures Confidence in PHC measured using a 0–10 scale, where a higher score indicates increased confidence in the ability to get needed PHC services. Participants Community-dwelling adults in the following ethnic–linguistic groups: English-speaking Chinese, Chinese-speaking Chinese, English-speaking South Asians, Punjabi-speaking South Asians and English-speakers of presumed European descent. Findings Based on a sample of 1211 respondents, confidence in PHC differed by ethnicity and the ability to speak English. Most of the differences in confidence by ethnic–linguistic group can be explained by various aspects of care experience. Patient experiences associated with lower confidence in PHC were: if care was received outside Canada, having to wait months to see their regular doctor and rating the quality of healthcare as good or fair/poor. Better patient experiences of their doctor being concerned about their feelings and being respectful and if they found wait times acceptable were associated with higher levels of confidence in PHC. The final regression model explained 30% of the variance. Conclusions Improving the delivery of PHC services through positive interactions between patients and their usual provider and acceptability of wait times are examples of how the PHC system can be strengthened.

Political Conditions for Electoral Accountability in Federalism

A theory of voting under federalism requires that attributions of responsibility moderate the strength of retrospective voting. Scholars have spotty evidence that voters do this but put this down to the effects of institutions and citizens’ capabilities. I show that political variation also affects electoral accountability. Using panel surveys across provincial and federal elections and qualitative media content analysis, I show that voters only live up to a federal theory of voting when governments make policy changes independent of the other level and those changes and their consequences are prominent in political discourse. Federal institutions affect electoral accountability through the politics that they generate.

Telephone versus Online Survey Modes for Election Studies: Comparing Canadian Public Opinion and Vote Choice in the 2015 Federal Election

Election studies must optimize on sample size, cost and data quality. The 2015 Canadian Election Study was the first CES to employ a full mixed-mode design, aiming to take advantage of the opportunities of each mode while preserving enough commonality to compare them. This paper examines the phone interviews conducted by ISR-York and the online questionnaires from panellists purchased from a sample provider. We compare data quality and representativeness. We conduct a comprehensive comparison of the distributions of responses across modes and a comparative analysis of inferences about voting. We find that the cost/power advantages of the online mode will likely make it the mode of choice for subsequent election studies.