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An Examination of Class and Left-Right Party Images in Canadian Voting

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

Barry J. Kay
Barry J. Kay
Affiliation:
University of Saskatchewan
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Abstract

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The systematic investigation of party-projected images is a relatively recent development in political science. Past studies into this subject have largely dealt with the perceptions of political parties held by various groups, and the perceived mobility of the parties over time with regard to selected dimensions. For the determination of party images held by individuals, most previous works in the field have made use of the semantic differential technique pioneered by Osgood, Suci, and Tannenbaum. This approach consists of respondents being asked to rank political parties along a number of seven-point scales, each demarcated by a pair of antonyms such as “good-bad” or “slow-fast.” Tests confirming the reliability, validity and comparability of the measure have also been conducted by Osgood et al., as found in The Measurement of Meaning.

Type
Notes
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , March 1977 , pp. 127 - 144
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1977

References

1 See for example Butler, David and Stokes, Donald, Political Change in Britain (New York, 1969), 200–14, 359–72.Google ScholarMeisel, John, Working Papers on Canadian Politics (Montreal, 1972), 63–119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Comparable research in leadership images is discussed in Laponce, Jean, People vs. Politics (Toronto, 1969), 116–28.Google Scholar

2 Osgood, C., Suci, G. and Tannenbaum, P., The Measurement of Meaning (Urbana, 1957), 130–42.Google Scholar The comparability issue is also investigated in Kumata, H. and Schramm, K., “A Pilot Study of Cross-Cultural Meaning,” Public Opinion Quarterly 20 (Spring 1956), 229–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Alford, Robert, Party and Society (Evanston, 1963), 250–86.Google Scholar

4 Wilson, John, “Politics and Social Class in Canada: The Case ot Waterloo South,” Canadian Journal of Political Science, 1 (September 1968), 307–09.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Elkins, David, “The Perceived Structure of the Canadian Party Systems,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 7 (September 1974), 511.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Elkins, David and Blake, Donald, “Voting Research in Canada,” Canadian Journal of Political Science, 8 (June 1975), 324.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 This phenomenon echoes the findings of previous research with the semantic differential, that the most important dimension of connotative meaning for a semantic space is evaluation. See Frey, F., “Cross-Cultural Survey Research in Political Science,” in Holt, R. and Turner, J. (eds.), The Methodology of Comparative Research (New York, 1970), 266–72.Google Scholar

8 Sample respondents were asked to rate each of Canada's political parties as well as the individual's hypothetically ideal party along the various semantic differential dimensions. The dimensions appeared in the surveys as seven-point scales ranging from one extreme to the other, with 4 as the neutral position. However, because of the miniscule n-size that this created in many categories, the scales were trichotomized into categories representing each dimensional side and the neutral position; thereby retaining direction of the scale-scores, but sacrificing intensity.

9 The figures for Social Credit are presented as an amalgam of its two factions which had split during the period being reported. Since the two wings did not run candidates against each other, they were classified as the same party with the exception that Quebec residents were questioned about Real Caouette's Ralliement des Créditistes, while the remainder of the nation evaluated the Social Credit Party led successively by Robert Thompson and Alex Patterson.

10 Kendall's tau B statistic was selected for the measurement of correlation coefficients, because it is less subject to wide fluctuations in tables based on small sample sizes, or in tables containing a small number of cells.

11 The figures pertaining to Social Credit are presented here for the sake of inclusiveness, but due to the complex nature of their tabulation as well as their limited sample in 1968, only the most general observations will be made concerning that party.

12 The specific control categories in which these exceptions took place include French-speaking voters, British Columbia residents, the university educated, and those perceiving themselves as middle class.

13 The only demographic producing higher tau B vote associations with Liberal and Conservative support was a dichotomized religion variable.

14 Unfortunately, this meant the loss of much of the sample, as indicated by the smaller n-sizes in Table 7.

15 As expected, the British Conservatives were widely perceived as “middle class” and “right wing,” while Labour was seen to be “working class” and “left wing.” British Liberal Party supporters were too few in number to allow a proper examination of their variance.

16 Laponce, Jean, “Note on the Use of the Léft-Right Dimension,” Comparative Political Studies 2 (January 1970), 481–502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Laponce, Jean, “In Search of the Stable Elements of the Left-Right Landscape,” Comparative Politics 4 (July 1972), 470.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 Barnes, Samuel, “Left, Right, and the Italian Voter,” Comparative Political Studies 4 (July 1971), 164.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 This suggestion was put forward by Henry Jacek to account for the underdeveloped nature of NDP support among workers and is derived in part from Lipset, S. M., Political Man (New York, 1963), 87–126.Google Scholar

20 Moreover, the perception of a party's “honesty” was found to be much more highly associated with vote for that party, than any of the other variables that have been discussed.