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The Challenge of Municipal Voting: Vancouver 2002

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2005

Fred Cutler  and
J. Scott Matthews
Fred Cutler
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia
J. Scott Matthews
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia
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Abstract

Abstract. As compared with federal and provincial elections, municipal elections in Canada present voters with challenges of informational quantity and quality. These unique challenges have implications for the psychological structure of citizens' voting calculus. Using a survey of voters conducted after the city of Vancouver civic election of 2002, we estimate a model of vote choice for mayor. We show that voters respond to the different context in predictable ways: their choices are determined largely by ideological orientations and provincial partisanship, with local economic evaluations and local issues playing only a very small role.

Résumé. Si on les compare aux élections fédérales et provinciales, les élections municipales au Canada posent, pour les électeurs, des problèmes d'accès à une information de qualité en quantité suffisante. Ces défis particuliers ont un impact sur la structure psychologique de leurs stratégies de vote. Nous estimerons ici un modèle de choix d'un candidat au poste de maire à l'aide des données d'un sondage effectué après les élections municipales de Vancouver de 2002. Nous démontrerons que les électeurs répondent à ce contexte différent de manière prévisible : leurs choix sont déterminés principalement par leur orientation idéologique et leur soutien partisan au niveau provincial, alors que l'évaluation de l'état de l'économie locale et les questions de politique locale ne jouent qu'un rôle limité.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , June 2005 , pp. 359 - 382
Copyright
© 2005 Cambridge University Press

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