Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-jbqgn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-21T16:19:46.474Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Too Close to Call: Political Choice in Canada, 2004

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 May 2005

Harold D. Clarke
Affiliation:
University of Texas at Dallas and University of Essex
Allan Kornberg
Affiliation:
Duke University
John MacLeod
Affiliation:
TNS Canadian Facts
Thomas Scotto
Affiliation:
West Virginia University

Extract

Canada's June 28th, 2004, federal election was an exciting and, in several respects a surprising contest. One major surprise was the election campaign itself. Rather than being the predictable, boring event many commentators had anticipated, the campaign was a closely fought battle between a longtime governing party and a new opposition party that had been formed only six months before the election was called. A second surprise, at least for some observers, was turnout, with participation in a national election falling to the lowest level in Canadian history. A third, potentially very significant, surprise was the success of the separatist Bloc Québécois, accompanied by a resurgence of support for Quebec sovereignty. After the election, the future of Canada's national party system, indeed, the future of Canadian democracy, appeared more problematic than had been the case only a few months earlier.

Type
Features
Copyright
© 2005 by the American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Blais André. 2000. To Vote or Not to Vote? The Merits and Limitations of Rational Choice Theory. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.Google Scholar
Blais André, Elisabeth Gidengil, Richard Nadeau, and Neil Nevitte. 2002. Anatomy of a Liberal Victory: Making Sense of the Vote in the 2000 Canadian Election. Toronto: Broadview Press.Google Scholar
Clarke Harold D., Jane Jenson, Lawrence LeDuc, and Jon H. Pammett. 1979. Political Choice in Canada. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson.Google Scholar
Clarke Harold D., Jane Jenson, Lawrence LeDuc, and Jon H. Pammett. 1996. Absent Mandate: Canadian Electoral Politics in an Era of Restructuring. Toronto: Gage Educational Publishing.Google Scholar
Clarke Harold D., Allan Kornberg, and Peter Wearing. 2000. A Polity on the Edge: Canada and the Politics of Fragmentation. Toronto: Broadview Press.Google Scholar
Clarke Harold D., David Sanders, Marianne C. Stewart, and Paul Whiteley. 2004. Political Choice in Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dalton Russell J., and Martin P. Wattenberg, eds. 2001. Parties without Partisans. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Epstein Leon D. 1964. “A Comparative Study of Canadian Parties.” American Political Science Review 58: 4660.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Franklin Mark N. 2004. Voter Turnout and the Dynamics of Electoral Competition in Established Democracies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnston Richard, André Blais, Henry Brady, and Jean Crête. 1992. Letting the People Decide: Dynamics of a Canadian Election. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.Google Scholar
Kornberg Allan, and Harold D. Clarke. 1992. Citizens and Community: Political Support in a Representative Democracy. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Nevitte Neil, André Blais, Elisabeth Gidengil, and Richard Nadeau. 2000. Unsteady State: The 1997 Canadian Federal Election. Toronto: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pammett Jon H., and Lawrence LeDuc. 2003. Explaining the Turnout Decline in Canadian Federal Elections: A New Survey of Non-Voters. Ottawa: Elections Canada.Google Scholar
Stokes Donald E. 1963. “Spatial Models of Party Competition.” American Political Science Review 57: 36877.Google Scholar
Stokes Donald E. 1992. “Valence Politics.” In Electoral Politics, ed. Dennis Kavanagh. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar