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Canada Votes: A Quarter Century of Canadian National Election Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

Elisabeth Gidengil
Elisabeth Gidengil
Affiliation:
McGill University
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Abstract

This review essay examines the contribution of the Canadian National Election Studies to understanding vote choice in Canada. Analyses using both the sociological approach and the social-psychological approach are discussed. The essay starts with a review of the debates about the role of class, region and religion in Canadian voting and then goes on to discuss the applicability of the concept of party identification to Canada. An evaluation of both recursive and non-recursive models of vote choice follows. The review calls for social psychological approaches to take the social context of political choice more seriously and points to the need for sociological approaches to conceptualize social categories as live social forces.

Résumé

Cet article passe en revue les études portant sur les élections fédérales canadiennes et évalue leur contribution à la compréhension du choix électoral au Canada. L'auteure discute des analyses faisant usage des approches sociologiques et psychosociales. Après une revue des débats rattachés à l'incidence des classes, des r´gions et de la religion sur le vote canadien, l'article examine l'applicabilité du concept d'identification partisane au Canada. Cet examen est suivi d'une évaluation des modèles récursifs et non-récursifs du choix électoral. L'auteure incite les tenants des approches psychosociales à considérer plus sérieusement le contexte social du choix politique et montre l'avantage qu'auraient les approches sociologiques à conceptualiser les catégories sociales en termes de forces sociales dynamiques.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , June 1992 , pp. 219 - 248
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1992

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References

1 Wiseman, Nelson, “The Use, Misuse, and Abuse of the National Election Studies,” Journal of Canadian Studies 21 (1986), 21CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A tightly argued response to Wiseman's criticisms has been offered by Archer, Keith, “The Meaning and Demeaning of the National Election Studies,” Journal of Canadian Studies 24 (1989), 122–140CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Wiseman's reply, see Wiseman, Nelson, “The National Election Studies Revisited,” Journal of Canadian Studies 24 (1989), 141–147CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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3 The 1984 team, for example, have used their data to analyze the nature of ideological beliefs and beliefs about differences between social classes, feelings of political efficacy and trust, gender and political activity, and sources of political knowledge. Lambert, Ronald D., Curtis, James E., Brown, Steven D. and Kay, Barry J., “Canadians' Beliefs about Differences between Social Classes,” Canadian Journal of Sociology 11 (1986), 379–399CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lambert, Ronald D., Curtis, James E., Brown, Steven D. and Kay, Barry J., “In Search of Left/Right Beliefs in the Canadian Electorate,” this Journal 19 (1986), 541–563Google Scholar; Lambert, Ronald D., Curtis, James E., Brown, Steven D. and Kay, Barry J., “Effects of Identification with Governing Parties on Feelings of Political Efficacy and Trust,” this Journal 19 (1986), 705–728Google Scholar; Kay, Barry J., Lambert, Ronald D., Brown, Steven D. and Curtis, James E., “Gender and Political Activity in Canada, 1965–1984,” this Journal 20 (1987), 851–863Google Scholar; and Lambert, Ronald D., Curtis, James E., Kay, Barry J. and Brown, Steven D., “The Social Sources of Knowledge,” this Journal 21 (1988), 359–374Google Scholar.

4 Elkins and Blake, “Voting Research in Canada,” 325. Ronald Lambert has recently compiled a lengthy list of publications, theses, dissertations and scholarly papers based on the national elections studies of 1965 to 1984 (Department of Sociology, University of Waterloo).

5 See Miller, William L., The Survey Method in the Social and Political Sciences: Achievements, Failures, Prospects (ondon: Frances Pinter, 1983), chap. 5Google Scholar. Secondary analyses of the NES datasets will be greatly facilitated by the recent appearance of Brombak's, AnnaIndex to the Canadian National Election Studies, n.p., September 1990Google Scholar.

6 Miller, The Survey Method, 107. Probably the most influential of the pioneering Michigan studies was Campbell, Angus, Converse, Philip E., Miller, Warren E. and Stokes, Donald E., The American Voter (New York: Wiley, 1960)Google Scholar. The major Columbia studies were Lazarsfeld, Paul F., Berelson, Bernard and Gaudet, Hazel, The People's Choice (3rd ed.; New York: Columbia University Press, 1968)Google Scholar, and Berelson, Bernard, Lazarsfeld, Paul F. and McPhee, William N., Voting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954)Google Scholar.

7 Meisel, John and Van Loon, Richard, “Canadian Attitudes to Election Expenses 1965–6,” in Committee on Election Expenses, Studies in Canadian Party Finance (Ottawa: Queen's Printer, 1966), 143, 23Google Scholar. The 1968 NES was also organized “with SRC studies very much in mind” and with the assistance of several scholars associated with the SRC. See Meisel, John, “Values, Language and Politics in Canada,” in John Meisel, Working Papers on Canadian Politics (2nd enlarged ed.; Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1975), 181, n. 30Google Scholar.

8 Elkins and Blake, “Voting Research in Canada,” 317. Studies involving straightforward attempts to replicate, however, were not the norm and there was sufficient Canadian content in the 1965 questions, for example, to provide one of the principal investigators with material for a major study of regionalism in Canada. Schwartz, Mildred A., Politics and Territory: The Sociology of Regional Persistence in Canada (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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11 Meisel, “Bizarre Aspects of a Vanishing Act,” in Meisel, Working Papers, 253.

12 Alford, Party and Society, x-xi.

13 See, for example, Hunter, Alfred A., “On Class, Status, and Voting in Canada,” Canadian Journal of Sociology 7 (1982), 19–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Ornstein, Michael D., Stevenson, H. Michael and Williams, A. Paul, “Region, Class and Political Culture in Canada,” this Journal 13 (1980), 227–271Google Scholar.

14 See, especially, Ogmundson, Rick, “On the Measurement of Party Class Position: The Case of Canadian Federal Political Parties,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 12(1975), 565–576CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “On the Use of Party Image Variables to Measure the Political Distinctiveness of a Class Vote: The Canadian Case,” Canadian Journal of Sociology 1 (1975), 169–177CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Party Class Images and the Class Vote in Canada,” American Sociological Review 40 (1975), 506–512CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ogmundson, Rick and Ng, M., “On the Inference of Voter Motivation: A Comparison of the Subjective Class Vote in Canada and the United Kingdom,” Canadian Journal of Sociology 7 (1982), 141–160CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Myles, John F., “Differences in the Canadian and American Class Vote: Fact or Pseudofact?” American Journal of Sociology 84 (1979), 1232–1237CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Alford classified the Liberals as a party of the left and Social Credit as a party of the right.

15 Lambert, Ronald D. and Hunter, Alfred A., “Social Stratification, Voting Behaviour, and the Images of Canadian Federal Political Parties,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 16 (1979), 287–304CrossRefGoogle Scholar. As part of the 1984 NES team, however, Lambert did, in fact, go on to revive this approach, but the scale measuring the parties' class positions was defined in terms of “for the lower classes” /“for the higher social classes” instead. Examining voting within provinces, he and his colleagues found more evidence of subjective class voting at the provincial level than the federal level. Lambert, Ronald D., Curtis, James E., Brown, Steven D. and Kay, Barry J., “Social Class, Left/Right Political Orientations, and Subjective Class Voting in Provincial and Federal Elections,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 24 (1987), 526–549CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Kay, Barry J., “An Examination of Class and Left-Right Party Images in Canadian Voting,” this Journal 19(1977), 127–143Google Scholar. On the role of knowledge in class voting, see Erickson, Bonnie, “Region, Knowledge, and Class Voting in Canada,” Canadian Journal of Sociology 6 (1981), 121–144CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Lambert et al., “Canadians' Beliefs About Differences between Social Classes.”

18 Ogmundson, Rick, “Liberal Ideology and the Study of Voting Behaviour,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 17 (1980), 47Google Scholar. See also Ogmundson, Rick, “Mass-Elite Linkages and Class Issues in Canada,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 13 (1976), 1–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Two Modes of Interpretation of Survey Data: A Comment on Schreiber,” Social Forces 55 (03 1977), 809–811CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Outside the voting literature, similar arguments have been offered by Brodie, M. Janine and Jenson, Jane, Crisis, Challenge and Change: Party and Class in Canada Revisited (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1988)Google Scholar, and Horowitz, Gad, “Towards a Democratic Class Struggle,” in Lloyd, Trevor and Mcleod, Jack, eds., Agenda 1970: Prospects for a Creative Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968)Google Scholar.

19 Schreiber, E. M., “Cultural Cleavages Between Occupational Categories: The Case of Canada,” Social Forces 55 (1976), 16–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Class Awareness and Class Voting in Canada: A Reconsideration of the Ogmundson, Thesis,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 17 (1980), 37–44Google Scholar.

20 Pammett, Jon H., “Class Voting and Class Consciousness in Canada,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 24 (1987), 269–289CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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23 Pammett, “Class Voting and Class Consciousness.” On the link between NDP voting and union membership, especially membership in an NDP-affiliated union, see Archer, Keith, “The Failure of the New Democratic Party: Unions, Unionists and Politics in Canada,” this Journal 18 (1985), 353–366Google Scholar.

24 Elkins and Blake, “Voting Research in Canada,” 322.

25 Jenson, Jane, “Party Systems,” in Bellamy, David J., Pammett, Jon H. and Rowat, Donald C., eds., The Provincial Political Systems: Comparative Essays (Toronto: Methuen, 1976)Google Scholar.

26 Blake, Donald E., “The Measurement of Regionalism in Canadian Voting Patterns,” this Journal 5 (1972), 54–81Google Scholar.

27 Blake, Donald E., “Constituency Contexts and Canadian Elections: An Exploratory Study,” this Journal 11 (1978), 279–305Google Scholar.

28 LeDuc, Lawrence, Clarke, Harold, Jenson, Jane and Pammett, Jon, “A National Sample Design,” this Journal 7 (1974), 701–708Google Scholar.

29 Clarke, Harold D., LeDuc, Lawrence, Jenson, Jane and Pammett, Jon H., Political Choice in Canada (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1979), chap. 2Google Scholar. At least in the case of the Prairie provinces, their conclusion seems overstated: whether they chose to think of their region as “the West” or “the Prairies,” more than half of Prairie residents did share a sense that their provinces formed a regional unit. The notion .of regions as “containers” derives from Simeon, Richard and Elkins, David, “Regional Political Cultures in Canada,” this Journal 7 (1974), 397–437Google Scholar.

30 Gidengil, Elisabeth, “Class and Region in Canadian Voting: A Dependency Interpretation,” this Journal 22 (1989), 563–587Google Scholar.

31 Johnston, J. Paul, “Some Methodological Issues in the Study of ‘Class Voting’: A Critique of Erickson's Analysis,” Canadian Journal of Sociology 6 (1981), 145–156CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Meisel, “Religious Affiliation.”

33 Regenstreif, The Diefenbaker Interlude.

34 John Meisel, “Bizarre Aspects of a Vanishing Act: The Religious Cleavage and Voting in Canada,” in Meisel, Working Papers, 253–84.

35 McDonald examined the influence of similar factors in her study of religion and the vote in Ontario in the same election. She also found that while measures of social involvement did have some effect, the differences between Catholics and Protestants in voting preferences were no greater among those who were the most committed to their respective group (McDonald, Lynn, “Religion and Voting: A Study of the 1968 Canadian Federal Election in Ontario,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 6 [1969], 129–144CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

36 Irvine, William P., “Explaining the Religious Basis of the Canadian Partisan Identity: Success on the Third Try,” this Journal 7 (1974), 560–563Google Scholar.

37 See, for example, Jane Jenson, “Party Loyalty in Canada: The Question of Party Identification,” this Journal 8 (1975), 543–53. For some hypotheses regarding the adoption of parental partisanships, see Michael D. Martinez, “Intergenerational Transfer of Canadian Partisanships,” this Journal 17 (1984), 133–43.

38 Johnston, Richard, “The Reproduction of the Religious Cleavage in Canadian Elections,” this Journal 18 (1985), 99–113Google Scholar.

39 McDonald, “Religion and Voting.”

40 Meisel, “Bizarre Aspects of a Vanishing Act.”

41 Lambert et al., “Canadians' Beliefs about Differences between Social Classes.”

42 Elkins and Blake, “Voting Research in Canada,” 316, emphasis added.

43 The contact-breeds-consensus theory holds that the more people interact with their social group and/or the more closely they self-consciously identify with the group, the more likely they are to share the dominant partisanship of that group. The breakage effect refers to the notion that when the voter's primary groups are not politically homogeneous, the partisan climate of opinion in the community at large will “break through.” Blake used both of these notions in “Constituency Contexts.”

44 Meisel, “Party Images in Canada: A Report on Work in Progress,” in Meisel, Working Papers, 67.

45 Jenson, “Party Loyalty in Canada,” and Elkins, David J., “Party Identification: A Conceptual Analysis,” this Journal 11 (1978), 419–435Google Scholar.

46 Sniderman, Paul M., Forbes, H. D. and Melzer, Ian, “Party Loyalty and Electoral Volatility: A Study of the Canadian Party System,” this Journal 7 (1974), 268–288Google Scholar.

47 See MacDermid, R. H., “The Recall of Past Partisanship: Feeble Memories or Frail Concepts?” this Journal 22 (1989), 363–375Google Scholar.

48 LeDuc, Lawrence, Clarke, Harold D., Jenson, Jane and Pammett, Jon H., “Partisan Instability in Canada: Evidence from a New Panel Study,” American Political Science Review 78 (1984), 470–484CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The implications of these findings are developed in LeDuc, Lawrence, “Canada: The Politics of Stable Dealignment,” in Dalton, Russell J., Flanagan, Scott C. and Beck, Paul Allen, eds., Electoral Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983)Google Scholar.

49 Clarke, Harold D., Jenson, Jane, LeDuc, Lawrence and Pammett, Jon H., Absent Mandate: The Politics of Discontent in Canada (1st ed.; Toronto: Gage, 1984), 56Google Scholar.

50 See Wiseman, “The Use, Misuse, and Abuse.”

51 Johnston's experiments with question wording suggest that the number of unstable identifiers in Canada may have been inflated by measurement error because the standard form of the question is likely to push respondents to express an attachment that they do not really feel by not explicitly offering the response alternative of “none.” See Johnston, Richard, “The Equivalence of forty Identification Measures: A National Survey Experiment,”paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association,Washington, D.C., 1988Google Scholar. Since “flexible” partisans include those with no identification, however, the basic conclusions in Political Choice would be unaffected.

52 Blake, Donald E., “The Consistency of Inconsistency: Party Identification in Federal and Provincial Politics,” this Journal 15 (1982), 691–710Google Scholar.

53 Political Choice, chap. 5. In the following chapter, Clarke and his colleagues show that many voters articulated quite independent and often very different images of federal and provincial parties bearing the same name. Uslaner has recently affirmed the importance of Canadians' “two political worlds” for understanding split identification (Uslaner, Eric M., “Splitting Image: Partisan Affiliations in Canada's ‘Two Political Worlds,’” American Journal of Political Science 34 [1990], 961–981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 Clarke, Harold D. and Stewart, Marianne C., “Partisan Inconsistency and Partisan Change in Federal States: The Case of Canada,” American Journal of Political Science 31 (1987), 383–407CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 Brym and his colleagues, however, have dismissed the criterion of proportion of variance explained as a “methodological fetish.” See “Class Power, Class Mobilization, and Class Voting,” 31–32. It should be noted that Clarke et al. did not examine any interactive effects among the various social background characteristics.

56 Their analysis of voting in the 1979 and 1980 elections may be found in the first edition of Absent Mandate. Voting in the 1984 and 1988 elections is analyzed in Clarke, Harold D., Jenson, Jane, LeDuc, Lawrence and Pammett, Jon H., Absent Mandate: Interpreting Change in Canadian Elections (2nd ed.; Toronto: Gage, 1991)Google Scholar. For further discussion of candidate effects, see Irvine, William P., “Does the Candidate Make a Difference? The Macro-Politics and Micro-Politics of Getting Elected,” this Journal 15 (1982), 755–782Google Scholar.

57 John Meisel, “Values, Language and Politics in Canada,” in Meisel, Working Papers, 174. Wiseman has been particularly critical of Political Choice in Canada, characterizing the concluding statement as a mere tautology. See “The Use, Misuse, and Abuse.”

58 LeDuc, Lawrence, “On Abusing the National Election Studies,” unpublished manuscript, University of Toronto, 12Google Scholar. LeDuc offers detailed responses to a number of Wiseman's criticisms in this paper.

59 Archer, Keith, “A Simultaneous Equation Model of Canadian Voting Behaviour,” this Journal 20(1987), 553–572Google Scholar. Brown, Steven D., Lambert, Ronald D., Kay, Barry J. and Curtis, James E., “The 1984 Election: Explaining the Vote,”paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association,Winnipeg, 1986Google Scholar. For a useful discussion of some of the problems with non-recursive models, see Asher, Herbert B., “Voting Behaviour Research in the 1980s: An Examination of Some Old and New Problem Areas,” in Finifter, Ada, ed., Political Science: The State of the Discipline (Washington, D.C.: American Political Science Association, 1983), 342–349Google Scholar.

60 The inclusion of “candidate” in Archer's Figure 1 is obviously an error. In Brown et al.'s model, the leader evaluations are explicitly comparative evaluations.

61 The Brown model also included gender, interest and the respondent's direct experience with unemployment in the previous five years.

62 Brown and his colleagues included variables for all three leaders in recognition of the fact that a respondent's evaluation of a leader is a comparative judgment that will be affected by the perceived attributes of the other leaders. The Brown model also included perceptions of the leaders' comparative ability to represent the respondent's own region and to embody the “time for a change” sentiment that figured in the 1984 election.

63 On this point, see Asher, “Voting Research in the 1980s,” 348. Adequate representation of the causal processes at work calls for dynamic equations (and therefore panel data) that incorporate time-lagged variables.

64 Tajfel, Henri, Human Groups and Social Categories: Studies in Social Psychology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 10Google Scholar. See also Turner, John C., Rediscovering the Social Group: A Self-Categorization Theory (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987)Google Scholar.

65 Converse, Philip E., “The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics,” in Apter, David, ed., Ideology and Discontent (New York: John Wiley, 1964), 211Google Scholar.

66 Sniderman, Paul M., Fletcher, Joseph F., Russell, Peter H. and Tetlock, Philip E., “Political Culture and the Problem of Double Standards: Mass and Elite Attitudes Toward Language Rights in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,” this Journal 22 (1989), 259–284Google Scholar. The 1988 NES mailback questionnaire does tap a number of values.

67 Kinder, Donald R., “Diversity and Complexity in American Public Opinion,” in Finifter, Ada, ed., Political ScienceGoogle Scholar.

68 See Archer, Keith and Johnston, Marquis, “Inflation, Unemployment and Canadian Federal Voting Behaviour,” this Journal 21 (1988), 569–584Google Scholar, and Clarke, Harold D. and Kornberg, Allan, “Support for the Canadian Federal Progressive Conservative Party since 1988: The Impact of Economic Evaluations and Economic Issues,” this Journal 25 (1992), 29–53Google Scholar. While these studies use individual-level data, much of the research has employed aggregate data. See, for example, Happy, J. R., “Voter Sensitivity to Economic Conditions: A Canadian-American Comparison,” Comparative Politics 19 (1986), 45–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Economic Performance and Retrospective Voting in Canadian Federal Elections,” this Journal 22 (1989), 377–387Google Scholar; Monroe, Kristen and Erickson, Lynda, “The Economy and Political Support: The Case of Canada,” Journal of Politics 48 (1986), 629–640CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Erickson, Lynda, “CCF-NDP Popularity and the Economy,” this Journal 21 (1988), 96–116Google Scholar; Clarke, Harold D. and Zuk, Gary, “The Politics of Party Popularity: Canada 1974–79,” Comparative Politics 19 (1987), 229–316CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Carmichael, Calum M., “Economic Conditions and the Popularity of the Incumbent Party in Canada,” this Journal 23 (1990), 713–726Google Scholar.

69 See Feldman, Stanley, “Economic Self-interest and Political Behaviour,” American Journal of Political Science 26 (1982), 446–466CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

70 Clarke and Stewart, “Partisan Inconsistency and Partisan Change”; Fiorina, Morris P., Retrospective Voting in American National Elections (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981)Google Scholar; and Stevenson, H. Michael, “Ideology and Unstable Party Identification in Canada: Limited Rationality in a Brokerage Party System,” this Journal 20 (1987), 813–850Google Scholar.

71 Jenson, Jane, “Party Strategy and Party Identification: Some Patterns of Partisan Allegiance,” this Journal 9 (1976), 27–48Google Scholar. See also Jenson, “Party Loyalty in Canada.”

72 Goldberg, Arthur S., “Social Determinism and Rationality as Bases of Party Identification,” American Political Science Review 63 (1969), 5–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

73 Price, Vincent, “Social Identification and Public Opinion: Effects of Communicating Group Conflict,” Public Opinion Quarterly 53 (1989), 197–224CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the role of group affect in structuring voters' thinking about issues, see Sniderman, Paul M., Brady, Richard A. and Tetlock, Philip E., Reasoning and Choice: Explorations in Political Psychology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

74 A study that did take the campaign seriously was Black, Jerome H., “Revisiting the Effects of Canvassing on Voting Behaviour,” this Journal 17 (1984), 351–374Google Scholar. Findings from the 1988 NES will be reported extensively in Johnston, Richard, Blais, André, Brady, Henry and Crête, Jean, Letting the People Decide (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, forthcoming)Google Scholar. See also their chapter “Free Trade and the Dynamics of the 1988 Election,” in Wearing, Joseph, ed., The Ballot and Its Message: Voting in Canada (Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman, 1991)Google Scholar; Johnston, Richard, Blais, André, Brady, Henry E. and Crête, Jean, “Free Trade in Canadian Elections: Issue Evolution in the Long and the Short Run,”paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association,San Francisco, 1990Google Scholar; and Blais, André, Johnston, Richard, Brady, Henry E. and Crête, Jean, “The Dynamics of Horse Race Expectations in the 1988 Canadian Election,”paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association,Victoria, 1990Google Scholar. For an earlier study of strategic voting, see Black, Jerome H., “The Multicandidate Calculus of Voting: Application to Canadian Federal Elections,” American Journal of Political Science 22 (1978), 609–638CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

75 The discrepancies between reported and actual behaviour form the centrepiece of Wiseman's critique of the NES in “The Use, Misuse, and Abuse.” LeDuc maintains that Wiseman has exaggerated the extent of the discrepancies. See LeDuc, “On Abusing the National Election Studies.” While the problems of faulty recall were certainly no cause for complacency, experience with the 1974–1979–1980 NES panel suggests that we should not exaggerate the problem of possible unreliability. With panel data, we no longer have to rely on fallible memories to compare reported vote at successive elections. The NES panel confirmed the portrait of an electorate with flexible attachments to parties and considerable potential for volatility that emerged from the 1974 cross-section.

76 Meisel and Van Loon, “Canadian Attitudes to Election Expenses 1965–6,” 40.

77 Ibid., 143.

78 See de Leeuw, Edith D. and van der Zouwen, Johannes, “Data Quality in Telephone and Face to Face Surveys: A Comparative Meta-Analysis,” in Robert M. Groves, Paul P. Blemes, Lars E. Lyndberg, James T. Massey, William L. Nichells II and Joseph Waksberg, Telephone Survey Methodology (New York: John Wiley, 1988), 283–300Google Scholar.

79 Dennis Trewin and Geoff Lee, “International Comparisons of Telephone Coverage,” in Ibid., 9–24. Noncoverage at the province level ranges from 2 to 6 per cent.

80 Meisel and Van Loon, “Canadian Attitudes to Election Expenses,” 37.

81 For a discussion of some of the pitfalls in the analysis of rolling cross-section data, see Rosenstone, Steven and Feldman, Stanley, “Design, Implementation, and Analysis of the Rolling Cross-Section and Event Monitoring Components of the 1984 National Election Study,” Memo to the Board of Overseers and 1984 National Election Study Planning Committee, October 19, 1983Google Scholar.

82 Elkins and Blake, “Voting Research in Canada,” 313.

83 Black, Jerome H., “Immigrant Political Adaptation in Canada: Some Tentative Findings,” this Journal 15 (1982), 3–27Google Scholar.

84 Black, Jerome H. and McGlen, Nancy E., “Male-Female Political Involvement Differentials in Canada, 1965–1974,” this Journal 12 (1979), 471–497Google Scholar, and Kay et al., “Gender and Political Activity.” An exception is Wearing, Peter and Wearing, Joseph, “Does Gender Make a Difference in Voting Behaviour?” in Wearing, , ed., The Ballot and Its MessageGoogle Scholar.

85 Conover, Pamela Johnston, “Feminists and the Gender Gap,” Journal of Politics 50 (1988), 985–1010CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Conover cites an extensive list of works on the gender gap.

86 Abramson, Paul R., “The Decline of Over-Time Comparability in the National Election Studies,” Public Opinion Quarterly 54 (1990), 177–190CrossRefGoogle Scholar.