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Party Loyalty and Electoral Volatility: A Study of the Canadian Party System

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

Paul M. Sniderman ,
H.D. Forbes  and
Ian Melzer
Paul M. Sniderman
Affiliation:
Stanford University
H.D. Forbes
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
Ian Melzer
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , June 1974 , pp. 268 - 288
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1974

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References

* We are deeply indebted to John Meisel for making available to us the data from the 1965 and 1968 post-election surveys, and to the Inter-University Consortium for Political Research for making available to us data from the 1964 and 1968 election surveys. We are also grateful to Robert Axelrod, Ronald Blair, Richard Brody, Ken Bryden, Stephen Clarkson, William Irvine, Ronald Manzer, and John Terry who read earlier versions of the paper and made many helpful suggestions. This is publication a-155 of the Survey Research Center of the University of California, Berkeley. This investigation was supported by a grant from the Center for Research for International Studies, Stanford University. The responsibility for errors is, of course, ours alone.

1 We recognize, of course, that there is no single theory of Canadian politics on which all scholars are agreed. On many points of interest there are not only sharp differences of interpretation among different scholars, but equally important, many subtle variations of emphasis and approach. Compare, for example, the analyses of party politics in two recent textbooks, Mallory, J.R., The Structure of Canadian Government (Toronto, 1971Google Scholar) and van Loon, R.J. and Whittington, M.S., The Canadian Political System (Toronto, 1971Google Scholar). Nevertheless our reading of the literature on elections and political parties persuades us that there is sufficient consensus on some key points to justify the convenient label of “the textbook theory.”

2 See for example George M. Hougham, “The Background and Development of National Parties,” and Reid, Escott M., “The Rise of National Parties in Canada,” both in Party Politics in Canada, ed. Thorburn, Hugh G. (2nd ed., Scarborough, 1967), 2–22.Google Scholar

3 For evidence of this point see McClosky, Herbert, Hoffman, Paul J., and O'hara, Rosemary, “Issue Conflict and Consensus among Party Leaders and Followers,” American Political Science Review, LIV (June 1960), 406–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Alford, Robert R., Party and Society (Chicago, 1963Google Scholar).

4 Scarrow, Howard, “Distinguishing between political parties – The Case of Canada,” Midwest Journal of Political Science, IX (February, 1965), 61–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar A similar view is taken by many others, including Clokie, H. McD., Canadian Government and Politics (rev. ed., Toronto, 1950Google Scholar); Dawson, R. MacGregor, revised by Ward, Norman, The Government of Canada (5th ed., Toronto, 1970Google Scholar); Horowitz, G., “Conservatism, Liberalism, and Socialism in Canada: An Interpretation,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, XXXII (May 1966), 143–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fox, Paul, “Parties and Politics in Canada,” in Politics: Canada, ed. Fox, Paul (3rd ed., Toronto, 1970), 223–7Google Scholar; and McLeod, John T., “Party Structure and Party Reform,” in The Prospect of Change, ed. Rotstein, A. (Toronto, 1965), 1–22.Google Scholar For an attempt to identify some points of difference between the major parties, see John Meisel, “Recent Changes in Canadian Parties,” in Thorburn, Party Politics in Canada, 2nd ed., 33–54.

5 The Vertical Mosaic (Toronto, 1965), chapter 12.

6 Alan C. Cairns has persuasively argued that most interpretations of Canadian politics under-estimate the degree to which the electoral system encourages parties to exploit these cleavages and the degree to which the parties have in fact done so. See Cairns, Alan C., “The Electoral System and the Party System in Canada, 1921–1965,” Canadian Journal of Political Science, I (March, 1968), 55–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Dawson and Ward, The Government of Canada, 415.

8 J.M. Beck and D.J. Dooley, “Party Images in Canada,” in Thorburn, Party Politics in Canada, 2nd ed., 76 and 78.

9 Dawson, R. MacGregor and Dawson, W.F., revised by Ward, Norman, Democratic Government in Canada (Toronto, 1971), 24.Google Scholar

10 “The Structure of Canadian Politics,” in Thorburn, Party Politics in Canada, 2nd ed., 28–89.

11 Scarrow, “Distinguishing Between Political Parties,” 75.

12 Regenstreif, Peter, The Diefenbaker Interlude: Parties and Voting in Canada (Toronto, 1965), 169.Google Scholar

13 “Distinguishing Between Political Parties.”

14 Kornberg, Alan, Smith, Joel, and Bromley, David, “Some Differences in the Political Socialization of Canadian and American Party Officials: A Preliminary Report,” this Journal, II (March, 1969), 64–88.Google Scholar

15 Perlin, George and Peppin, Patti, “Variation in Party Support in Federal and Provincial Elections: Some Hypotheses,” this Journal, IV (June, 1971), 280–6.Google Scholar

16 Chi, N.H. and Perlin, George, “The New Democratic Party: A Party in Transition,” in Party Politics in Canada, ed. Thorburn, H.G. (3rd ed., Scarborough, 1972), 183.Google Scholar

17 Mallory, The Structure of Canadian Government.

18 Horowitz, G., Canadian Labour in Politics (Toronto, 1968Google Scholar).

19 Dawson, Dawson, and Ward, Democratic Government in Canada.

20 Elite Accommodation in Canadian Politics (Toronto, 1973), 45.

21 “Distinguishing between Political Parties,” 75.

22 “Is Canadian Politics too Competitive?” this Journal, vi (September, 1973), 356.

23 The Diefenbaker Interlude, 169.

24 This claim is made by Kornberg, Smith, and Bromley, “Some Differences in the Political Socialization of Canadian and American Party Officials,” 74. See also the more complex argument of Meisel, John, Working Paper on Canadian Politics (Montreal, 1972), 67 and 113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For references to some unpublished papers, see Lovink, “Is Canadian Politics too Competitive?” 355.

25 See for example Perlin and Peppin, “Variation in Party Support in Federal and Provincial Elections;” Courtney, John C. and Smith, David E., “Voting in a Provincial General Election and a Federal By-election: A Constituency Study of Saskatoon City, Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, XXXII (August, 1966), 338–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Laponce, J.A., People vs Politics (Toronto, 1969Google Scholar); and Wilson, John and Hoffman, David, “The Liberal Party in Con-temporary Ontario Politics,” this Journal, III (June, 1972), 177–204.Google Scholar It is worth noting that Wilson and Hoffman highlight the importance of differential turnout, rather than weak party loyalties, in explaining different outcomes in federal and provincial elections.

26 Laponce, People vs Politics, 138.

27 The Diefenbaker Interlude, 6.

28 Canadian Labour in Politics, 43.

29 Engelmann, F.C. and Schwartz, M.A., Political Parties and the Canadian Social Structure (Scarborough, 1967), 12.Google Scholar

30 Dawson, R. MacGregor, The Government of Canada (3rd edition, Toronto, 1957), 506 and 507.Google Scholar Later editions of this book, revised by Norman Ward, play down the distinctiveness of the minor parties. For an elaborate discussion of different types of political parties, see Engelmann and Schwartz, Political Parties and the Canadian Social Structure. For a recent study of the NDP, which documents its distinctiveness, see N.H. Chi and G.C. Perlin, “The New Democratic Party: A Party in Transition,” in Thorburn, Party Politics in Canada, 3rd ed.

31 Regenstreif, Peter, “Some Aspects of National Party Support in Canada,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, XXIX (February, 1963), 69Google Scholar, and Englemann and Schwartz, Political Parties and the Canadian Social Structure, 207.

32 Engelmann and Schwartz, Political Parties and the Canadian Social Structure, 49. In fairness it should be noted that they point out that Social Credit appears to be an exception to this rule; however, they suggest that the ndp in Ontario illustrates the basic validity of their contention that minor parties tend to be more homogeneous than major parties.

33 It should be added, however, that we have also computed the results for election series beginning in 1900, another reasonable starting point, and the results in every respect are the same.

34 The depression had such a devastating impact on the British Labour party that we excluded the results from the election of 1931 from our calculations. Including the 1931 figures would, of course, have inflated the variability of both the Conservative and the Labour series.

35 The relative standard deviation, commonly called the coefficient of variation, is equal to the standard deviation divided by the mean.

36 Campbell, Angus, Converse, Philip E., Miller, Warren E., and Stokes, Donald E., The American Voter (New York, 1960), 121ff.Google Scholar

37 For these figures, see Campbell, Angus, Converse, Philip E., Miller, Warren E., and Stokes, Donald E., Elections and the Political Order (New York, 1966), 13 and 277Google Scholar; Converse, Philip E., Miller, Warren E., Rusk, Jerrold G., and Wolfe, Arthur C., “Continuity and Change in American Politics: Parties and Issues in the 1968 Election,” American Political Science Review, LXIII (December, 1969) 1085Google Scholar; and Butler, David and Stokes, Donald, Political Change in Britain (New York, 1969Google Scholar).

38 The sequence of questions asked about party identification allows different ways of calculating these percentages. We have calculated them in three different ways and the results do not differ by more than one percentage point from the figures reported above.

39 Political Change in Britain, 43.

40 Figures based on data distributed by the Inter-University Consortium for Political Research.

41 In this respect, the difference between a presidential and a parliamentary system may prove vital. It has often been argued, for example, that third-party movements in the United States fail in part at least because of their inability to capture the presidency, no matter how strong their sectional support. For a classical example for such an argument, see Schattschneider, E.E., Party Government (New York, 1942Google Scholar). Another relevant institutional consideration is the much weaker party discipline in Congress than in the Canadian House of Commons. On this see Lipset, S.M., “Party Systems and the Representation of Social Groups,” European Journal of Sociology, I (1960), 50–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

42 Butler and Stokes, Political Change, 42.

43 Key, V.O. Jr, and Munger, Frank, “Social Determinism and Electoral Decision: The Case of Indiana,” in American Voting Behavior, ed. Burdick, Eugene and Brodbeck, Arthur J. (Glencoe, Ill., 1959), 286.Google Scholar

44 This similarity is brought out clearly by calculating measures of association between party identification and vote. Distinguishing four categories of party identification and four categories of vote, we find that the correlation (lambda) between 1965 party identification and 1963 vote is 0.69, while the correlation between 1968 party identification and 1965 vote is 0.70. It may also be helpful to compare the correlations between party identification and vote over a two- or three-year period (Table vi) with the correlations for the most recent election: the comparable figures are 0.78 and 0.79 for the 1965 and 1968 studies respectively. On the calculation and interpretation of lambda, see Goodman, Leo A. and Kruskal, William H., “Measures of Association for Cross Classifications,” Journal of the American Statistical Association, XLIX (December, 1954), 740–2.Google Scholar

45 A party supporter is defined here by 1965 vote, rather than by his party identification, in order to show the percentage of each party's support that comes from those who identify with no party at all or with a different party. If we considered only identifiers, then the proportion of strong identifiers would be larger among the minor than the major parties, as Table vi shows.

46 See Goodman and Kruskal, “Measures of Association for Cross Classifications.”

47 An exception to this generalization is Pammett, Jon H., “The Development of Political Orientations in Canadian School Children,” this Journal, IV (March, 1971), 132–41.Google Scholar Pammett interprets his findings as evidence for the hypothesis that “continuity in many Canadian children of the partisan orientations of their parents is relatively low… The result of this is likely to be a relatively unstable pattern of party allegiances and frequent vote switching once the children reach voting age” (p. 140).

48 Philip E. Converse and Georges Dupeux, “Politicization of the Electorate in France and the United States,” in Campbell, et al., Elections and the Political Order, 269–91.

49 Ibid., 280

50 The 1968 survey did not include questions about parental party loyalties so no comparisons between 1965 and 1968 are possible for the results discussed in this section.

51 Why the correlation is lower for the ccf/ndp is an interesting question, which we intend to pursue in a subsequent note.

52 In the context, a point that is most important to appreciate is that in approximately 8 in every 10 instances, the partisan preferences of the mother and the father are the same.

53 For a review of all relevant studies, see Sears, David O., “Political Behavior,” in The Hand-book of Social Psychology, Vol. 5, ed. Lindzey, G. and Aronson, E. (2nd ed., Reading, Mass., 1969), 374–7.Google Scholar

54 Party loyalties may reflect the influence of friends and associates as well as of family members, and yet, in certain circumstances, they may seem to be the effect of the family. We are presently at work on the preparation of a paper which will deal with this problem. It may appear to be a problem easily resolved, but in fact it involves complex methodological issues. We can report, however, that our preliminary results clearly support our emphasis on the importance of the family.

55 See Philip E. Converse, “The Concept of a Normal Vote,” in Campbell et al., Elections and the Political Order, 9–39.