Research into the impact of a politician's sociodemographic profile on vote choice in Westminster-style systems has been hindered by the relative sociodemographic homogeneity of party leaders. Past research has focused mainly on the evaluation of local candidates in the American context, but given that elections in plurality systems are far less candidate-oriented , the evaluation of local candidates tells us little about the prevalence of affinity or discrimination in other contexts. This article investigates the effect of political leaders' ethnicity on political behavior by looking at the case of Jagmeet Singh in Canada, the first federal party leader of color in the country's history. While the literature has shown that the gender of leaders in Canada can matter, little is known about the attitudes of Canadians toward party leaders of color specifically. We are interested in the evaluations of Singh and his party, as well as the shifts in voting intentions between elections in 2015 and 2019. We uncover affinity-based behaviors from individuals who identify as Sikh, as well as a negative reception of Singh's candidacy in Quebec.

The paper explains long-term changes in birth, death rates, and in attitude to personal consumption by evolution of preferences by means of cultural transmission. When communities are culturally isolated, they are focused on population growth, which results in large fertility and welfare transfers to children, limited adult consumption, and lack of old-age support. With increasing cultural contact across communities, successful cultural traits induce their hosts to increase their social visibility by limiting fertility and increasing longevity via higher individual consumption. Empirical analysis confirms that social visibility, as measured by the number of language versions of Wikipedia biographical pages, is associated with fewer children and longer lifespan. The presence of notable individuals precedes reduced aggregate birth rates.