Understanding Municipal Elections: New Data and Approaches from Canada

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

For years, urban political scientists in Canada and other countries have lamented their subfield's peripheral place in the discipline. The opening paragraphs of urban political science articles contained a parade of gloomy descriptions of the subfield: Black hole. Neglected. Academic ghetto. Poor cousin. Good work was happening in Canadian urban political science -- the problem was, no one seemed to know about it.

Thanks to major new research efforts by political scientists across Canada, those days are over. The Canadian Municipal Election Study, led by Michael McGregor at Ryerson University, is collecting unparalleled individual-level survey data in eight Canadian cities. An ambitious data collection effort led by Sandra Breux at INRS recently captured election results and contextual variables for a decade's worth of elections in Canada's 100 largest municipalities. Another team of researchers, led by Zack Taylor at Western University, has compiled exceptionally rich quantitative and qualitative data on neighbourhood-level voting patterns in Canadian and international cities. The hard work of these and other scholars is creating a treasure trove of data for Canadian political scientists. The poor cousin, it seems, has quietly grown rich.

This panel features work on Canadian municipal elections which draws from these new data sources. The panel will illuminate key themes in urban elections and politics -- incumbency advantage, partisanship and non-partisanship, municipal turnout, and the politics of place -- while also describing the exciting new data sources available to urban political scientists. The panel will be of interest to scholars of political behaviour, urban politics, and Canadian politics.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 49: Canadian Politics

Cosponsors

• DIVISION 30: Urban and Local Politics

• DIVISION 36: Elections and Voting Behavior

Individual Presentations

• Political Parties and Local Elections: Consequences for Voters - Laura Stephenson, University of Western Ontario; Michael McGregor

• Does Political Information Influence Voter Turnout at the Municipal Level? - Sandra BREUX; Jérôme Couture, Université Laval

• Place, Politics, and Urban Political Order in Toronto, London (UK), and Chicago - Zack Taylor, Western University; Daniel Silver; Jan Doering, University of Toronto

• Redistricting and Incumbency Advantage: Evidence from Toronto and Calgary - Jack Lucas, University of Calgary; Michael McGregor

Chair

• Mirya R. Holman Tulane University

Discussant

• Peter Bucchianeri Vanderbilt University