Canadian Politics



A16(c) - Candidate Diversity in Canadian Politics

Date: Jun 14 | Time: 08:30am to 10:00am | Location: Zoom (see details/voir détails)

Chair/Président/Présidente : Jacob Robbins-Kanter (Bishop’s University)

Zoom Meeting Link | Meeting ID : 870 6603 2250 | Password: 180464

Candidate Diversity in Federal and Quebec Parties: 2021-2022: Benjamin Forest (McGill University)
Abstract: This study analyzes the diversity of candidates in the 2021 Federal and the 2022 Quebec elections. There are substantial differences in proportions of both women and racialized minorities among parties, but these two dimensions of diversity show different partisan patterns. While diversity patterns generally fall along ideological (left-right) lines for federal parties, the patterns for Quebec parties are more complex and suggest that cultural-identity issues play a significant role in candidate selection. Using an original data set of party, candidate, and district characteristics for each election, and multivariate analysis, the paper extends earlier work by including smaller parties that did not win seats, and dimensions of diversity beyond gender and racialized identities, such as nativity/immigration status.


Are Women Candidates Less Likely to Win? An Analysis of Canadian Federal Elections, 2004-2019: Michael Wigginton (Carleton University)
Abstract: The underrepresentation of women in Canadian federal politics is an obvious fact, with only 31% of seats in the House of Commons currently being held by women. The majority of scholarship attributes this deficit to women less often being nominated as (viable) candidates by major parties, and prior research in the Canadian context has suggested that women candidates in Canada get the same number of votes as do men. In this paper, I revisit these past findings by analysing the electoral success of major party candidates in the 2004-2019 general elections. I find that, even when controlling for a party’s past performance in the district, women candidates have only a 22% chance of being elected, compared to 24% for men – in other words, that women are less likely to win election a similarly positioned man would be. While substantively small, this statistically significant difference in performance suggests that discrimination at the ballot box continues to be a barrier to women’s equitable representation.