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Overview
The result is a compendium of data and analysis that can be found nowhere else and which will be an invaluable sourcebook for students of Canadian political behavior.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780822399926 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Duke University Press |
| Publication date: | 08/01/2012 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 368 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
Read an Excerpt
Canada Votes
1935â"1988
By Frank Feigert
Duke University Press
Copyright © 1989 Duke University PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8223-9992-6
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
In Professor Scarrow's groundbreaking compendium of Canadian election returns, we find a statement of a problem which has faced students of Canadian politics.
Any Canadian history text can be relied upon to relate which party and which leaders were elevated to office in a given election. The more refined data, however, [are] considerably more elusive, so that anyone who asks such a seemingly elementary question as "How many votes did a party receive at a given election?" had better be prepared to devote a good many hours of research among sources which are not always easily available.
Since Scarrow's work was published in 1962, through 1988, there were ten federal general elections, 88 federal by-elections, and 79 provincial and territorial elections. No additional comprehensive collection of such data has been made widely available. Hence, the need for a broadly disseminated source of Canadian election returns, updating Scarrow, seems evident.
Although this work is patterned after Scarrow, there are some significant changes which should be noted by those who use both works in studying changes in Canadian election results. The present work is organized by province and territory in order to facilitate the analysis of changes at these important levels. National election trends, aggregating provincial returns for each year, are summarized only in chapter 2, whereas Scarrow's analysis was organized on the basis of the returns for each election. Both works ultimately report the results of elections at the riding (constituency) level.
Another change worth noting is hidden by the data. Professor Scarrow had to contend with what was a basic fact of life in analyzing federal election returns for the 1878-1958 period, and that was the absence of party affiliation, as indicated on either the ballot or in the compiled election returns themselves. The enormity of ascertaining the party affiliation, or absence of one for every candidate for each riding in each election, cannot be fully appreciated for those who have not tried it. Fortunately, the author of this present work only had to contend with eight elections in this regard, the seven from 1935 to 1958 in which the two works overlap each other, and 1962 as well.
Why were the 1935–1958 elections checked? Simply, this was done to put the stamp of veracity on Scarrow's work, which had been criticized for alleged errors. The check was done by using three major sources which were not available to Professor Scarrow. These include lists for absentee members of the Canadian armed forces of candidates and their party affiliations, a listing of all members elected to Commons by riding, and a history of all ridings which includes candidates and their affiliations, if any. Those errors which were detected were minimal at best.
For 1963 and succeeding elections, candidates' party affiliation was reported in the compiled Report of the Chief Electoral Officer for each election. These latter reports provide the raw data for federal elections on which this and Professor Scarrow's work are based. It might be added that party affiliation first appeared on the ballot itself in the 1972 election.
One may often think of Canadian parties in terms of the two main parties, Liberals and Progressive Conservatives, plus a significant third party or two. Previously known as Conservatives, the prefix "Progressive" was added starting with the 1945 election. The two principal third parties, Social Credit and Cooperative Commonwealth Federation/New Democratic Party, are included in all tabulations, whether they ran candidates or not in any particular election. In the case of the CCF/NDP, we list the two together, as the result of a name change which took place in 1961. Although Social Credit has all but disappeared at the federal level, it is included in all riding tables in order to maintain consistency of presentation as well as to identify those constituencies where it has continued to appear.
The tables also include a generic classification of "other" for Independents, other third parties, and those who ran without any party label. In this last case the Report of the Chief Electoral Officer specifically included this as a separate category ("none") starting in 1972, and this is so noted for the annual as well as regional and provincial summaries. Some small confusion can result from this, as Ontario, for instance, elected a candidate listed as "none" in 1984, while some reports might list this and similar persons as "independent." As table 1–1 makes clear, there has never been much of a shortage of third parties.
Quite often, however, as the constituency tables will show, a "party" consists of a single candidate. Another change from Scarrow's format concerns the placement of the by-election results. Rather than placing them at the end, we have summarized them in chapter 2 (National Results). As Scarrow subsequently showed, by-elections can be taken as a measure of public opinion as well as potentially affecting the balance in Commons. Hence, including them at the national and provincial levels of analysis should make their results easier to interpret.
Also included in summary form are data on voter turnout, organized by year and province. It is worth pointing out that Canada has, as compared to the United States, a significantly higher level of turnout. One reason apparently lies in the manner in which voters are enrolled in each country. Typically, in the United States, registration is initiated by the voter. That is, the would-be voter has to go somewhere, even if it is to a shopping plaza where a booth has been set up. In Canada, on the other hand, canvassers or enumerators go door-to-door across the nation. Following this, major advertising campaigns are undertaken to advise those voters who had not been enumerated about how they might enroll as voters. Consequently, voter turnout is not only high, but the figures for Canada have a high degree of accuracy.
Turnout is about 6 percent lower when the total adult population is used as the base as against voter lists. This may not be due to errors and omissions on the part of enumerators but because the total population contains approximately that percentage who are ineligible to vote by reason of lack of citizenship or insufficient length of residence in their constituency.
A matter which has some significant import is that of "redistribution" or reapportionment. Except for the 1959-1963 period after Alaska and Hawaii entered the union, the U.S. House of Representatives has remained constant at 435 members since 1912, when New Mexico and Arizona were included. On the other hand, there has been an incremental growth in the size of the House of Commons. Originally standing at 181 members in 1867, it grew until, for the period on which we report, it ranged from 245 to 295 members. Consequently, the number of Members of Parliament for each province and territory has also varied.
In an earlier era there was a considerable degree of gerrymandering, or drawing of riding (constituency) lines in order to best advantage one party over the other. Qualter has suggested that "all redistributions prior to 1966 were carried out in great haste, with partisan motives dominating all other considerations...." Since the passage of the 1964 Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act, the drawing of riding lines has been the responsibility of eleven independent commissions, following the decennial-census. Each of these commissions is headed by a judge appointed by the chief justice for each province and the Northwest Territories. Nonetheless, when district lines are drawn, they inevitably have consequences affecting the likelihood of partisan success and the magnitude of that success.
In this light we must point out that, although we provide summary results for each provincial and territorial election, we do not explore these elections on a riding-by-riding basis. Nonetheless, even though federal reapportionments have been removed from the partisan arena, there is still a great deal of gerrymandering within the provinces as regards the drawing of lines for partisan advantage. As Professor Qualter puts it,
until very recent times the gerrymander was a normal weapon in the political battle and if it has now disappeared from the federal scene it is still alive and flourishing in most of the provinces.
This factor in provincial elections has been examined principally not in terms of its partisan implications but in the sense of urban-rural imbalances.
Explanation of Tables
All tables in this work derive from a basic building block. This is the analysis by riding which shows party totals, in absolute terms as well as in percentages. Obviously, this is the most common type of table in the book. Hence, for each province or territory we have such a table for each election year, broken down by ridings. A difficulty of compiling such tables is how to deal with the plethora of "other" party candidates and Independents. In order to standardize the reporting of results, we include for each election, whether at the national, regional, provincial, or riding levels, the results for four parties. These are, respectively, the Progressive Conservatives (Conservatives in the 1935 and 1940 elections), the Liberals, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (ccf, 1935–1958)/New Democratic Party (NDP, 1962–1988). and Social Credit. We grant that not all four parties have contested all riding elections, particularly the ccf in its early years, and Social Credit more generally. However, by including these four in a standard format, the data can be easily retrieved and recognized. For that matter, the absence of results can be taken as indicative of a particular party not contesting at the specified level. We also include for all elections a column labeled "other," which represents both the "other" parties to which we have alluded as well as Independents and (since 1972) those with no party designation. In all provincial and territorial tables for each election, when "others" are indicated, a note at the end of the table indicates how many ridings were contested by each particular party or by Independents. These basic tables for each province and territory for each year are then aggregated at the regional and national levels, showing for all election years the patterns of support for each party in terms of not only votes but also seats won.
From these basic tables we have also assembled the following additional information regarding competivness, following the model laid down by Scarrow:
1. Tables on the number of seats contested, retained, gained and lost by each party.
2. Tables on the number of seats won by the victor's margin. Both of these tables are then aggregated for each province and territory. Following this, these tables have been aggregated to the regional level and then to the nation as a whole, as well as for each election year.
3. A summary table showing for each provincial and territorial election the actual number of votes and seats won for all elections since 1935, by year and party. These data are not available for the Northwest Territories, since elections to the Legislative Assembly have been nonpartisan in nature. Such was the case for the Yukon, as well, until 1978.
In a sense, therefore, this book has been assembled from the basic riding totals, aggregating results at the provincial and territorial levels, then to the regions, and finally to the nation as a whole. Care has been taken to validate the data by disaggregation, checking provincial/territorial as well as national results against the information supplied by the Chief Electoral Officer. In the rare instances where discrepancies have emerged, these have been checked with Elections Canada and are so indicated in notes for the provincial tables for each year.
Organization of the Book
To summarize, the following schematic illustrates the way in which this book is organized, showing the processes of aggregation and disaggregation which have been employed.
CHAPTER 2National Results: Individual Elections
As noted In the preceding chapter, we start this analysis with the 1935 elections for several reasons. One was the desired overlap with Professor Scarrow's work. Another was the significance of that election, the first of five won by the Liberals, each of which produced a majority government. In the seventeen elections examined, the Liberals have won or been able to form the government in all but six, those of 1957 (when the Liberals actually won a higher percentage of the vote), 1958, 1962, 1979, 1984, and 1988. Minority governments have been formed six times, three under each of the major parties.
Following their disastrous defeat in 1935, the Conservatives failed to contest all seats until 1958. The Liberals, on the other hand, have been quite consistent in this regard, contesting all but 12 seats since 1935. The two third parties we examine have quite different records. The CCF/NDP has generally contested seats across the nation, in most if not all of the provinces, since it began winning seats and had time to develop an infrastructure. In 1974, for the first time, it contested every seat, just as did the Liberals and Progressive Conservatives. Social Credit, on the other hand, generally confined itself to contesting a limited number of seats, principally in the West, until its expansion into Quebec. It was there, in 1965 and 1968, that it won its greatest number of seats under the splinter faction known as Ralliement Creditiste. Following the disappearance of this faction, it gradually ran fewer and fewer candidates until it virtually disappeared in 1984 with only 0.1 percent of the popular vote, and even less than that in 1988. It is also interesting to note that there has been a trend of "other" candidacies in recent years, jumping from 61 in 1972 to 239 in 1974 and increasing ever since. From these data it is difficult to tell to what extent, if at all, this may be indicative of discontent within the electorate.
Electoral margins show some contrasting images of party strength. Something less than 20 percent of all contests have, on average, been decided by less than 5 percent of the vote, whereas almost 40 percent have been decided by 20 percent or more. The latter may be somewhat surprising, given the fact of multiple candidacies in the Canadian electoral system. Of interest in this regard is the fact that, since party label first appeared on the ballot in 1972, elections have seemingly become less competitive for the most part.
With this as a brief overview, we now turn to the data for the several elections, and the circumstances surrounding them.
(see tables 2–1, 2–2, and 2–3 at end of text)
The Election of October 14, 1935
In the midst of the worldwide depression, the Conservative government of Richard Bennett had lost a series of by-elections. Bennett's government had refused to take action on a series of economic issues, such as the budget, tariffs, and unemployment insurance. Hence, the Conservatives were faced with several challenges. These included the emergence of two new parties, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and Social Credit as well as a onetime breakaway or splinter of the Conservatives, known as Reconstruction. The Liberal Party was also more than willing to at least talk about taking measures to get the country out of the sloughs of the depression. The Liberals, headed by Mackenzie King, campaigned with the slogan "It's King or Chaos," attacking both Bennett's record and personality.
Consequently, the Conservatives suffered a severe setback, not winning another election until 1957 and only episodically after that. Their vote and seat shares from 1930 to 1935 declined 19.1 percent and 39.6 percent respectively, demonstrating quite well one of the givens of the Canadian electoral system: the distorting effects of multi-partism. Interestingly, although the Liberals were able to gain more than 70 percent of the votes, their vote share actually dropped, from 45.5 percent to 44.9 percent. Nonetheless, they were able to achieve sufficient strength in enough provinces and regions so as to capitalize on the divisive effects of the third parties which, between them, won more than 20 percent of the popular vote.
One of these, the CCF, was to become a fixture on the Canadian scene, although its initial performance in 1935 in terms of both votes and seats could hardly have foretold this. The CCF contested almost half of the ridings, winning only seven seats while gaining almost 9 percent of the vote. By contrast, Social Credit limited itself to contesting only 40 seats in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia. For their efforts, they netted 4 percent of the vote but won seventeen seats. This established a pattern that was to be followed for years to come, that the CCF, later reconstituted as the New Democratic Party (NDP), would attempt to run on a national basis, but be penalized in terms of the difference between vote and seat share. On the other hand, Social Credit would, for the most part, capitalize on the tendency for third parties to fare better when they concentrate their efforts on a regional basis. (see tables 2–4, 2–5, and 2–6 at end of text)
The Election of March 26, 1940
Led again by Mackenzie King, the Liberals won a decisive victory against the Conservatives, running under the temporary label of National Government. Robert Manion, the Conservative leader selected at the party's 1938 leadership convention, was caught napping by King's dissolution of Parliament.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Canada Votes by Frank Feigert. Copyright © 1989 Duke University Press. Excerpted by permission of Duke University Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Tables,Preface,
1 Introduction,
2 National Results: Individual Elections,
3 The Regional Results,
The Individual Elections,
The Individual Regions,
4 Newfoundland,
5 Prince Edward Island,
6 Nova Scotia,
7 New Brunswick,
8 Quebec,
9 Ontario,
10 Manitoba,
11 Saskatchewan,
12 Alberta,
13 British Columbia,
14 The Northwest Territories,
15 Yukon,
Selected Bibliography,