Political Trust and the Vote in Multiparty Elections: The Canadian Case

In: European journal of political research: official journal of the European Consortium for Political Research, Volume 44, Issue 1, p. 121-146

Abstract

While the causes of declining political trust have been investigated extensively in the literature, much less empirical effort has been devoted to the study of its behavioral implications. This article focuses on the decline of trust in Canada during the period 1984 to 1993, & on its effect on Canadian voting behavior. We build upon M. J. Hetherington's ('The Effect of Political Trust on the Presidential Vote, 1968-1996.' American Political Science Review 93 [1999]: 311-326) work to explore the impact of political trust on the vote & on abstention in a multiparty electoral context. Multinomial logit estimations are performed using individual-level survey data from three Canadian federal elections. While distrust is shown to significantly affect electoral participation, thus acting as an alienating factor, the results indicate that decreasing trust acts more as a motivation to support third-party alternatives. The study further demonstrates that, in a multiple party setting, 'old-line' major parties electorally suffer from declining political trust, but some third parties benefit more from this phenomenon than others. Contrary to what was the case in the previous two elections, distrustful individuals in 1993 were more likely to vote for the Reform Party or the Bloc Quebecois than support the New Democratic Party. 6 Tables, 1 Figure, 4 Appendixes, 65 References. Adapted from the source document.