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Despite the promise of Internet surveys, there are significant concerns about the representativeness of the sample and survey instrument effects. This article seeks to address these questions by examining the differences and similarities between parallel Internet and telephone surveys conducted in Quebec after the provincial election in 2007. Our results indicate that the responses obtained in each mode differ somewhat from each other but that few inferential differences would occur if conclusions were drawn from the analysis of one dataset or the other. We urge researchers to consider the Internet as a viable mode of data collection, in that the consequences of mode effects appear to be minimal. Adapted from the source document.

As immigration issues waned in salience during the COVID-19 pandemic, populist radical right (PRR) parties repositioned themselves by politicizing various pandemic policies. In light of this changing political landscape, scholars have analyzed what factors are associated with PRR voting. Yet, most studies focus on small sets of covariates that could easily ignore other key determinants. To address this limitation, we use MI-LASSO logistic regression, which is a more inductive data-driven approach that can incorporate a huge number of covariates. Our research analyzes the key determinants of voting for the People's Party of Canada—a PRR party that rose rapidly during the pandemic. Using the 2021 Canadian Election Study dataset ( N = 14,841), we confirm that PRR voters in the pandemic were both protest and policy-oriented voters. They were protest voters since anti-establishment attitudes consistently correlate with their vote choice. On the other hand, PRR voters' policy concern was about pandemic policies rather than immigration, as nativist attitudes never emerge as key determinants. Additionally, we uncover that the ideological placement of the mainstream right party and the defense of hate speech are strong correlates, while conventional variables like sociodemographics are not. These findings enrich our understanding of PRR voting during the pandemic.

AbstractDisaffection of youth from politics is a well-documented phenomenon in many countries. In this article, we consider whether the social networks of young people have the same influence on political engagement as they have been found to have for older adults. We use a single dataset to test the effects of discussion and disagreement on the political engagement of young people (30 and under) and older adults. We find that social network discussion has a stronger effect on the engagement of young people but that disagreement has no clear differential effect.

AbstractRecent changes in government policy making and the labour market have created new opportunities for political scientists, provided that we have the skills to respond to them. We argue that changes need to be made in the area of methodology training in order to capitalize on these opportunities. Canadian political scientists should ensure that all our students acquire basic quantitative competencies, in addition to research design and qualitative analysis training, and that those graduate students interested in more sophisticated quantitative methods have the opportunity to develop those skills. We explain how expanding and deepening training in quantitative methods is one strategy for ensuring a role for political science in evidence-based policy making, for expanding labour market options for students, and for keeping apace with disciplinary trends. We caution, however, that special care needs to be taken to ensure that all political scientists have equal opportunities to develop such skills.

Abstract.Concern about the environment has grown around the world. Important work has assessed the correlates of support for the environment and its relationship to values (for example, Inglehart, 1995). Recent comparative work on political party positioning demonstrates how the issue has increasingly taken on a left–right dimension (Dalton, 2009). Filling a void in the literature, this paper explores how and whether the environmental issue has been incorporated into the ideological space of Canadian citizens and reflected in the views of the major political parties outside of Quebec. In particular, we first consider the extent to which the environment is a left–right issue in the minds of Canadian citizens. We follow this by assessing the effect of environmental concern on citizens' views of political parties and whether this issue tends to operate as a positional or valence issue in differentiating political parties. We use the Canadian Election Studies from 2000–2006 to address these research questions empirically.Résumé.L'intérêt pour la protection de l'environnement s'est intensifié autour du monde. Des recherches ont été menées sur la corrélation entre l'idéologie et la protection de l'environnement (par exemple, Inglehart 1995). Une étude récente sur le positionnement des partis politiques en matière d'environnement démontre que la question prend de plus en plus une dimension gauche–droite (Dalton 2009). Dans le but de combler un manque dans la littérature, cet article tente d'établir dans quelle mesure l'environnement a effectivement été intégré dans l'espace idéologique des citoyens canadiens et se reflète dans l'opinion sur les principaux partis politiques à l'extérieur du Québec. Nous examinons d'abord jusqu'à quel point l'environnement est considéré par les Canadiens comme un enjeu politique de gauche ou de droite. Nous évaluons ensuite l'effet de cet intérêt pour l'environnement sur l'opinion des citoyens canadiens à l'égard des partis politiques en vue de déterminer s'il s'agit là d'un enjeu de valeur ou d'un enjeu positionnel dans les choix politiques et électoraux. Nous appuyons empiriquement notre étude sur les données de l'Étude électorale canadienne de 2000 à 2006.

A central tenet of electoral systems' research is that more parties should get votes in districts with large magnitudes than in districts with smaller magnitudes. This proposition is largely untested at the district level, even though that is the level at which relevant pressures are expected to work. At the aggregate level, research has found that there are systematic deviations from Duverger's law related to incentives from ethnolinguistic fragmentation, institutions, and strategic voting. This analysis confirms that many of these results hold at the district level, which is the most appropriate level for testing Duverger's law. District level party-system fragmentation patterns in 44 countries support Duverger's basic hypotheses. The effect of electoral institutions is contingent, however, upon the presence of social cleavages that generate pressures for additional parties, the establishment of patterns of party-system competition that help voters evaluate contenders' viability, and the absence of competing incentives generated by districts of varying magnitudes. These effects are robust to different specifications of social heterogeneity. However, we find no evidence that institutional features like federalism or presidentialism reduce the strategic effects of district level factors. [Copyright Elsevier Ltd.]

Canada seems to refute Duverger's Law by sustaining more than two political parties in a plurality system, suggesting that Canadian voters do not utilize the 'wasted vote' calculus. However, many studies have found evidence of strategic voting in the electorate, although the work is limited because scholars have typically tested varying models at single points in time. This paper uses data from Canadian federal elections from 1988 to 2000 to test the expected utility model, developed by McKelvey and Ordeshook (1972), on those with an incentive to vote strategically across all four elections. We extend the model to test hypotheses related to party system changes and individual factors (minor party support and political sophistication). Our findings strongly support the model and many of the individual level hypotheses, although the results pertaining to the system level hypotheses are mixed. [Copyright 2006 Elsevier Ltd.]