The Impact of the Local Candidate in Canadian Federal Elections

Abstract

The impact of the local candidate in Canadian federal elections has received scant theoretical or empirical attention. Voting in Canada is usually accounted for in terms of party identification, party leader attraction, ethnicity, and religious affiliation. Possible local candidate influence on electoral outcomes is rarely considered systematically. An observer of British elections placed the average influence of the local candidate at about 10 per cent of the total vote. Morris Davis, in a study of a Halifax two-member constituency, states that the local candidate is responsible for at least 6 per cent of the vote