What do voters do when they like a local candidate from another party?

Abstract

AbstractWe address two questions: How many voters particularly like a candidate from another party? And do these voters vote for their preferred party or their preferred candidate? We use the Making Electoral Democracy Work data for the 2015 Canadian federal election in three provinces (British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec). We find that one voter out of ten particularly liked a candidate from a party other than the one he or she preferred. For two out of five of such voters, the preference for the local candidate trumped the party preference.