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Election campaign tours in Canada
POLITICALGEOGRAPHYQUARTERLY, Vol. 4, No. 1, January 1985,47-54
Election campaign tours in Canada ERICMINI-Z Department of Political Science, Sir Wilfred Grenfell College, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Corner Brook, Newfoundhd A2H 6P9, Canada
ABSTRACT. Becauseof the nature of Canadian society and politics as well as the effects of the single-member plurality electoral system, spatial criteria may be expected to figure prominently in the development of campaign strategy for national elections. The major focus of Canadian election campaigns, the tours of the national party leaders, can be considered as a scarce resource whose allocation willbedesignedtotryto maximize the number of seats won by a party. An analysis of the distribution of the campaign visits by province and constituency indicates that there is some relationship with the distribution of constituencies that could be considered marginal based on previous election results. However, at least until recently, the distorting effects of the single-member plurality electoral system were not strong enough to encourage the largest parties to adopt highly
regional&d campaign strategies. Nevertheless, the relevance of carefully distributing a leader’s campaign visits is suggested by the relationship between visits and constituency voting patterns.
A key strategic element in any large-scale persuasive effort is the choice of targets. Given limited resources, election campaign strategists may be expected to focus their persuasive efforts as much as possible on those groupings considered most important to the successful outcome of the campaign. Although political scientists have tended to focus on the nature of the appeals made to target groupings and the modifications of party positions this may necessitate, campaign strategists typically are very concerned with the amount of campaign effort devoted to distinctive groupings. A party’s basic nature and image cannot be easily changed and thus campaigners may be at least as interested in the distribution of the ‘sales’ effort as in the nature of the ‘product’ being sold. Although research is rather limited in scope, there is evidence that, to some extent, the allocation of campaign resources reflects spatially defined campaign strategies (Me&l, 1962; Brams and Davis, 1974; Colantoniet al., 1975; Johnston, 1976,1977; Minghi and Rumley, 1978; Young, 1978). Through an analysis of the geographical distribution of the campaign tours of party leaders, this study considers the impact of strategic considerations on national election campaigns in Canada. The strategic environment Canadians tend to relate to political life more in terms of their geographical position than in terms of the functional national groupings whose interests they share. This sense of geo0260-9827/85/01
0047-08 $03.00
0 1985 Bunetwonh & GJ (Publishers) Ltd
48
Election campaign tours in Cha&
graphical political identification is fostered by the nature of federalism in Canada which has both encouraged the building of provincial identities and, through frequent intergovemmental disputes, focused attention on the geographical aspect of ‘who gets what’ in Canada (Elkins and Simeon, 1980; Ornstein et al., 1980; Gibbiis, 1982). The single-member plurality electoral system provides a strong incentive for parties to mobilize support on a spatially defined basis. Given that the competitive situation varies greatly from constituency to constituency, national campaign strategists can be expected to focus their efforts as much as possible on those constituencies where the expected margin of votes separating the leading parties is perceived to be relatively small, such that the allocation of campaign resources could reasonably have some expectation of contributing to the winning or saving of a seat for the party. The allocation of campaign resources to constituencies where the difference in party support is substantial has little likelihood of being electorally beneficial. Fast election results provide an easy source of information upon which to develop a constituency-based strategy, and the organizational structures of the parties are generally oriented to the mobilization of support on a constituency basis. However, there are difficulties involved in focusing campaign efforts (other than canvassing) on marginal constituencies. Many cities contain a number of constituencies, with voters often having a limited sense of identification with their constituency, and media audiences do not generally coincide with constituency boundaries. Cairns (1968) has pointed out that the electoral system in Canada has had a strong effect in distorting the translation of votes into seats on a provincial basis. Provinces, like constituencies, can be classified as marginal or non-marginal, with relatively small changes in the popular vote of a marginal province having the potential of creating substantial changes in the partisan composition of that province’s parliamentary representation. Thus, for many campaign activities, strategic consi~rations may encourage a focus on those provinces containing a high proportion of marginal constituencies.
The national
party
leaders’
tours
Elections in Canada involve almost continual travel by the party leaders during a nearly twomonth carnp~~ period. The major party leaders are accompanied on their campaign tours by a large contingent of mass media personnel, with the tour activities providing the main source of campaign news (Clarke et at., 1979; Fletcher, 198 1). Party strategists, perceiving leadership image as the leading factor in the persuasive process, consider the leader’s tour as the focal point of the campaign. Thus campaigners pay very great attention to the planning of the leader’s tour and consider the best campaigns to be those in which the leader’s activities are planned to the minutest detail and carried out with military-style efficiency. It is not the perceived importance of personality alone that accounts for the importance of the leaders’ tours. With modem communications, the national leaders can reach far more people from the television studio than through the frenzied activities of a national campaign tour. Why, then, has the ‘whistle-stop’ campaign tour continued in modified jet-age form? Although the importance of tradition and habit in an environment of uncertainty should not be ignored, there seem to be rational reasons for the continued importance of the leaders’ tours. First of all, the tour provides for numerous news creation possibilities. The simple fact that the major news services expend considerable money and talent to cover the leaders’ tours ensures that a leader will receive considerable coverage regardless of the objective importance of what he has to say. Indeed, the tour itself is a major news event, often generating more publicity and interest than the leader’s policy pronouncem~~.
ERIC&&N-I-Z
49
Secondly, the leaders’ tours are important because the mass media are fairly decentralized in Canada. Newspapers generally reach only a city and its surrounding area or, in some cases, a province. Radio is predominantly local, with the public national network having a very limited audience in the urban areas. Although most television stations are part of national networks, they usually have important provincial and/or local news and public affairs programming. Thus, a visit by a national party leader can generate substantial local media coverage. Tbirdly, the salience of regional, provincial and local concerns and identities makes visits to particular localities an important aspect of the persuasive process. Visits by the party leader may allow appeals to be made to speci6.c local or regional concerns (Scar-row, 1959): Even if the presence of national media personnel makes explicit appeals on the basis of local or regional interests unlikely, a visit to a locality may contain an implicit appeal that the leader (and, by implication, the party) cares about that community and will be sensitive to its interests. As Kayden (1973) has noted regarding American campaigns, it is the fact rather than the content of an appearance by the candidate that is considered important. Also, even if a direct appeal is not made to a locality, the party leader may try to emphasize those aspects of the national program that are central issues in the minds of the electorate of that locality. The provincial
distribution
of the leaders’ visits
Given the relatively short period of time available in the campaign in which to make appearances in a very large country, the tours of the leaders of the three major parties have been examined for each national election from 1949 to 1980 to determine the extent to which provinces with a high proportion of marginal seats have been emphasized. The itineraries of the party leaders during the campaign period were derived from newspaper reports of their activities (checked in some cases against reports in party files) with the leader considered as having visited a province on a particular day if he made a public appearance there.’ A marginal seat was defined as one which a party won or lost in the preceding election by a margin of 10 per cent or less of the total valid vote. 2 Although there have been some very large swings in constituency voting patterns in particular situations, a margin of over 10 percentage points is fairly difficult for another party to overcome. Specifically, in those elections in the time period under investigation not affected by redistribution, only 17 per cent of the ‘non-marginal’ seats changed hands (12 per cent it-the ‘deviating’ election of 1958 is excluded from the analysis). On the other hand, 40 per cent of the ‘marginal’ seats changed hands in the next election. Thus al&rough seats won by more than 10 per cent are not completely safe, generally it appears unlikely that a party would devote great efforts to win or hold such seats. To summarize the relationship between the distribution of each leader’s tour and the provincial distribution of the party’s marginal seats, the correlations between the two variables have been calculated for each of the 12 elections (ZWe 1).3 In almost all election campaigns, there was a tendency for the tour to devote more time to those provinces with a higher than average proportion of marginal seats than would be expected if tour time were distributed according to the number of constituencies in a province. However, most of the relationships for the Liberal and Progressive Conservative (PC) parties were not particularly strong as their tours did not generally focus all that strongly on provinces that might be considered marginal. By contrast, the CCF-NDF appeared to more strongly and consistently emphasize provincial priorities in the tours of its leaders. Although the electoral system has generated considerable distortions in the translation of votes into parliamentary seats on a provincial basis, the distribution of marginal seats for the
Election campaign tours in Canada
50
TABLE 1. The relationship distribution of the leader’s
between the tour and the
provincial provincial
distribution of the party’s marginal seats, 1949-1980 (Pearson correlation coefficients)
1949 1953 1957 1958 1962 1963 1965 1968 1972 1974 1979 1980
Lib
PC
CCF-NDP
0.49 0.02 0.19 0.32 0.20 0.55 0.07 0.22 0.40 0.64 0.48 0.73
- 0.06 0.83 0.34 0.39 0.37 0.06 0.02 0.48 0.60 0.39 0.32 0.40
0.91 0.62 0.90 0.95 0.83 0.92 0.88 0.70 0.99 0.86 0.48 0.79
Liberal and Progressive Conservative parties has not generally provided a particularly strong incentive to emphasize certain provinces and ignore others. To illustrate this point, the proportion of a party’s popular vote, marginal seats and parliamentary representation derived from a particular region can be examined in relation to the general electoral significance of that region measured in terms of its proportion of the country’s constituencies. Looking at Western Canada and Quebec, areas of Liberal and PC weakness respectively, it can be seen (Table 2) that, averaged over 12 elections, the distorting effects of the electoral system have been stronger in terms of each party’s parliamentary representation than in terms of the distribution of marginal seats. However, the more regional&d support bases of the CCF-NDP (exaggerated by the workings of the electoral system) have provided a strong incentive for that party to emphasize provincial priorities. As a smaller party it tends to be competitive only in its areas of strongest support. As the voting support bases of the two largest parties have become somewhat more regionalized in recent years, the distribution of marginal seats has become much less even. TABLE 2. The proportion of each party’s total popular vote, marginal seats and constituencies won derived from selected regions, 1949-1980 Proportion of pop&r vote (%I
Proportion of marginal seats W>
Boportion of constituencies won @)
Quebec Lib PC CCF-NDP
34.6 18.2 9.6
23.5 15.2 0.7
44.8 7.2 0.0
West Lib PC CCF-NDP
17.6 27.6 43.9
18.5 23.6 62.6
3E.r: 70:2
Region
Note. Percentages represent averages over 12 elections. An average of 27.9 per cent of Canada’s constituencies were located in Quebec and 26.5 per cent in the four Western provinces during the period examined.
ERICMrrwz
51
This is reflected, to some extent, in a greater emphasis in the leaders’ tours on priority provinces. For example, in the 1980 campaign (Table 3) the Liberal and PC leaders spent more than three times as much time in Ontario as they did in Quebec (even though Ontario has only about one and a quarter times as many seats in the House of Commons). Faced with a fairly similar distribution of marginal seats in 1979, the PCs (as the challenger rather than the incumbent party) devoted an even smaller proportion of their leader’s time to Quebec. TABLE 3. Provincial distribution of the leaders’ tours (1980), provincial distribution of marginal seats in the preceding election (1979), and provincial distribution of constituencies
l+ovince
Lib tour (%)
Lib marginal seats (%)
PC tour (%)
Rz marginal seats (%)
NDP NDP tour (%I
marginal Proportion of seats constituencies (%I @I
Bc Alta Sask
9.6 2.4 6.0
6.3 0.0 4.7
12.3 :::
16.1 ;*;
17.0 2.3 8.0
29.7 0.0 16.2
9.9 7.4 5.0
ont Man %Y
48.2 6.0 9.6 2.4
59.4 3.1 12.5
43.2 9.9 17.3 2.5
53.2 8:l 1.7
48.9 6.8 3.4
3;:: 0.0
3::; 26.6
z
4.8
4.7 :::
2.5
4:8 :.:
4.5 :::
0.0 2.7
3.9 ::;
Nfld Terr
::“b
:::
2.5 0.0
0.0 1.7
:::
2.7 5.4
2.5 1.1
Total (days)
41.5
64
40.5
62
44
37
282
Looking at the general patterns of each party’s visits over 12 elections, Table 4 confirms the conventional wisdom of Canadian political commentators that Ontario has tended to be a major focal point of campaign activity. As well, Liberal and Progressive Conservative party leaders have emphasized the Atlantic provinces in their touring activities. On the other hand, Quebec has received a considerably smaller share of leader visits than one would expect in terms of the size of its parliamentary representation. Western Canada has received TABLE4. Leaders’ visits by province, 1949-1980
Rovince
BC Alta Sask Man ont z&Y NB NS Nfld Tel-r Total
Liberal visits (%)
8.2 5.0 4.2 5.0 40.4 20.0 2.8 4.8
PC visits (%I
10.7 7.3 6.6
::; 0.5
3::: 16.0 2.6 5.2 5.7 2.8 0.4
100.2
100.3
NDP visits W)
20.1 5.7 19.5 10.0 32.0
average Proportion of constituencies (%)
8.6 6.8 5.9 3::; 27.9
::; ::: 1.5 0.5
::: 4.4 2.6 0.8
99.9
100.0
Election campaign tours in Canada
52
more visits from Conservative than Liberal leaders, reflecting the substantial realignment in the West favorable to the PC party in this period. CCF-NDP leaders have strongly emphasized Saskatchewan and British Columbia in their tour strategies. This general pattern of visits reflects the general distribution of marginal seats. In most elections, Ontario and the Atlantic provinces (except Newfoundland) have had a greater than average proportion of Liberal and PC marginal seats. Quebec, on the other hand, has had a substantially below-average proportion of marginal seats for all major parties. The Western Canadian provinces have generally provided a slightly smaller proportion of marginal seats for the Liberals than for the PCs. Finally, Saskatchewan and British Columbia have usually had a much higher proportion of CCF-NDP marginal seats, with all other provinces (except Manitoba and Ontario) having few, if any, marginal seats for that party.
Constituency
level analysis
Because of the difficulties involved in gathering accurate data for an analysis of the specific constituencies visited by the party leaders, only a single campaign (1972) has been examined. And because of the problems in analyzing visits to particular constituencies within large urban centers, it was decided to exclude metropolitan areas containing more than one constituency from the analysis. 5 While this unfortunately meant the exclusion of 38 per cent of the constituencies, it seems reasonable to expect that a marginal seat maximization strategy would be applied more to the less urbanized areas of the country (where local concerns are likely stronger and constituency boundaries more meaningful) than to metropolitan centers. As can be seen in Table 5, marginal constituencies were substantially more likely to receive a visit from that party’s leader than non-marginal seats. This is most clearly the case for the smallest of the three major parties, the NDP, which most needs to concentrate its resources to offset the effects of the electoral system and which can safely write off most of its non-marginal seats as ‘hopeless’, based on past experience. By examining the leaders’ tours on a constituency basis, an indication of the impact of a leader’s visit on constituency outcomes can be obtained. Comparing the change in each party’s vote in constituencies visited by that party’s leader to the experience of constituencies not visited by the leader, it can be seen that a leader’s visit does make a difference (Table 6). Interestingly this effect is stronger for the opposition parties (PC and NDP in TABLE 5. Proportion
of marginal and nonmarginal constituencies visited by the party leaders in the 1972 election campaign (nonmetropolitan areas only)
TABLE 6. Average change in each party’s popular vote from the previous election in constituencies visited and not visited by the party leader (non-metropolitan areas only)
Proportion of party ‘s non-marginal seats visited (%I
Visited Not visited Visited .5y exclusively by by party leader party leader party leader W) (%) (%I
Party
Proportion of party ‘s marginal seats visited (%I
Lib PC NDP
39 37 60
20 22 11
Note. The classification of seats as marginal or nonmarginal is in terms of the results of the previous election (1968).
Party Lib PC NDP
-4.05 +4.27 +4.09
- 2.44 +7.59 + 4.78
-6.22 - 0.60 + 0.98
ERICMIN-IZ
53
1972) perhaps because their leaders were less well-known. The general conclusion is strengthened by the fact that each party’s shift in votes was even more favorable than its average in constituencies that were not visited by any other major party leader. It could be argued that, given fairly strong provincial variations in the inter-election party swing, the effect of a leader’s tour should be measured by comparing the average change in constituencies visited to the average change in the province in which the constituencies are located. Using this method, a fairly small but uniform pattern was found the Liberal leader’s visits were associated with an average constituency change of 1.35 per cent above the provincial swing (i.e. more favourable to that party); PC visits with 1.36 per cent; and NDP visits with 1.52 per cent6 Conclusions Although the Canadian electoral system has helped to create a strongly regional&l pattern of party representation in the Canadian Parliament, the distribution of marginat seats for the leading parties over the post-war period has provided only a moderate incentive for campaigners to pursue provincially defined campaign resource allocation strategies. However, the increased regionalization of the support bases of the two leading parties (which may pa&ally be an indirect effect of the distortions in representation caused by the electoral system) has created a stronger potential for regionalned campaign strategies. The direction of the relationships between the leaders’ tours and geographic strategic considerations (both at the provincial and the constituency level) was basically consistent with the hypothesis that parties will concentrate their efforts on those areas potentially most productive in terms of past election results. However, the relationships were not generally very strong. This should not be surprising considering the variety of factors involved in devising campaign strategies. Not only are there other available indicators of the state of party competition (such as by-election results, extrapolations from polling data, and reports from the ‘field’) but, more importantly, internal party considerations, such as the need to maintain the morale of candidates and party workers, and the party leader’s concern to maintain his popularity within the party, encourage a broad rather than a focused pattern of campaign visits. Thus, for example, in 11 of the 12 campaigns examined the Liberal leader visited every province at least once while the PC leader visited every province in 9 of the 12 campaigns. At the constituency level, incumbent MPs may be able to exercise some pressure to schedule visits to help their campaigns, and special consideration may be given to the election of prominent candidates (Lovink, 1973). Even if campaign strategists are able to resist pressures relating to internal party politics, the tour may deviate from a spatially defined seat maximization strategy in order to appeal to a national audience (for example, by visiting areas of party strength to convey an image of popularity). And, given the large size of the country, the costs (both in time and money) of visiting remote areas may have some significance. Finally, using evidence at the constituency level, it was found that a leader’s visit was associated with an above-average change in the support level for that party. Given the comparatively wide variation in the constituency level ‘swing’ in Canada (Jackman, 1972), further research concerning the effect of campaign variables on constituency level outcomes would be useful. Notes 1. If a leader made a publicappearancein two (or more) provinceson the sameday, he was considered to have spent a half day in each province.
54 2.
3.
4. 5.
6.
Election
catnjaign
tours in Canada
Electionresultsand party affiliations were derived from the Parliamentary Guide (Ottawa, various years) and the Report of the Chief Electoral OffKer (Ottawa, various years). Candidates listed as ‘Independent Liberal’ or ‘Independent Conservative’ were considered Liberal or Conservative if there was no other candidate listed as Liberal or Conservative in the contest. For the two dualmember constituencies that existed before 1968, marginality was measured in terms of whether each of the losing candidates was within 10 per cent (of half the total valid vote) of the second-place candidate. To control for the effects of varying provincial size, both variables have been standardized by dividing by the proportion of seats in each province. In addition, to reduce the distorting effects of particular elections in which there have been strong deviations from normal voting patterns, marginality has been calculated in terms of the proportion of marginal seats in each province in the previous two elections. (Basically comparable results were obtained by calculating marginality in terms of the previous election results). The Yukon and Northwest Territories have been excluded from the analysis. The Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) changed its name to the New Democratic Party (NDP) prior to the 1962 election. Stormont-Dundas, won by the Speaker of the House of Commons running as an independent, was not inciuded in the analysis. There were Liberal and Conservative candidates in all other constituencies. For the NDP a small number of uncontested constituencies were excluded. Looking only at constituencies receiving visits exclusively from one party leader, the average changes above the provincial averages were: Liberal, 1.83 per cent; PC, 3.68 per cent; and NDP, 2.09 per cent.
References BRAMS, S. J. AND DAVIS, M. D. (1974). The 3/2’s rule in presidential campaigning. American Political Science Review 68,113-134. CAIRNS, A. C. (1968). The electoral system and the party system in Canada, 1921-1965. Gznu&n Journul of Political Science 1.55-80. CLARKE, H. D., JENSON, J., LEDUC, L. AND PAMMEIT, J. H. (1979). Political Choice in Canauk. Toronto:
McGraw-HWRyerson. COLANTONI, C. C., LEVESQUE,T. J. AND ORDESHOOK,P. C. (1975). Campaign resource allocations under the electoral college. American Political Science Review 69, 14 I- 154. ELKINS,D. J. AND SIMEON, R. (1980). Small Worlds: Provinces andPartiesin Gmadian Political Life Toronto:
Methuen. FLETCHER,F. J. (1981). The Newspaper andPublic Afiirs. Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada. GBB~N~, R. (1982). Regionalism: Territorial Politics in Gznaah and the United States. Toronto: Buttenvorths. JACKMAN, R. W. (1972). Political parties, voting and national integration: the Canadian case. Comparative Politics4,511-536. JOHNSTON, R. J. (1976). Resource allocation and political campaigns: notes towards a methodology. Policy and Politics 5, 181-199. JOHNSTON, R. J. (1977). The electoral geography of an election campaign: Scotland in October 1974. Scottish Geographical Magazine 93,98-108. KAMEN, X. (1973). The political campaign as an organization. Public Policy 21, 263-290. LOVINK, J. A. A. (1973). Is Canadian politics too competitive? Chadian Journal of Political Science 6, 341-379. MEISEL, J. (1962). The Canadian General Election oj1957. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. MINGHI, J. V. AND RUMLEY.D. (1978). Toward a geography of campaigning: some evidence from a provincial election in Vancouver, British Columbia. Canadian Geogrolpher 22,145-162. ORNSTEIN,M. D., STEVENSON,H. M. AND W~UAMS, A. P. (1980). Region, class and political culture in Canada. Canadian Journal of Political Science 13,227-271. kARROW, H. A. (1959). Communication of election appeals in Canada. Journalism Quarterb 36,219-220. YOUNG, H. P. (1978). The allocation of funds in lobbying and campaigning. BehavioralScience 23,21-31.
Election campaign tours in Canada ERICMINI-Z Department of Political Science, Sir Wilfred Grenfell College, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Corner Brook, Newfoundhd A2H 6P9, Canada
ABSTRACT. Becauseof the nature of Canadian society and politics as well as the effects of the single-member plurality electoral system, spatial criteria may be expected to figure prominently in the development of campaign strategy for national elections. The major focus of Canadian election campaigns, the tours of the national party leaders, can be considered as a scarce resource whose allocation willbedesignedtotryto maximize the number of seats won by a party. An analysis of the distribution of the campaign visits by province and constituency indicates that there is some relationship with the distribution of constituencies that could be considered marginal based on previous election results. However, at least until recently, the distorting effects of the single-member plurality electoral system were not strong enough to encourage the largest parties to adopt highly
regional&d campaign strategies. Nevertheless, the relevance of carefully distributing a leader’s campaign visits is suggested by the relationship between visits and constituency voting patterns.
A key strategic element in any large-scale persuasive effort is the choice of targets. Given limited resources, election campaign strategists may be expected to focus their persuasive efforts as much as possible on those groupings considered most important to the successful outcome of the campaign. Although political scientists have tended to focus on the nature of the appeals made to target groupings and the modifications of party positions this may necessitate, campaign strategists typically are very concerned with the amount of campaign effort devoted to distinctive groupings. A party’s basic nature and image cannot be easily changed and thus campaigners may be at least as interested in the distribution of the ‘sales’ effort as in the nature of the ‘product’ being sold. Although research is rather limited in scope, there is evidence that, to some extent, the allocation of campaign resources reflects spatially defined campaign strategies (Me&l, 1962; Brams and Davis, 1974; Colantoniet al., 1975; Johnston, 1976,1977; Minghi and Rumley, 1978; Young, 1978). Through an analysis of the geographical distribution of the campaign tours of party leaders, this study considers the impact of strategic considerations on national election campaigns in Canada. The strategic environment Canadians tend to relate to political life more in terms of their geographical position than in terms of the functional national groupings whose interests they share. This sense of geo0260-9827/85/01
0047-08 $03.00
0 1985 Bunetwonh & GJ (Publishers) Ltd
48
Election campaign tours in Cha&
graphical political identification is fostered by the nature of federalism in Canada which has both encouraged the building of provincial identities and, through frequent intergovemmental disputes, focused attention on the geographical aspect of ‘who gets what’ in Canada (Elkins and Simeon, 1980; Ornstein et al., 1980; Gibbiis, 1982). The single-member plurality electoral system provides a strong incentive for parties to mobilize support on a spatially defined basis. Given that the competitive situation varies greatly from constituency to constituency, national campaign strategists can be expected to focus their efforts as much as possible on those constituencies where the expected margin of votes separating the leading parties is perceived to be relatively small, such that the allocation of campaign resources could reasonably have some expectation of contributing to the winning or saving of a seat for the party. The allocation of campaign resources to constituencies where the difference in party support is substantial has little likelihood of being electorally beneficial. Fast election results provide an easy source of information upon which to develop a constituency-based strategy, and the organizational structures of the parties are generally oriented to the mobilization of support on a constituency basis. However, there are difficulties involved in focusing campaign efforts (other than canvassing) on marginal constituencies. Many cities contain a number of constituencies, with voters often having a limited sense of identification with their constituency, and media audiences do not generally coincide with constituency boundaries. Cairns (1968) has pointed out that the electoral system in Canada has had a strong effect in distorting the translation of votes into seats on a provincial basis. Provinces, like constituencies, can be classified as marginal or non-marginal, with relatively small changes in the popular vote of a marginal province having the potential of creating substantial changes in the partisan composition of that province’s parliamentary representation. Thus, for many campaign activities, strategic consi~rations may encourage a focus on those provinces containing a high proportion of marginal constituencies.
The national
party
leaders’
tours
Elections in Canada involve almost continual travel by the party leaders during a nearly twomonth carnp~~ period. The major party leaders are accompanied on their campaign tours by a large contingent of mass media personnel, with the tour activities providing the main source of campaign news (Clarke et at., 1979; Fletcher, 198 1). Party strategists, perceiving leadership image as the leading factor in the persuasive process, consider the leader’s tour as the focal point of the campaign. Thus campaigners pay very great attention to the planning of the leader’s tour and consider the best campaigns to be those in which the leader’s activities are planned to the minutest detail and carried out with military-style efficiency. It is not the perceived importance of personality alone that accounts for the importance of the leaders’ tours. With modem communications, the national leaders can reach far more people from the television studio than through the frenzied activities of a national campaign tour. Why, then, has the ‘whistle-stop’ campaign tour continued in modified jet-age form? Although the importance of tradition and habit in an environment of uncertainty should not be ignored, there seem to be rational reasons for the continued importance of the leaders’ tours. First of all, the tour provides for numerous news creation possibilities. The simple fact that the major news services expend considerable money and talent to cover the leaders’ tours ensures that a leader will receive considerable coverage regardless of the objective importance of what he has to say. Indeed, the tour itself is a major news event, often generating more publicity and interest than the leader’s policy pronouncem~~.
ERIC&&N-I-Z
49
Secondly, the leaders’ tours are important because the mass media are fairly decentralized in Canada. Newspapers generally reach only a city and its surrounding area or, in some cases, a province. Radio is predominantly local, with the public national network having a very limited audience in the urban areas. Although most television stations are part of national networks, they usually have important provincial and/or local news and public affairs programming. Thus, a visit by a national party leader can generate substantial local media coverage. Tbirdly, the salience of regional, provincial and local concerns and identities makes visits to particular localities an important aspect of the persuasive process. Visits by the party leader may allow appeals to be made to speci6.c local or regional concerns (Scar-row, 1959): Even if the presence of national media personnel makes explicit appeals on the basis of local or regional interests unlikely, a visit to a locality may contain an implicit appeal that the leader (and, by implication, the party) cares about that community and will be sensitive to its interests. As Kayden (1973) has noted regarding American campaigns, it is the fact rather than the content of an appearance by the candidate that is considered important. Also, even if a direct appeal is not made to a locality, the party leader may try to emphasize those aspects of the national program that are central issues in the minds of the electorate of that locality. The provincial
distribution
of the leaders’ visits
Given the relatively short period of time available in the campaign in which to make appearances in a very large country, the tours of the leaders of the three major parties have been examined for each national election from 1949 to 1980 to determine the extent to which provinces with a high proportion of marginal seats have been emphasized. The itineraries of the party leaders during the campaign period were derived from newspaper reports of their activities (checked in some cases against reports in party files) with the leader considered as having visited a province on a particular day if he made a public appearance there.’ A marginal seat was defined as one which a party won or lost in the preceding election by a margin of 10 per cent or less of the total valid vote. 2 Although there have been some very large swings in constituency voting patterns in particular situations, a margin of over 10 percentage points is fairly difficult for another party to overcome. Specifically, in those elections in the time period under investigation not affected by redistribution, only 17 per cent of the ‘non-marginal’ seats changed hands (12 per cent it-the ‘deviating’ election of 1958 is excluded from the analysis). On the other hand, 40 per cent of the ‘marginal’ seats changed hands in the next election. Thus al&rough seats won by more than 10 per cent are not completely safe, generally it appears unlikely that a party would devote great efforts to win or hold such seats. To summarize the relationship between the distribution of each leader’s tour and the provincial distribution of the party’s marginal seats, the correlations between the two variables have been calculated for each of the 12 elections (ZWe 1).3 In almost all election campaigns, there was a tendency for the tour to devote more time to those provinces with a higher than average proportion of marginal seats than would be expected if tour time were distributed according to the number of constituencies in a province. However, most of the relationships for the Liberal and Progressive Conservative (PC) parties were not particularly strong as their tours did not generally focus all that strongly on provinces that might be considered marginal. By contrast, the CCF-NDF appeared to more strongly and consistently emphasize provincial priorities in the tours of its leaders. Although the electoral system has generated considerable distortions in the translation of votes into parliamentary seats on a provincial basis, the distribution of marginal seats for the
Election campaign tours in Canada
50
TABLE 1. The relationship distribution of the leader’s
between the tour and the
provincial provincial
distribution of the party’s marginal seats, 1949-1980 (Pearson correlation coefficients)
1949 1953 1957 1958 1962 1963 1965 1968 1972 1974 1979 1980
Lib
PC
CCF-NDP
0.49 0.02 0.19 0.32 0.20 0.55 0.07 0.22 0.40 0.64 0.48 0.73
- 0.06 0.83 0.34 0.39 0.37 0.06 0.02 0.48 0.60 0.39 0.32 0.40
0.91 0.62 0.90 0.95 0.83 0.92 0.88 0.70 0.99 0.86 0.48 0.79
Liberal and Progressive Conservative parties has not generally provided a particularly strong incentive to emphasize certain provinces and ignore others. To illustrate this point, the proportion of a party’s popular vote, marginal seats and parliamentary representation derived from a particular region can be examined in relation to the general electoral significance of that region measured in terms of its proportion of the country’s constituencies. Looking at Western Canada and Quebec, areas of Liberal and PC weakness respectively, it can be seen (Table 2) that, averaged over 12 elections, the distorting effects of the electoral system have been stronger in terms of each party’s parliamentary representation than in terms of the distribution of marginal seats. However, the more regional&d support bases of the CCF-NDP (exaggerated by the workings of the electoral system) have provided a strong incentive for that party to emphasize provincial priorities. As a smaller party it tends to be competitive only in its areas of strongest support. As the voting support bases of the two largest parties have become somewhat more regionalized in recent years, the distribution of marginal seats has become much less even. TABLE 2. The proportion of each party’s total popular vote, marginal seats and constituencies won derived from selected regions, 1949-1980 Proportion of pop&r vote (%I
Proportion of marginal seats W>
Boportion of constituencies won @)
Quebec Lib PC CCF-NDP
34.6 18.2 9.6
23.5 15.2 0.7
44.8 7.2 0.0
West Lib PC CCF-NDP
17.6 27.6 43.9
18.5 23.6 62.6
3E.r: 70:2
Region
Note. Percentages represent averages over 12 elections. An average of 27.9 per cent of Canada’s constituencies were located in Quebec and 26.5 per cent in the four Western provinces during the period examined.
ERICMrrwz
51
This is reflected, to some extent, in a greater emphasis in the leaders’ tours on priority provinces. For example, in the 1980 campaign (Table 3) the Liberal and PC leaders spent more than three times as much time in Ontario as they did in Quebec (even though Ontario has only about one and a quarter times as many seats in the House of Commons). Faced with a fairly similar distribution of marginal seats in 1979, the PCs (as the challenger rather than the incumbent party) devoted an even smaller proportion of their leader’s time to Quebec. TABLE 3. Provincial distribution of the leaders’ tours (1980), provincial distribution of marginal seats in the preceding election (1979), and provincial distribution of constituencies
l+ovince
Lib tour (%)
Lib marginal seats (%)
PC tour (%)
Rz marginal seats (%)
NDP NDP tour (%I
marginal Proportion of seats constituencies (%I @I
Bc Alta Sask
9.6 2.4 6.0
6.3 0.0 4.7
12.3 :::
16.1 ;*;
17.0 2.3 8.0
29.7 0.0 16.2
9.9 7.4 5.0
ont Man %Y
48.2 6.0 9.6 2.4
59.4 3.1 12.5
43.2 9.9 17.3 2.5
53.2 8:l 1.7
48.9 6.8 3.4
3;:: 0.0
3::; 26.6
z
4.8
4.7 :::
2.5
4:8 :.:
4.5 :::
0.0 2.7
3.9 ::;
Nfld Terr
::“b
:::
2.5 0.0
0.0 1.7
:::
2.7 5.4
2.5 1.1
Total (days)
41.5
64
40.5
62
44
37
282
Looking at the general patterns of each party’s visits over 12 elections, Table 4 confirms the conventional wisdom of Canadian political commentators that Ontario has tended to be a major focal point of campaign activity. As well, Liberal and Progressive Conservative party leaders have emphasized the Atlantic provinces in their touring activities. On the other hand, Quebec has received a considerably smaller share of leader visits than one would expect in terms of the size of its parliamentary representation. Western Canada has received TABLE4. Leaders’ visits by province, 1949-1980
Rovince
BC Alta Sask Man ont z&Y NB NS Nfld Tel-r Total
Liberal visits (%)
8.2 5.0 4.2 5.0 40.4 20.0 2.8 4.8
PC visits (%I
10.7 7.3 6.6
::; 0.5
3::: 16.0 2.6 5.2 5.7 2.8 0.4
100.2
100.3
NDP visits W)
20.1 5.7 19.5 10.0 32.0
average Proportion of constituencies (%)
8.6 6.8 5.9 3::; 27.9
::; ::: 1.5 0.5
::: 4.4 2.6 0.8
99.9
100.0
Election campaign tours in Canada
52
more visits from Conservative than Liberal leaders, reflecting the substantial realignment in the West favorable to the PC party in this period. CCF-NDP leaders have strongly emphasized Saskatchewan and British Columbia in their tour strategies. This general pattern of visits reflects the general distribution of marginal seats. In most elections, Ontario and the Atlantic provinces (except Newfoundland) have had a greater than average proportion of Liberal and PC marginal seats. Quebec, on the other hand, has had a substantially below-average proportion of marginal seats for all major parties. The Western Canadian provinces have generally provided a slightly smaller proportion of marginal seats for the Liberals than for the PCs. Finally, Saskatchewan and British Columbia have usually had a much higher proportion of CCF-NDP marginal seats, with all other provinces (except Manitoba and Ontario) having few, if any, marginal seats for that party.
Constituency
level analysis
Because of the difficulties involved in gathering accurate data for an analysis of the specific constituencies visited by the party leaders, only a single campaign (1972) has been examined. And because of the problems in analyzing visits to particular constituencies within large urban centers, it was decided to exclude metropolitan areas containing more than one constituency from the analysis. 5 While this unfortunately meant the exclusion of 38 per cent of the constituencies, it seems reasonable to expect that a marginal seat maximization strategy would be applied more to the less urbanized areas of the country (where local concerns are likely stronger and constituency boundaries more meaningful) than to metropolitan centers. As can be seen in Table 5, marginal constituencies were substantially more likely to receive a visit from that party’s leader than non-marginal seats. This is most clearly the case for the smallest of the three major parties, the NDP, which most needs to concentrate its resources to offset the effects of the electoral system and which can safely write off most of its non-marginal seats as ‘hopeless’, based on past experience. By examining the leaders’ tours on a constituency basis, an indication of the impact of a leader’s visit on constituency outcomes can be obtained. Comparing the change in each party’s vote in constituencies visited by that party’s leader to the experience of constituencies not visited by the leader, it can be seen that a leader’s visit does make a difference (Table 6). Interestingly this effect is stronger for the opposition parties (PC and NDP in TABLE 5. Proportion
of marginal and nonmarginal constituencies visited by the party leaders in the 1972 election campaign (nonmetropolitan areas only)
TABLE 6. Average change in each party’s popular vote from the previous election in constituencies visited and not visited by the party leader (non-metropolitan areas only)
Proportion of party ‘s non-marginal seats visited (%I
Visited Not visited Visited .5y exclusively by by party leader party leader party leader W) (%) (%I
Party
Proportion of party ‘s marginal seats visited (%I
Lib PC NDP
39 37 60
20 22 11
Note. The classification of seats as marginal or nonmarginal is in terms of the results of the previous election (1968).
Party Lib PC NDP
-4.05 +4.27 +4.09
- 2.44 +7.59 + 4.78
-6.22 - 0.60 + 0.98
ERICMIN-IZ
53
1972) perhaps because their leaders were less well-known. The general conclusion is strengthened by the fact that each party’s shift in votes was even more favorable than its average in constituencies that were not visited by any other major party leader. It could be argued that, given fairly strong provincial variations in the inter-election party swing, the effect of a leader’s tour should be measured by comparing the average change in constituencies visited to the average change in the province in which the constituencies are located. Using this method, a fairly small but uniform pattern was found the Liberal leader’s visits were associated with an average constituency change of 1.35 per cent above the provincial swing (i.e. more favourable to that party); PC visits with 1.36 per cent; and NDP visits with 1.52 per cent6 Conclusions Although the Canadian electoral system has helped to create a strongly regional&l pattern of party representation in the Canadian Parliament, the distribution of marginat seats for the leading parties over the post-war period has provided only a moderate incentive for campaigners to pursue provincially defined campaign resource allocation strategies. However, the increased regionalization of the support bases of the two leading parties (which may pa&ally be an indirect effect of the distortions in representation caused by the electoral system) has created a stronger potential for regionalned campaign strategies. The direction of the relationships between the leaders’ tours and geographic strategic considerations (both at the provincial and the constituency level) was basically consistent with the hypothesis that parties will concentrate their efforts on those areas potentially most productive in terms of past election results. However, the relationships were not generally very strong. This should not be surprising considering the variety of factors involved in devising campaign strategies. Not only are there other available indicators of the state of party competition (such as by-election results, extrapolations from polling data, and reports from the ‘field’) but, more importantly, internal party considerations, such as the need to maintain the morale of candidates and party workers, and the party leader’s concern to maintain his popularity within the party, encourage a broad rather than a focused pattern of campaign visits. Thus, for example, in 11 of the 12 campaigns examined the Liberal leader visited every province at least once while the PC leader visited every province in 9 of the 12 campaigns. At the constituency level, incumbent MPs may be able to exercise some pressure to schedule visits to help their campaigns, and special consideration may be given to the election of prominent candidates (Lovink, 1973). Even if campaign strategists are able to resist pressures relating to internal party politics, the tour may deviate from a spatially defined seat maximization strategy in order to appeal to a national audience (for example, by visiting areas of party strength to convey an image of popularity). And, given the large size of the country, the costs (both in time and money) of visiting remote areas may have some significance. Finally, using evidence at the constituency level, it was found that a leader’s visit was associated with an above-average change in the support level for that party. Given the comparatively wide variation in the constituency level ‘swing’ in Canada (Jackman, 1972), further research concerning the effect of campaign variables on constituency level outcomes would be useful. Notes 1. If a leader made a publicappearancein two (or more) provinceson the sameday, he was considered to have spent a half day in each province.
54 2.
3.
4. 5.
6.
Election
catnjaign
tours in Canada
Electionresultsand party affiliations were derived from the Parliamentary Guide (Ottawa, various years) and the Report of the Chief Electoral OffKer (Ottawa, various years). Candidates listed as ‘Independent Liberal’ or ‘Independent Conservative’ were considered Liberal or Conservative if there was no other candidate listed as Liberal or Conservative in the contest. For the two dualmember constituencies that existed before 1968, marginality was measured in terms of whether each of the losing candidates was within 10 per cent (of half the total valid vote) of the second-place candidate. To control for the effects of varying provincial size, both variables have been standardized by dividing by the proportion of seats in each province. In addition, to reduce the distorting effects of particular elections in which there have been strong deviations from normal voting patterns, marginality has been calculated in terms of the proportion of marginal seats in each province in the previous two elections. (Basically comparable results were obtained by calculating marginality in terms of the previous election results). The Yukon and Northwest Territories have been excluded from the analysis. The Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) changed its name to the New Democratic Party (NDP) prior to the 1962 election. Stormont-Dundas, won by the Speaker of the House of Commons running as an independent, was not inciuded in the analysis. There were Liberal and Conservative candidates in all other constituencies. For the NDP a small number of uncontested constituencies were excluded. Looking only at constituencies receiving visits exclusively from one party leader, the average changes above the provincial averages were: Liberal, 1.83 per cent; PC, 3.68 per cent; and NDP, 2.09 per cent.
References BRAMS, S. J. AND DAVIS, M. D. (1974). The 3/2’s rule in presidential campaigning. American Political Science Review 68,113-134. CAIRNS, A. C. (1968). The electoral system and the party system in Canada, 1921-1965. Gznu&n Journul of Political Science 1.55-80. CLARKE, H. D., JENSON, J., LEDUC, L. AND PAMMEIT, J. H. (1979). Political Choice in Canauk. Toronto:
McGraw-HWRyerson. COLANTONI, C. C., LEVESQUE,T. J. AND ORDESHOOK,P. C. (1975). Campaign resource allocations under the electoral college. American Political Science Review 69, 14 I- 154. ELKINS,D. J. AND SIMEON, R. (1980). Small Worlds: Provinces andPartiesin Gmadian Political Life Toronto:
Methuen. FLETCHER,F. J. (1981). The Newspaper andPublic Afiirs. Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada. GBB~N~, R. (1982). Regionalism: Territorial Politics in Gznaah and the United States. Toronto: Buttenvorths. JACKMAN, R. W. (1972). Political parties, voting and national integration: the Canadian case. Comparative Politics4,511-536. JOHNSTON, R. J. (1976). Resource allocation and political campaigns: notes towards a methodology. Policy and Politics 5, 181-199. JOHNSTON, R. J. (1977). The electoral geography of an election campaign: Scotland in October 1974. Scottish Geographical Magazine 93,98-108. KAMEN, X. (1973). The political campaign as an organization. Public Policy 21, 263-290. LOVINK, J. A. A. (1973). Is Canadian politics too competitive? Chadian Journal of Political Science 6, 341-379. MEISEL, J. (1962). The Canadian General Election oj1957. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. MINGHI, J. V. AND RUMLEY.D. (1978). Toward a geography of campaigning: some evidence from a provincial election in Vancouver, British Columbia. Canadian Geogrolpher 22,145-162. ORNSTEIN,M. D., STEVENSON,H. M. AND W~UAMS, A. P. (1980). Region, class and political culture in Canada. Canadian Journal of Political Science 13,227-271. kARROW, H. A. (1959). Communication of election appeals in Canada. Journalism Quarterb 36,219-220. YOUNG, H. P. (1978). The allocation of funds in lobbying and campaigning. BehavioralScience 23,21-31.