Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Impact Of Trait Attributions On Evaluations Of Political Leaders, Cathy Widdis Barr

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Evaluations of political leaders have long been considered an important component of the vote decision. Nevertheless, little research has been conducted in Canada on voters’ overall evaluations of their political leaders. Indeed, the topic has only recently received much systematic attention in the comparative literature. The study of how voters’ judgements about the personality characteristics of candidates affect their overall evaluations of those candidates is an area that has been particularly neglected. In this thesis, we test three hypotheses about the impact of personality trait attributions on voters’ overall evaluations of Canadian federal party leaders. The data for our analyses …