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Party Images And Party Identification In Canada, Ian Cotter

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The notion that electors acquire an enduring allegiance to a political party has guided the study of voting behaviour and elections in western democracies for almost three decades. Yet when used outside the United States, where the concept was developed, party identification has been greeted with less unanimous enthusiasm. For Canadian scholars, debate over the concept revolves primarily around (1) the empirical independence of party identification and the vote and (2) the stability of such attachments. Indeed, this debate has occupied much of the efforts of previous analysts in Canada. In this thesis, we reexamine the conventional wisdom about party …