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Local elections are an increasingly popular area of research among scholars of Canadian political behaviour, offering invaluable insights into the attitudes and motivations of Canadian electors. The Canadian Municipal Election Study (CMES) has collected unparalleled individual-level survey data in eight major Canadian municipal elections: Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, London, Mississauga, Toronto, Montreal, and Quebec City. These elections, which took place in 2017 and 2018, were high-profile, contentious, and often surprising, featuring mayoral defeats, record-breaking turnouts, provincial-municipal tensions, and the first ranked-ballot election in Canada in decades.
Combining unprecedented individual-level survey data from the CMES with local expertise from political scientists across Canada, Big City Elections in Canada provides a data-driven overview of each election, while also highlighting the more general lessons the elections teach us about municipal politics and voting behaviour. The chapters in this book make substantial empirical and theoretical contributions to the voting behaviour and urban political science subfields and will appeal to students, journalists, and engaged citizens who are interested in learning more about municipal elections in their cities.
This collection offers an in-depth look at municipal voting behaviour during local elections in eight of Canada’s largest cities.
- Imprint: University of Toronto Press
- Published: October 2021
- Pages: 280
Jack Lucas is a professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Calgary.
R. Michael McGregor is an associate professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at Ryerson University.
"Drawing from a unique survey of voting behaviour in Canadian municipal elections, Big City Elections in Canada speaks to fundamental debates in the broader voting behaviour literature and about the nature of local politics. This volume is a must-read for students of municipal politics, elections, and voting behaviour as well as Canadian politics in general."
Kristin R. Good, Associate Professor of Political Science, Dalhousie University
"Canadians pay far too little attention to local politics compared to federal or provincial politics. But this highly interesting and readable account of recent elections in Canada’s ‘big cities’ may help to change that."
Royce Koop, Professor of Political Studies, University of Manitoba
"At last we have a set of systematic, comparative studies of Canadian municipal elections. The combination of the descriptions of campaign issues and the analysis of voting behaviour makes this a gold mine for anyone interested in municipal politics. It is both an excellent contribution to the academic literature and easily accessible to the casual reader."
David Siegel, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Brock University