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    Canadian Political Science Association
    2020 Annual Conference Programme

    Confronting Political Divides
    Hosted at Western University
    Tuesday, June 2 to Thursday, June 4, 2020
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    Presidential Address:
    Barbara Arneil, CPSA President

    Origins:
    Colonies and Statistics

    Location:
    Tuesday, June 2, 2020 | 05:00pm to 06:00pm
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    KEYNOTE SPEAKER:
    Ayelet Shachar
    The Shifting Border:
    Legal Cartographies of Migration
    and Mobility

    Location:
    June 04, 2020 | 01:30 to 03:00 pm
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    Keynote Speaker: Marc Hetherington
    Why Modern Elections
    Feel Like a Matter of
    Life and Death

    Location:
    Wednesday, June 3, 2020 | 03:45pm to 05:15pm
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    Plenary Panel
    Indigenous Politics and
    the Problem of Canadian
    Political Science

    Location: Arts & Humanities Building - AHB 1R40
    Tuesday, June 2, 2020 | 10:30am to 12:00pm

Political Behaviour/Sociology



F08 - Workshop: Understanding Electoral Democracy, The 2019 Canadian Election in Perspective 1

Date: Jun 3 | Time: 08:45am to 10:15am | Location:

Joint Session / Séance conjointe : Canadian Politics

Sponsor / Commanditaire : Consortium on Electoral Democracy (C-Dem), a SSHRC-funded research network across Canada.

Chair/Président/Présidente : Peter Loewen (University of Toronto)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Richard Johnston (University of British Columbia)

Platforms, Promises and Issues

Are Citizens Aware of Electoral Promises?: Dominic Duval (Université du Québec à Montréal), François Pétry (Université Laval)
Abstract: The theory of promissory representation (Mansbridge ,2003) holds that parties make promises during election campaigns, which they then try to fulfill if elected to power. The theory also holds that citizens choose for which party to vote for on the basis of those promises. A fundamental assumption of promissory representation remains to be tested. If voters are to use party promises as a basis for deciding which party to vote for they need to be aware of which party made what pledges in the first place. Currently there is no research on the subject of citizens’ pledge awareness. The precise objective of our research is to test Canadian voters’ ability to identify what pledges were made by what parties during the 2019 election. To achieve this objective, we included 6 questions in the Canadian Electoral Study’s post-electoral survey that show respondents specific party pledges and ask them to identify which party made these pledges.


Climate Change and its Role in the 2019 Canadian Federal Election: Cara Camcastle (Simon Fraser University)
Abstract: The environment was an issue of greater focus than in previous federal elections for many voters. Issue ownership theory predicts that the Green Party could benefit electorally from a heightened concern with climate change. The Green Party of Canada did manage to increase its number of seats and votes, but it was not a dramatic increase. Climate change proved to be a valence issue. Nearly all parties made climate change a priority. The political divides were on debating alternative policies to solve the climate change issue. This paper utilizes data collected from the Canadian Election Study to compare the socio-demographic and attitudinal profiles of those voting for the Green Party of Canada with the profiles of other parties’ voters. A module is designed to uncover clues as to what motivates voters who are concerned about climate change to select one party over another.


The Failings of Platform Politics: Framing the 2019 Canadian Federal Election Manifestos: Peter Ryan (Mount Royal University)
Abstract: The 2019 Canadian federal election may well become known as a campaign that was more about the failings of leaders to communicate differences in their policy platforms due to being overshadowed by self-created scandals, such as Trudeau's brown/black-face scandals, and Scheer's views on abortion and American passports. The Green party was the first to release its fully costed Parliamentary Budget Office assessed platform on Tuesday, September 17, 2019, and the Liberal party followed next on Sunday, September 29. The Conservatives and New Democrats waited until Friday, October 11, the first day of advanced voting to launch theirs, which repeated their release date strategies from the 2015 election. The general party practices continued a permanent campaign tactic from the 2008 election, where the parties tried to create media moments by announcing individual components on discrete policies, waiting to make available their full platform documents later, rather than creating one major announcement as the Greens attempted. This paper answers the question: what digital innovations and mediated practices appeared during the 2019 election that changed or disrupted the delivery of the platforms? A content analysis of the party web sites and the main linked social media channels demonstrates differences among the communications in the platforms and the top issues connected via the extended party channels. The parties’ framing of issues demonstrates poor execution of coordinated policy releases for each brand, particularly when compared to several public relations analyses of the platforms, as developed by The Capital Current, National, and Navigator public relations agencies.




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