Lifeblood of the Party: Motivations for Political Donations in Canada

ABSTRACT

Monetary donations from individuals have become the lifeblood of electoral and partisan politics in Canada, yet we know remarkably little about who these donors are, what motivates them to give, and whether their interactions are primarily with national or local party organizations. This article reports findings from a survey of donors to federal-level political parties in Canada. Our analysis identifies two distinct sets of motivations for donating to parties and candidates: political and transactional. We find that donors are more likely to report stronger political motivations than transactional ones. In general, donors expressing high political motivations tended to be older and less wealthy, but we also note that the strength of the political motivation does not relate to specific donor behaviors.

KEYWORDS:

• Campaign finance
• Canada
• elections
• political parties
• donations

Acknowledgments

This article draws on research supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Donors can give up to a set amount to each of the following: to each registered party; in total to all the registered associations, nomination contestants, and candidates of each registered party; in total to all leadership contestants in a particular contest; and to each independent candidate. In 2022, the limit was $1675 to each of the groups above. This total is indexed to inflation, so it rises annually.

2. This is part of a large trend of multi-speed membership strategies (Scarrow 2015).

3. Note that “Obligation as a citizen” was ultimately not included in either factor as it did not load on to either factor neatly.

4. Appendix A provides full regression models as available, which take into consideration the potential covariates together. In the text, the results for the mean variables (rather than factor variables) are reported for ease of interpretation. A full set of results is available in Appendix B.

5. All statistically significant at p < .05.

Additional information

Funding

This article draws on research supported by the Government of Canada, Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, #435-2018-0385, 2018-22.

Notes on contributors

Holly Ann Garnett

Holly Ann Garnett is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the Royal Military College of Canada and cross-appointed at Queen’s University. She is co-director of the Electoral Integrity Project and studies issues relating to the quality of elections in Canada and around the globe, including electoral management bodies, registration and voting, cyber-security, and election technology, civic literacy, and campaign finance.

Scott Pruysers

Scott Pruysers is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Dalhousie University. His research focuses on questions of participation and representation in party and electoral politics. His writing has including topics such as political ambition, nomination and recruitment, and leadership selection and removal.

Lisa Young

Lisa Young is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Calgary. Her current research focuses on election finance, Alberta politics, and graduate education.

William P. Cross

William P. Cross is Professor of Political Science at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. His research is focussed on questions relating to political party organization and intraparty democracy. He has published extensively on party members, party leadership selection, and candidate nomination.