Racial discrimination at the polls? The Canadian case of Jagmeet Singh

ABSTRACT

Discriminatory attitudes towards racial minorities are prevalent throughout society. However, there is mixed evidence of electoral discrimination for racial minority candidates beyond the American context. This paper investigates the effect of racial attitudes on the electoral performance of Canada’s New Democratic Party (NDP), by examining the case of Jagmeet Singh, the country’s first major federal party leader of color. Relying on three surveys from the Canadian Election Study (2015–2021) and controlling for demographics, ideology, and partisanship, we find voters with more negative attitudes toward racial minorities were significantly: (1) less likely to vote for the NDP under Singh’s leadership; (2) more likely to abandon than join the party in his first federal election; and (3) more likely to view Singh negatively than his predecessor. The findings suggest that some racial minority candidates likely face significant electoral penalties, which may contribute to the consistent underrepresentation of racial minorities throughout democracies.

KEYWORDS:

• Canada
• racial attitudes
• leadership
• Canadian Election Study (CES)
• New Democratic Party (NDP)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 While there is evidence of internal reliability, the measure of prejudice used by Bouchard (2022) includes a range of items that are dominated by attitudes toward immigrants and immigration. We differ in our focus on items that are specific to racial minorities.

2 We use the weights provided by the CES team.

3 Economic ideology (Cronbach’s α = 0.40) and cultural ideology (Cronbach’s α = 0.66) each consist of two questions. Economic ideology measures market liberalism and redistribution via the questions: “the government should leave it to the private sector to create jobs,” and “how much do you think should be done to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor.” Cultural ideology measures gender roles and sexuality via the questions: “how much should be done for women,” and “how much should be done for gays and lesbians.” Immigration attitude is measure via the question: “do you think Canada should admit more, fewer, or about the same number of immigrants as now?”

4 The CES has not traditionally asked about racial background but ethnic ancestry (with the exception of the CES 2021, where an explicit racial identification question was included for the first time). We use the explicit racial identification question in 2021 to identity those who select one or more of the racialized minority categories listed. In 2015 and 2019, this measure is not available, so we rely on reported ethnic ancestry and recode those who indicate ancestry outside of North America, Europe, or Australasia as a racial minority.

5 Note that we find a significant effect for Quebec in both 2019 and 2021. This effect is likely driven by the unexpectedly high number of votes for the NDP in the 2015 election in Quebec, the so-called “Orange Wave.” In 2019 and 2021, Quebec voters returned to the other major parties in the province.