Ethnoracial Identity and Candidate Self-Presentation in Canadian Elections

• In Event: Race and Politics in Canada

Abstract

Local campaigns offer candidates a chance to emphasize shared characteristics and to build affinity with voters. A substantial amount of research examines media coverage of ethnoracialized candidates (e.g. Tolley, 2016) and whether voters from ethnoracial minority groups are more likely to vote for candidates who share their identities (e.g. Besco, 2019). This paper builds on this research by examining how ethnoracialized candidates choose to present their identities to voters. Drawing on local candidate biographies from the 2022 Ontario and Quebec provincial elections, the paper focuses on four contextual factors that shape candidate presentation. These include differences in riding competitiveness, the ethnoracial diversity of the constituency, the candidate’s party affiliation, and the different discourses surrounding ethnoracial and religious identity between English Canada and Quebec (for the last of these see Turgeon et al., 2019). In doing so, this paper provides insight not only into the numeric presence of candidates from diverse backgrounds, but also when such candidates from diverse backgrounds make ethnoracial identity a part of their campaign messaging. Our initial findings suggest that constituency diversity and party affiliation matter most to whether a candidate emphasizes a non-European ethnoracial identity. We find minimal effects for riding competitiveness or the province in which the candidate is running.

Authors

• Daniel Westlake, University of Saskatchewan

• Jacob Robbins-Kanter, Bishop's University