Ethnicity and the 2019 Canadian federal election: do racialized candidates increase voter turnout?

Abstract

Voting behaviour research in Canada has shown that racialized voters tend to support racialized candidates and candidates with whom they share an ethnic identity. However this work doesn’t address why racialized voters might be turning out to vote in the first place. Using data from the 2019 Canadian Election Study, this project helps to bridge tha gap by examining the mobilizing effect that racialized candidates may have had on racialized voter turnout during the 2015 and 2019 Canadian federal elections. South Asian candidates were found to positively increase reported turnout of South Asian voters in 2015. Similarly, the presence of a Chinese candidate in 2015 led to increased reported turnout among Chinese voters and increased reported plans to vote in 2019. These findings suggest that the presence of racialized candidates was linked to increased turnout and plans to vote among voters with the same ethnic identity. The analysis in this thesis provides further insight into the dynamics of racialized participation in Canadian politics.