Le citoyen et sa circonscription

In this dissertation, I analyze citizen attitudes and political behaviour toward politics at the local level, that is, the constituency (or ‘district’). Whether you believe that politics at the local level is more important than the national level or vice-versa in political science, my contribution is an important one. On the one hand, I confirm empirically what scholars who already believe in the importance of analysing politics at the constituency level simply assumed, that is, the local level is important. On the other hand, my results show that academics who do not study local politics are missing a relatively important dynamic according to citizens themselves.   Chapter 1 asks: To what extent voters attribute importance to electoral outcomes in their district? Using the Making Electoral Democracy Work (MEDW) datasets for several countries, I find that electoral outcomes at the local level are viewed as less important compared to the national level. However, the gap is modest and much less important than what the conventional wisdom stipulates. Chapter 2 focuses on Canadian voters who like a local candidate from another party than their preferred one. This group of voters makes up 9% of the population. Do they follow the local candidate or the party? It depends on partisan affiliation and provinces but overall, 40% of the respondents support the candidate while 60% vote for the party.  Chapter 3 demonstrates that electoral outcomes at the local level do not have an influence on voters’ level of satisfaction with democracy. In a second step, I turn to the national level and challenge the assumption that a national victory always increases one’s level of satisfaction with democracy. The argument is that in a majoritarian electoral system such as in Canada, a minority victory would not be sufficient (contrary to a majority victory). However, my results indicate that no matter the size of the victory, winners enjoy a very similar boost of satisfaction with democracy.  Chapter 4 focuses on a never-seen-before question included in the MEDW project which asks voters if, according to them, the party they voted for won or lost the election. Clearly, voting for a party that forms the government or that is party of a coalition is the most important determinant. But can a victory at the district level compensate for a defeat at the national level? My results suggest a certain impact of a victory at the local level since voters who won at the local, but lost at the national level are significantly more likely to say that their party won compared to someone who voted for a party that lost at both levels.    Chapter 5 examines the impact of the perceived polarization on strategic voting. Polarization between viable parties should have an important impact on voters’ proclivity to vote strategically. First, an increase of polarization between viable parties increases ideological distance between the most distant party and the strategic option for the voter. Second, an increase of polarization between viable parties decreases ideological distance between the preferred party and the strategic option. My results confirm these hypotheses. Finally, Chapter 6 examines if national considerations can influence strategic voting during the Canadian 2015 election. I focus on preferences toward majority and minority governments. I demonstrate that preferences over minority government have an independent impact on voting strategically although this effect is smaller than local considerations such as a candidates chance of winning in the district.

Keyphrases: Identification territoriale, Winner-loser gap, Satisfaction with democracy, Local politics, Strategic voting, Minority government