My report involved detailing a range of voting scenarios including accounting for the possibility of parties facing leadership changes, votes of no confidence, coalitions, and overall, resulting in a less stable, and possibly less effective government. In carrying out this project and studying these scenarios, I was struck by the complexity of our federal electoral system in Canada, and realized it was the first time I had studied our political and governmental processes in any detail.
This experience piqued my interest in political science and the nature of campaigning and elections, demonstrating the requirement for each party to develop a comprehensive plan for each possible outcome. I used this project to explore the extent to which polls, while potentially useful, are also limited in their predictiveness, as they are in no way 100% reliable. In recent years, we have witnessed examples of polls being incorrect and misleading, with the actions of the voters on election day diverging significantly from what polls predicted.
In the case of the 2015 Canadian federal election, polls were predicting that the Liberals would likely achieve minority government status when, in fact, they attained a majority government. Another personal interest of mine is the effectiveness of negative attack ads, a tactic used primarily by the Conservatives in the 2015 election. By contrast, the Liberals took a different path, gearing ads towards highlighting their platform rather than mentioning or criticizing their opponents. Exploring this phenomenon of negative advertising and whether it functioned as the tipping point in the election proved interesting but, ultimately, I found it difficult to separate and evaluate the impact of the individual contributing factors that together, produced the final electoral result.
This was the first election I followed in great detail and researched, introducing me to election research and confirming my interest in political science. Canadian politics is often overshadowed by our neighbours to the south, the United States, yet our democratic tradition is equally as compelling and nuanced and this project tapped into that, providing a compelling introduction to election discourse and a better understanding of the many different outcomes an election could have in Canada.
This project gave me my first major taste of political science and the study of elections and exerted a significant influence on the path I have taken in University. Since 2015, I have become increasingly interested in elections, specifically voter behaviour and campaigning/campaign management. I learned valuable research skills from this exercise that I still use today, as the project required me to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the many and varied outcomes of an election, as well as to understand the history and process behind Canada’s electoral system. Furthermore, it helped me understand the complexity of Canada’s electoral processes including the first-past-the-post system that have helped me become a better-informed voter as the 2019 Federal Election approaches and I have the opportunity to vote for the first time at the federal level.