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Who Has School Spirit? Explaining Voter Participation in School Board Elections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 August 2019

R. Michael McGregor  and
Jack Lucas
R. Michael McGregor*
Affiliation:
Department of Politics and Public Administration, Ryerson University, 350 Victoria Street JOR700, Toronto, ON, M5B 2K3
Jack Lucas
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive NW, Calgary, AB, T2N 1N4
*
*Corresponding author. Email: mmcgregor@ryerson.ca
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Abstract

This research note examines the correlates of turnout in Canadian school board elections. Using individual-level data from the Canadian Municipal Election Study, we find that gender, education, left-wing ideology, Conservative partisanship and parental status were associated with participation in Calgary's 2017 public school board elections. Some of these patterns relate to the specific details of Calgary's 2017 election; others, we suggest, may be characteristic of school board elections more generally. We relate our findings to the literature on ballot roll-off and low-turnout elections.

Résumé

Cette note de recherche examine les corrélats de la participation aux élections des conseils scolaires au Canada. Selon les données individuelles tirées de l'Étude sur les élections municipales canadiennes, nous constatons que le sexe, le niveau de scolarité, l'idéologie de gauche, la partisanerie conservatrice et la qualité parentale étaient associés à la participation aux élections des conseils scolaires publics de 2017 à Calgary. Certaines de ces tendances sont liées aux détails particuliers de l'élection de 2017 à Calgary ; d'autres, à notre avis, pourraient être caractéristiques des élections des conseils scolaires en général. Nous faisons le lien entre nos constatations et la bibliographie sur les élections à faible taux de participation et l'annulation des bulletins de vote.

Keywords

turnoutschool board electionslocal elections
Type
Research Note/Notes de recherche
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 52 , Issue 4 , December 2019 , pp. 923 - 936
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 2019 

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Footnotes

Acknowledgments: The authors wish to thank Dr. Mary McGregor, our anonymous reviewers, and the journal editor for their helpful feedback on earlier versions of this piece.

†

The second author is a member of the English-language editorial team. To maintain objectivity, an outside editor oversaw the review process and was fully responsible for editorial decisions related to this submission.

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