Despite their numerous advantages, exit polls are not a common tool in the study of Canadian electoral behaviour. In this methodological note, we use data from two pilot projects to test small-scale exit polls’ accuracy when estimating party support. We mobilize exit-polling data collected in the 2018 Quebec provincial election (four voting locations) and the 2019 federal election in Quebec (two voting locations). We focus on chance error and bias error in small samples. Results obtained using parametric linear models suggest that small sample exit polls achieve relatively precise estimations. We do find, however, that right-of-the-centre parties’ vote share tends to be underestimated. These findings shed light on the strengths and shortcomings of small-scale exit polls in Canada.

While previous studies have examined the factors contributing to the appointment of women in government cabinets, few have investigated the role of political leaders in promoting women's cabinet representation. Drawing on political socialization theory, we argue that political leaders from economically disadvantaged backgrounds are more inclined to appoint female members to ministerial positions than their wealthier counterparts. This propensity stems from leaders’ personal experiences of economic hardship, which foster their interest in improving political equality among social groups and reducing gender disparities by appointing more female ministers. Analyzing an original dataset encompassing leaders’ family backgrounds across 155 countries between 1966 and 2015, we find that leaders who have experienced economic hardship significantly increase the proportion of female ministers in executive cabinets. This finding holds across various model specifications and effectively addresses endogeneity concerns. Our research highlights the crucial role of political leaders in shaping gender politics based on their economic backgrounds.

The Canadian Judicial Council is primarily responsible for regulating misconduct among federally appointed judges. Over the last decade, the Council has faced some highly publicized challenges to its authority when judges facing misconduct complaints commenced judicial review proceedings pursuant to the Federal Courts Act. In response to these challenges, the Council sought to immunize itself from judicial review, first by pleading its case in court and then by pressing for legislative changes in the form of Bill C-9. The new legislation, which exempts the Council from almost all external judicial oversight, was driven by the Council and assented to by a government willing to delegate its power to judicial elites. The legislation not only fails to provide adequate checks on the Council's power as an administrative decision maker, it represents a high-water mark in judicialized politics, pointing to a judicialization of governance in the area of judicial discipline.

Cette étude se penche sur la communication du Parti conservateur du Québec (PCQ) sur Facebook et X au cours de l'année précédant l’élection générale québécoise de 2022. Basée sur une analyse de contenu d'un échantillon de 800 messages diffusés sur Facebook et X par le parti et son chef Éric Duhaime, l'analyse relève les éléments populistes des publications de même que les objectifs politiques de sa communication en ligne. L'article démontre comment le parti a utilisé ces plateformes numériques afin de tenter de mobiliser une base d’électeurs en contournant les filtres médiatiques traditionnels et en s'adressant directement aux électeurs afin de tirer profit du contexte médiatique hybride québécois. Deux conclusions découlent de nos analyses. Premièrement, le PCQ semble avoir employé un discours populiste à caractère antiélitiste de manière à exploiter une grogne pandémique présente au Québec. Deuxièmement, le parti a utilisé les fonctions de mobilisations qu'offrent les médias socionumériques afin de constituer une coalition d’électeurs.

Limited academic career prospects are pushing PhD graduates in political science and other disciplines to nonacademic careers. Understanding the mismatch between student and supervisor perceptions of doctoral career training is a starting point for suggesting program reforms. This research note examines the perceptions of PhD students and supervisors on doctoral career training. We compare results from two surveys of English-speaking Canadian universities on doctoral political science programs; one surveys PhD students and the other surveys supervisors. These survey results suggest that 1) students are more aware of the limited academic job market and interested in nonacademic careers than supervisors realize; 2) supervisors are unaware of the sunk costs PhD students face; 3) supervisors and students have different preferences for change in doctoral programs; and 4) students overestimate supervisors’ confidence in preparing them for nonacademic careers. Changes in program design can better meet student needs in these PhD programs.

Academics across Canada, an officially bilingual and multicultural country, devote a lot of attention to diversity and representation. This is particularly true for political scientists. In this research note, we focus on the linguistic composition of panels and overall linguistic fragmentation of the most important in-person event for Canadian political science: the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association (CPSA). To do so, we generated a dataset based on the official program of the 2023 annual conference. Our main results are twofold. First, we find an important under-representation of French-speaking events and academic communications (i.e., panels and papers). Second, we computed Herfindahl-Hirschman indexes demonstrating that francophone-dominated panels and co-authored papers with francophone first authors are significantly more linguistically diverse than anglophone panels and papers. Our results highlight important blind spots in Canadian political science and help make sense of the lack of representation of French-language work in Canadian academia.

À la lumière de récents développements en politique québécoise, le présent article jette un regard critique sur deux éléments controversés entourant la légitimité du référendum sur la souveraineté du Québec de 1995, soit (1) le rejet de bulletins de vote le jour du scrutin et (2) l'effet du rallye pour l'unité canadienne tenu le 27 octobre 1995. Cette analyse mobilise des données historiques agrégées d’Élections Québec ainsi que des données individuelles de sondage collectées par Canadian Facts Limited en octobre 1995 (n = 930). Les résultats ne révèlent aucun prédicteur attitudinal du rejet de bulletins de vote à travers les circonscriptions québécoises. Des analyses suggèrent cependant l'existence d'un impact statistiquement significatif du rassemblement du love-in qui pourrait avoir profité à la cause fédéraliste à quelques jours du vote, particulièrement à l'extérieur de l’île de Montréal. Cette recherche vise à contribuer au débat public sur la transparence des processus démocratiques en contexte référendaire.

In political science, federalism is often treated as an “antithesis” to empire. While Canadian Politics has recently become more attentive to the importance of ongoing settler colonialism as conditioning Canadian political life writ large, this has yet to induce a paradigm shift in understanding how the institutional logics of the state were established by, and in order to advance, colonial and imperial ends. This article contributes to this broader understanding by exploring how, in Canada, the federal arrangement congeals a constitutionalized whiteness that facilitates both the internal coherence of a settler class and its subsequent continental expansion. Attentive to the importance of this constitutional development within a world-spanning imperial context, this article also suggests that the simultaneous innovation of Dominion status contoured the early twentieth-century's global colour line, as self-determination was increasingly devolved to other white settler polities. The contradictory realities of these processes are also noted.