Ethno-Racial Origins of Candidates and Electoral Performance

Abstract

This article uses the Canadian case to assess whether voter bias plays a role in accounting for the underrepresentation of ethnic minorities, especially racial minorities, in the national legislatures of diverse societies. Two sets of empirical analyses are performed, drawing on the results of the 1993 Canadian general election: survey information on candidates who ran for the major parties and census data on constituency characteristics. The first set tests for overt voter bias against minority candidates by employing several categories of minority origins, party and constituency variables to control for contextual effects, and candidate vote-share as the dependent variable. The second set tests for a more subtle form of bias that is sometimes associated with the need for minority candidates to be exceptionally qualified (‘compensation hypothesis’). The evidence indicates that minorities do not lose votes in elections because of their background and do not need to have more personal credentials in order to gain votes. The results suggest that any misgivings party officials may have about the electoral performance of minority candidates are misplaced.