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The Electoral Consequences of Party Switching in Canada: 1945–2011

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2018

Feodor Snagovsky*
Affiliation:
Australian National University
Matthew Kerby*
Affiliation:
Australian National University
*
Australian National University, Acton ACT 2601, Australia, email: feodor.snagovsky@anu.edu.au
Australian National University, Acton ACT 2601, Australia, email: matthew.kerby@anu.edu.au
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Abstract

This article addresses the overlooked subject of party switching in the Canadian House of Commons for the period 1945–2011. We estimate a model that explores how and why MPs engage in the otherwise risky behaviour of abandoning their party labels in a system characterized by a low personal vote. Our findings suggest that the electoral consequences for MPs who switch parties for policy reasons are indistinguishable from MPs who do not switch at all. By contrast, MPs who switch parties for office-related reasons, such as to accept a seat in cabinet or vote-related reasons, experience large electoral penalties. We also find that MPs who are expelled from caucus face the strongest electoral penalties of all party switchers, indicating it matters whether an MP jumps or is pushed. Our findings suggest that voters recognize opportunistic behaviour among their legislators and punish them accordingly and that under some circumstances, party switching may be both strategic and rational.

Résumé

Cet article aborde le sujet négligé du changement de parti au sein de la Chambre des communes canadienne pour la période comprise entre 1945 et 2011. Nous estimons le modèle qui examine les raisons pour lesquelles les députés adoptent le comportement par ailleurs périlleux d'abandonner l’étiquette de leur parti dans un système caractérisé par le peu de poids qu'a le vote personnel. D'après nos constatations, les conséquences électorales touchant les députés qui changent d'allégeance pour des raisons politiques sont impossibles à distinguer de celles des députés qui ne l'envisagent en aucun cas. En revanche, les députés qui changent de parti pour des raisons liées à leur fonction, lors par exemple de l'acceptation d'un siège au conseil des ministres, ou bien dictées par un vote subissent de lourdes sanctions électorales. Nous constatons également que, parmi les députés qui changent de parti, les députés expulsés de leur groupe parlementaire sont sanctionnés le plus lourdement, en indiquant l'influence qu'exerce le fait de faire le saut ou d'y être poussé. Nos conclusions suggèrent que les électeurs reconnaissent un comportement opportuniste parmi leurs législateurs et les punissent en conséquence et que dans certaines circonstances, le changement de parti est motivé par des raisons aussi bien stratégiques que rationnelles.

Type
Research Article/Étude originale
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 2018 

Introduction

Three examples shed light on the motivations behind party switching in the Canadian context. In 1990, Minister of the Environment Lucien Bouchard resigned from cabinet and the Progressive Conservative party (PC) over the government's failure to ratify the Meech Lake Accord. “This country doesn't work anymore. We have to remake it,” he told the House of Commons after his resignation (Freeman, Reference Freeman1990b). Shortly afterwards, Bouchard founded the Bloc Québécois (BQ), a party dedicated to promoting sovereignty for the province of Quebec in the House of Commons. His electoral fate was uncertain, but his mission was clear. Bouchard easily won his seat in the next election and led the BQ for three years before resigning to become Premier of Quebec in the aftermath of the 1995 Quebec referendum.

Almost a decade later, Angela Vautour thought the writing was on the wall when she abandoned the New Democratic Party (NDP) for the PCs. Her stated rationale made clear that her transition was motivated by electoral incentives: she wanted to join a party she believed would eventually form government. “Certainly, some will describe my move as opportunistic… But what is important for me is that it will open channels to provincial decision makers and that it offers the opportunity to be part of a federal government in the future” (Fraser, Reference Fraser1999). Vautour lost the next election and was defeated four years later when she ran again.

Our third story starts after the 2006 Canadian federal election, when Liberal Minister David Emerson found he wanted to stay in government. As the Conservative cabinet met to be sworn in for the first time at Rideau Hall, more than a few heads turned in surprise when Emerson walked into the room. The stormy, partisan Liberal who vowed just two weeks earlier to be the Conservative party's “worst nightmare” was now accepting a prestigious set of portfolios in the Conservative government (Taber and Chase, Reference Taber and Chase2006). Emerson faced considerable backlash from his constituents after switching parties and his career in federal politics ended two years later when he decided not to run in the 2008 federal election.

Schlesinger (Reference Schlesinger1966) presents an archetype of the political actor as an ambitious office-seeker—prepared to do whatever necessary to further or at least maintain access to political opportunities. This presents a puzzle in the context of party switching, where conventional wisdom portrays switching as an act of political self-immolation: few MPs who switch parties get re-elected. Nevertheless, MPs continue to switch parties. Why do they engage in this risky behaviour? Perhaps the answer lies in the aftermath of the switch itself, and an important part of the story can be found in the electoral consequences of party switching.

We argue that to answer the question, “Why do MPs switch parties when they know that their chances of future electoral success are diminished?” we must first reframe it. Not all party switches can be treated equally, and different types of switches lead to different outcomes. We use individual-level biographical data from the Canadian Library of Parliament, electoral data from Elections Canada and archival data from newspaper archives to examine the relationship between party switching and variations in electoral success. We find that voters are adept at recognizing opportunism, and at least some of the variation in party switchers' electoral fortunes can be explained by the reason they crossed the floor in the first place. Seen from this perspective, the electoral consequences of party switching tell a story about the personal vote in Canada.

Party Switching in Comparative Context

The empirical study of party switching is relatively sparse, and most of the existing research focuses on legislators' incentives and motivations to switch parties. McElroy (Reference McElroy, Giannetti and Benoit2008) argues that career advancement is key to understanding party switching in the European Parliament. She finds that party leaders, senior members and members on key committees are less likely to defect than backbench MEPs or those on low-ranking committees, while legislators are much more likely to defect to a party represented in the Parliamentary Bureau. Yoshinaka (Reference Yoshinaka2005) has found a similar trend among United States congressmen and congresswomen, where committee assignments provide a strong incentive for defection. While most committee placements are allocated by both parties according to seniority, party switchers in the House of Representatives are more likely to be rewarded with a committee assignment that violates the seniority norm. Office seeking motivations have been a strong determinant of party switching in Mexico where ambitious but dissatisfied representatives abandoned their parties to take up attractive leadership roles or senior committee assignments across the aisle (Kerevel, Reference Kerevel2014). Likewise, Kam (Reference Kam2009) found that Westminster MPs whose progressive ambition has been curtailed by a lack of opportunity within their existing parties may be more likely to switch. Conversely, many MPs anchored in leadership or prestige positions are less likely to abandon their parties (Castle and Fett, Reference Castle, Fett and Bianco2000, McElroy, Reference McElroy, Giannetti and Benoit2008). Sometimes the benefits of party switching are even more tangible; for example, Desposato (Reference Desposato2006) finds that access to “pork,” such as lucrative contracts and jobs for supporters and rewards for campaign workers, is a key variable in the calculus of party switching in Brazil.

Party switching has also been used to examine legislator voting behaviour. Desposato (Reference Desposato2003) finds evidence that party membership matters in Brazil by demonstrating that switchers in the 49th Legislature voted with their original parties less after a switch while voting more with their new party. Nokken (Reference Nokken2000) finds a similar effect in the United States Congress, where legislators who switch parties vote like members of their new party, even in systems where the enforcement of party discipline is low. Following from this, Heller and Mershon (Reference Heller and Mershon2008) find that more disciplined parties in Italy experience higher levels of party switching, and MPs whose ideal points in dimensional space were furthest away from their parties were most likely to defect to another party. Relatedly, McMenamin and Gwiazda (Reference McMenamin and Gwiazda2011) found that party switching and an examination of party switching type can be used to study and measure party institutionalization in Poland.

The motivations of party switchers may stem from a genuine disconnect between the representative and their party. Castle and Fett (Reference Castle, Fett and Bianco2000) argue that in two-party systems representatives situated at the edge of their party's ideological policy space may be tempted to switch affiliation if a neighbouring party's ideal point is closer to their own.

With respect to the consequences associated with party switching, Grose and Yoshinaka (Reference Grose and Yoshinaka2003: 57) and Yoshinaka (Reference Yoshinaka2015: ch. 5) demonstrate that incumbent legislators in the US who switch parties suffer in both general and primary elections, while both their “new” and “old” parties subsequently hold more competitive primary contests. Even though party switchers experience a decline in vote margin during primary elections, they find that this effect dissipates over time. This impact of switching is more pronounced in general elections, where switchers' vote shares are typically lower in all elections after their switch (Grose and Yoshinaka, Reference Grose and Yoshinaka2003: 69). This is related to the costs of party defection: “Party switchers may alienate past supporters, including general election voters, primary supporters, and partisan elites, and be unable to fully compensate with the support of new partisans” (Grose and Yoshinaka, Reference Grose and Yoshinaka2003: 69, 57).

Relatedly, Evans and colleagues (Reference Evans, Peterson and Hadley2012), in a survey following the 2010 midterm switch of Republican Arlen Specter to the Democrats, established that most Pennsylvanians did not buy Specter's stated reason—that an increasingly conservative Republican party no longer aligned with his own ideological position—and figured that he was motivated by electoral considerations. Where variation took place, it fell along established party lines: Democrats believe the switch was policy motivated, Republicans and independents believed Specter to be an opportunist. It is worth noting that Specter lost in his bid for re-election.

Given there is no shortage of research on legislator behaviour in Canada, it is surprising that little has been written on party switching in this context. In an appendix to a 2005 report published by the House of Commons Ethics Commissioner and subsequently republished in the Canadian Parliamentary Review, Morton paints a broad (and brief) picture of the Canadian party switching landscape. He finds that “lists of ‘switchers’ include a disproportionate number of Quebec and Western MPs expressing their discontent with party labels they seldom controlled or which, in the case of the Progressives and, later, Reform, virtually legitimized an independent spirit” (Reference Morton2006: 6). But Morton's findings are more descriptive than prescriptive.

Docherty followed Morton with a more detailed descriptive analysis of Canadian party switching. He finds that, “not surprising…party switching is most likely to occur when political parties themselves are undergoing periods of transition” (Reference Docherty2011: 198). Docherty sought to dispel the popular notion that party switchers commit electoral suicide; “Despite conventional wisdom that floor crossing is not rewarded we find that 57% of floor crossers who run for re-election under their new party banner win their bid” (200). While a valuable challenge to the conventional wisdom, the remaining 43 per cent of switchers who run and lose remain markedly different from the 20 per cent of all MPs who exit parliament involuntarily (Kerby and Blidook, Reference Kerby and Blidook2011: 628). Party switching has also attracted some descriptive and inferential attention more recently from Snagovsky (Reference Snagovsky2015), Cochrane and Sevi (Reference Cochrane and Sevi2016) and Snagovsky and Kerby (Reference Snagovsky, Kerby, Farhat and Poirier2017).

Theory and Design

In Canada, parties control almost all levels of political career advancement, from committee assignments, to cabinet appointments, to electoral labels and funding. MPs who vote against the party line do so with risk to their career ambitions and even their future electoral prospects (Kam, Reference Kam2009: 150). Legislators act rationally in response to both proximate and distant incentives; for example, they join and remain loyal to political parties with the expectation that the benefits of party membership outweigh the costs. When they pursue policy preferences, upward career mobility or votes, partisan affiliation is not a foregone conclusion or an end in and of itself, but rather an instrumental tool applied in pursuit of other goals. Thus, “[not] only do politicians choose to identify with a major party in the first place, they choose to maintain or alter that identification. Their choice, therefore, must be the consequence of the theory, rather than be assumed by it” (Aldrich and Bianco, Reference Aldrich and Bianco1992: 103).

The existing literature on political careers and party switching tells a story of the decisions made by ambitious legislators. These actors use party switching to further their interests, such as advancing a certain policy agenda, attaining higher political office such as a seat at the cabinet table or simply getting re-elected. Representative democracies are based on ambition: citizens elect representatives on their behalf, who in turn serve them both for mutual gain and out of fear of dismissal. As Schlesinger writes, “A political system unable to kindle ambitions for office is as much in danger of breaking down as one unable to restrain ambitions…No more irresponsible government is imaginable than one of high-minded men unconcerned for their political futures” (Reference Schlesinger1966: 2). Regardless of whether ambition is a desirable feature of our political system, it is a reality of it; ambition cannot simply be ignored or treated “as a human failing to be suppressed” (Reference Schlesinger1966: 2).

Following Grose and Yoshinaka's approach (Reference Grose and Yoshinaka2003) to the case of the US Congress, we present a model of the electoral consequences of party switching in the Canadian House of Commons. However, we also argue that legislators are motivated by three core “desires”: policy, office and votes (Müller and Strøm, Reference Müller and Strøm1999). MPs seek votes in the political arena as an instrumental means to realize a combination of policy outcomes and office-related prestige. In turn, they consider the costs and benefits of each “desire” to maximize their total expected payoffs.

As we highlight in our review, Muller and Strøm's policy office and votes lens has been used explicitly and implicitly to consider the determinants and motivations of party switching. In this respect, our choice of independent variable is not path breaking. The novelty and contribution of this study lies in our direct examination of the electoral consequence of party switching for each of the policy office and votes motivations. And, in this way, we bridge both the motivations and consequences literature using an up-until-now unexamined case: Canada.

Data

We constructed an original longitudinal dataset of individual-level MP electoral results for the period 1945–2011 to conduct our analysis of the electoral consequences of party switching. The records are drawn from the Canadian Library of Parliament's ParlInfo database which contains biographical, election and party membership data for the population of incumbent MPs elected and defeated during the period of interest. Supplementary data on the nature and timing of MPs' party switches were also drawn from ParlInfo, as well as Canadian newspaper archives and assorted political biographies. A complete list of the party switchers, the reasons for their switches and relevant sources can be found in supplementary Online Appendix 1.

The unit of analysis is incumbent election result recorded at the time of a general election. Therefore, each observation contains an MP identifier, the election date, the MP's party label at the time of the election and whether they retained or lost their seat. We also record whether the MP switched parties in the parliament preceding the election. By definition, we only consider those party switchers who ran in the election following their change of party affiliation. Those MPs who switched parties and resigned or chose not to run in the next election were dropped from the analysis. We chose to omit those MPs who switched out of and then switched back into the same party (for example, the Democratic Representative Caucus MPs who briefly left and then returned to the Canadian Alliance in 2001). We also do not consider MPs whose party labels change due to party mergers and re-brandings, such as the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation's transformation into the New Democratic Party (NDP) in 1961 or the merger of the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservative parties in 2003. Table 1 breaks down the possible outcomes for switcher and non-switcher incumbents on election day. It demonstrates that the incumbency rate of MPs who do not switch parties is different from those who change their party affiliations. Indeed, the proportion of MPs who switch parties and fail in their bids for re-election is considerably higher than it is for those do not switch at all. This difference is statistically significant at the .05 level.

Table 1 Frequency Table of Party Switch and Electoral Result (incumbents 1945–2011)

Pearson chi2(1) =  41.7792 Pr = 0.000

We look only at MPs' party affiliation at the time of an election. Thus, Robert Toupin, who switched from PC to independent to NDP and then back to independent between 1984 and 1987, is coded as having switched from PC to independent, the party labels he held in the 1984 and 1988 elections. Likewise, if an MP follows an “independent intermediate” trajectory where she leaves one party to sit briefly as an independent before joining another, then the intermediate step is excluded. So, when Lucien Bouchard moved from the PCs to the newly created Bloc Québécois after spending seven months as an independent, he is coded as having moved from PC to BQ.

The dependent variable

We take a straightforward approach to measuring “electoral consequence.” The dependent variable in this study is recorded as MPs' vote share in their ridings. This serves as an indicator of the overall level of support MPs enjoy. Three MPs won their seats by acclamation; their vote shares are recorded as 100 per cent. A means comparison test of the difference in the mean vote shares of switchers and non-switchers was statistically significant at the .05.

Independent variables

Like the dependent variable, we take several approaches to coding party switches. In the first instance, we use a dichotomous variable—“switched”—that is coded as 1 for “switched” and “0” for “not switched” in the preceding parliament. In the second instance, “switched” takes one of four values. The first three are based on the Müller and Strøm (Reference Müller and Strøm1999) “policy, office and votes” framework which was originally used to describe party motivations, but which in recent years has been used to describe the motivations of other political actors at both the individual and aggregate levels of analysis (Martin, Reference Martin2014; Mershon and Shvetsova, Reference Mershon and Shvetsova2008; O'Brien and Shomer, Reference O'Brien and Shomer2013). The fourth category, “booted,” is assigned to those party switchers who were expelled from their political parties. Each category was matched to the appropriate party switchers according to the official stated reason in ParlInfo and/or the reasons reported most often in the press. Some MPs were more difficult to code than others as they switched for multiple reasons. In these instances, the switches were coded according to the most cited motivation. The frequency of each switch type is reported in Table 2.

Table 2 Frequency Table of Party Switching Types (Incumbents: 1945–2011)

We operationalize “policy” switches as any event where an MP leaves caucus voluntarily on a point of principle, as a response to her party's position on a certain policy issue or because she identified a new party as being stronger on a certain issue than her old one. For example, Maurice Bourget left the Liberal party in 1944 to protest the government's conscription policy (“Bourget bolts government,” 1944)Footnote 1, while Lucien Bouchard resigned from the PC cabinet and caucus over the failure to pass the Meech Lake Accord (Freeman, Reference Freeman1990b).

“Office” switches refer to those cases where MPs leave their party to join the government party and are appointed to cabinet or become parliamentary secretaries within one year of the switch. Belinda Stronach's high-profile defection from the Conservative party to the governing Liberals in 2005 saw her immediately appointed Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development, as well as Minister Responsible for Democratic Renewal (Howlett, Reference Howlett2006). Likewise, Jack Horner took his seat at the cabinet table on April 21, 1977, the day after he became a Liberal (Hawthorn, Reference Hawthorn2004). Both Stronach and Horner are coded as office switchers.

“Vote” switches take place when MPs cite electoral motivations as the determining factor for their switch or when there was strong indication that they left for fear of a negative result in an approaching election. For example, Gerard Girouard left the Social Credit party to join the Progressive Conservatives because “the Social Credit party [had] committed suicide by its internal disputes and hopeless division” (Westall, Reference Westall1964). Disaffected with his party leadership, Rémi Paul left the Progressive Conservative caucus in 1965. Upon his exit, he told the press that “Not only would I be defeated as a Conservative candidate under Mr. Diefenbaker, I would lose my deposit” (“Quebec Tory Defector Decides To Quit Politics at Federal Level”, 1965). Other MPs, like Raymond Rock, may face stiff nomination challenges and likely fear that they will not get their parties' subsequent endorsement (Wills, Reference Wills1972). Still others switch between specific parties and unique labels such as “Independent Liberal” or “Liberal Labour,” to retain a party association but avoid the electoral wrath of their constituents. This was electoral strategy used by a number of MPs in the 1940s and 1950s (Stevens, Reference Stevens1966).

Some MPs jump ship; others are pushed. Any instance where an MP lost a nomination battle, was ejected from caucus or was forced to step down by the party leadership was coded as “booted.” For example, Jean Guy Carignan resigned from the Liberal caucus after being sentenced to jail time for a hit-and-run accident (LeBlanc, Reference LeBlanc2001), while David Kilgour and Alex Kindy were expelled from the PC caucus for voting against the establishment of the Goods and Services Tax (Freeman, Reference Freeman1990a).

While the proportion of those incumbents who switch parties and are re-elected is not nearly as high as the proportion of non-switchers who are re-elected, Table 3 presents some interesting variation across the switching categories. Nearly three-quarters (72.73%) of MPs who switch for office reasons are re-elected. This is closely followed by those who switch for policy reasons (65.71%) and then (ironically) the more evenly balanced MPs who switch to enhance their electoral chances (54.55%). Unsurprisingly, only 18.52 per cent of MPs ejected from their parties are successfully re-elected in the next election.

Table 3 Frequency Table of Switch Type and Electoral Result (incumbents 1945–2011)

While the “policy, office, or votes” framework helps to demarcate party switcher motivations in a more nuanced way, it is possible that the voters who cast judgment on party switchers are less concerned with the specific categories. Therefore, we include a third, in-between approach to coding party switching types that employs an “opportunist” variable that combines the office and vote switching motivations into a single category. MPs who do not switch parties are coded as “0” and treated as the reference category in all the model specifications.

Control variables

We include several control variables to account for the alternative explanations of incumbents' changes in vote share. Our model accounts for incumbency effects, that is, the advantage or disadvantage that incumbent legislators have when seeking re-election. Incumbents may be more familiar to voters than challengers; MPs appear at community events, advertise in local newspapers and provide services to their constituents. As a result, incumbent legislators seeking re-election may have an advantage over other candidates. This notion is consistent with the literature, which suggests incumbents have an advantage over challengers in Canadian elections (Blais et al., Reference Blais, Gidengil, Dobrzynska, Nevitte and Nadeau2003; Kendall and Rekkas, Reference Kendall and Rekkas2012; Krashinsky and Milne, Reference Krashinsky, Milne and Seidle1991, Reference Krashinsky and Milne1985). In the context of party switching, MPs may switch parties because they think they are well-known by their constituents from years of service. Since all party switches in our model are incumbents, we cannot simply include an “incumbent” dummy variable. Instead, we code “experience” as the number of years an MP has served in parliament since their first election. This makes our measure more robust, since the longer an MP holds office, the greater the familiarity their constituents should have with them, and therefore the greater their potential advantage. In a similar vein, the “minister” variable is coded as “1” for incumbents who run in an election as a sitting cabinet ministers and “0” for those who are not. This is intended to capture potential voter preferences for representation by a member of cabinet, perhaps thinking this gives their riding more of a say in policy matters. Since several of our MPs switch for office-related reasons, this consideration is important.

While local candidates matter, so do parties. In the context of party switching, it is important to understand whether switchers are elected on their new party's coattails, or by contrast do better than another candidate would have in their place. Further, we are interested in whether switching to an unpopular party makes re-election unlikely or whether the MP's personal popularity still carries them to victory. To control for party effects and partisan swings, we consider the popularity of MPs' political parties at the time of the general election. This is operationalized as the percentage of the popular vote the MP's party received in their province at the time of the election, since party support can vary dramatically from province to province. We also control for whether the MP ran as an independent, and thus had no party support to rely on.

In addition to these control variables we also control for MPs' vote share in the previous election and we include a series of interaction variables which consider the multiplicative effect of previous vote share for independents and for party switchers who run as independents in the election following their switch. We do this in order to disentangle independents' lack of party vote (captured by the party provincial vote share) from their fellow (yet separate) independents who share the same label but not a common affiliation.

Variable descriptions and summary statistics for the dependent, independent and control variables are found in Tables 4 and 5.

Table 4 Variable Descriptions

Table 5 Summary Statistics

Data and Method

Our dataset consists of the population of incumbent MPs elected to the House of Commons for the period 1945–2011 (less those MPs who were dropped for the reasons outlined above). Each MP is observed at the time of a general election. Thus, we possess data for 2014 unique MPs who are observed over the course of multiple elections. The data are organized as a panel (N = 5153 MP-elections) to examine both cross-sectional (across individuals) and time series (across time) dimensions. While it is tempting to employ a fixed-effects, or multilevel mixed effects linear regression model, the inclusion of the lagged dependent variable on the right-hand side of the equation requires us to deal with the problem of serial correlation by using an Arellano-Bond dynamic panel model (Arellano and Bond, Reference Arellano and Bond1991). The class of econometric model is precisely useful when there is a risk of an endogeneity problem, the likelihood of serial correlation caused by the inclusion of the lagged dependent variable as predictor of the dependent variable and a panel that is organized such that the time dimension (elections) is significantly smaller than the observation (MP) dimension. In order to control for serial correlation, we included two lags of the dependent variable on the right-hand side of the equation.

We estimate six specifications of the model that use MPs' vote shares as the dependent variable. We take this approach to examine the different effects party switching has on electoral popularity. We use three variations of the party switch independent variable: the first employs the binary “switched” variable; the second model subsets “switched” by motivation (policy, office, votes or booted–hereafter abbreviated as POVB); and finally, the third uses the “opportunist” variable in place of “office” and “votes.” The additional three models build on these specifications with the use of interactions, as described below.

Results

The results of our statistical analysis are found in Table 6.Footnote 2 Here we present two separate models, each with three specifications which account for the different operationalisations of the independent variable: party switch. Specification 1 reports that MPs who switch parties (regardless of nature or the rationale of the switch) can expect to experience a 5.5 percentage point drop in their vote share. The model includes the array of control variables set out above while accounting for MPs' vote share in the previous election and whether they ran as an independent (interacted with previous vote share).

Table 6 Arellano-Bond dynamic panel-data estimation of the electoral effects of party switching in Canada

Robust standard errors in parentheses

* p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001

Specification 3 estimates the same model but this time breaks down party switching by motivation: policy, office, votes and booted. Office, votes, and booted are statistically significant at the .05 level. We find that, all else being equal, MPs who switch for office reasons, that is, to take up a cabinet appointment, can expect to experience a six-percentage point drop in their vote share. Likewise, MPs who switch for electoral reasons see their vote share drop by 8.8 percentage points. Finally, those MPs who are forced out of their parties should see a 12-percentage point decrease in their vote share. The coefficients for the control variables remain effectively unchanged both with respect to their effect and statistical significance.

Specification 5 combines estimates the specification 3 model but pools the vote and office seeking categories into a single “opportunist” category. The coefficient suggests that opportunist switchers are electorally punished when compared to non-switchers at the same level as those switchers who exit their parties for electoral reasons.

In order to control for the effect of MPs who switched parties and ran as independents we estimated a second set of models (specifications 2, 4 and 6) which include a three-way interaction term for independents by switch type while also accounting for their previous vote shares. The inclusion of the additional interaction variable in specification 2 has little effect on the coefficient for the switched dummy variable: the effect of switching decreases by only two percentage points. When we turn to specification 4 we find that the coefficient for the policy category remained statistically insignificant while the office and votes categories are unchanged and still statistically significant. The coefficient for the “booted” category is no longer statistically significant, but we note that the three-way interaction for independents is both negative and statistically significant which indicates that those MPs who were ejected from their parties and who chose to run in the next election face an electoral cost with respect to their vote shares. An identical effect is found in specification 6 while the opportunist variable remains unchanged from specification 5. This is not surprising: the absence of an “office” option (MPs cannot switch to become an independent for office motivation) equates “opportunist” with “vote seeking.”

Overall, we find that party switching is negatively related to electoral prosperity: MPs who switch or are forced out of their political parties should expect to see a drop in their vote shares in the election that follows their change in party affiliation. However, when we break down switches by their competing motivations, we find variation.

Without a doubt, party expulsion universally and expectedly leads to a less happy electoral experience; MPs who are booted from their parties can expect a substantial and statistically significant drop in their vote shares. MPs in this group are much more likely to change partisan affiliations because of scandal or wrongdoing than MPs who change voluntarily. Several of these MPs were thrown out of caucus because of criminal charges, while others could not secure re-nomination under their party's banner. For some of the legislators who were booted (in this sample, for reasons such as sexual assault convictions, unemployment insurance fraud, corruption charges, drunk driving convictions and hit-and-runs), scandal may have been a confounding variable: voters may have been thinking less about the MP's partisan affiliation and more about criminal wrongdoing. However, most such MPs did not run again in the next election, and less than one-fourth (23%) who qualified for entry into our analysis (those who ran in the next election) resigned or were ejected due to scandal. In fact, most (77%) of the MPs in the “booted” category who subsequently lost in the next election were thrown out of caucus for speaking out against the party leadership, breaking ranks on a whipped vote or losing a nomination battle. These results suggest that even though voters do not respond to all party switches equally, they are not indifferent to partisan brands and a certain amount of party-based voting is still taking place.

Similarly, MPs who switch for office seeking reasons, that is, to take up a cabinet portfolio or party leadership role are punished by their constituents as well. It appears voters are not fooled by this sort of behaviour and recognize it as naked ambition and political manoeuvering. This is not to say that office-switching never pays off; however, this suggests that other factors may be at play and that the micro-circumstances surrounding a switch may be important, especially as they vary by constituency. One such mechanism concerns the type of legislator who might be motivated to switch parties for opportunistic reasons. In making their decisions, these MPs weigh the costs and benefits of switching: the benefits are obvious to the outside world, but the costs are often not. Such legislators may feel that their chances of re-election are quite high regardless of their behaviour, in effect, that they have an electoral cushion to fall back on after taking an initial hit. This suggests, as per Evans and colleagues (Reference Evans, Peterson and Hadley2012), that ambitious MPs who jump ship with the goal of moving up the political career ladder should weigh their ambition against the risk that their previous standing at the polls will diminish.

The analysis gets more interesting when we take a close look at the different effects of party switchers who switch to become independents and then choose to run in the subsequent election. Ordinarily, independents fare poorly in Canadian elections where the lack of a personal vote rewards incumbents who run under a party label. This is borne out in our analysis which highlights the electoral penalties that independent incumbents incur. Although, we also observe from the Vote share (lag1) X Independent variable that independents who fare well in the previous election appear to benefit from a personal vote effect; as independents' lagged vote share increases, so too does the vote share in the next election. This personal vote does not carry over for those previously “partied” MPs who switch and run as independents. Specification 2 demonstrates that MPs who switch (for whatever reason) and run as independents can expect their vote shares to drop. However, we found no statistically significant effect when we broke switches down by policy office and votes. That said, the story for independents may be a story about agency as we found that MPs who are booted from their political parties and then run as independents experience a statistically significant drop in their subsequent vote share. This effect is seen again in the opportunist model. It appears to hurt less when MPs jump from their parties to become an independent than when they are pushed out.

Conclusion

Our empirical analysis shows that a relationship exists between the reasons MPs switch parties and their subsequent electoral fates. The electorate punishes MPs who switch parties to further their own careers by switching for office- or vote-based reasons. By contrast, we found no empirical evidence of a negative effect for MPs who switch for policy-based reasons. MPs who were thrown out of caucus suffered the grimmest electoral fates.

At its core, party switching in Canada tells a story about the personal vote. This story contradicts past work on voting behaviour, which suggests that the personal vote does not exist in Canada. Our findings provide clear evidence that while political parties are important to voters, legislator identity and actions matter. Voters recognize when their MP is trying to serve their interests and do not necessarily punish them just for switching sides. This finding may provide some comfort for more cynical observers of Canadian politics: voters are paying attention and holding their representatives to account when they do not act in their best interests.

Supplementary materials

To view supplementary material for this article, please visit https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008423917001445.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments: The authors would like to thank the editors and reviewers of the Journal for their helpful comments and suggestions as well as Hwan-Jin Yoon, Daniel Stockemer, André Lecours, Luc Turgeon and Marina McGale. An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2015 Midwest Political Science Association Annual Conference.

1 Indeed, Bourget was not alone in his defection over the conscription issue, and several of his colleagues moved to sit as independents or “independent liberals” for the 1945 election. In this study, all Quebec MPs who ran under these labels in the 1945 election but then switched back to the Liberal party in 1949 are coded as having switched for “policy” reasons (Dawson, Reference Dawson1961).

2 Note that the overall N dropped to 3104 MP-elections for 1262 MPs due to the inclusion of the lagged dependent variables as independent variables.

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Figure 0

Table 1 Frequency Table of Party Switch and Electoral Result (incumbents 1945–2011)

Figure 1

Table 2 Frequency Table of Party Switching Types (Incumbents: 1945–2011)

Figure 2

Table 3 Frequency Table of Switch Type and Electoral Result (incumbents 1945–2011)

Figure 3

Table 4 Variable Descriptions

Figure 4

Table 5 Summary Statistics

Figure 5

Table 6 Arellano-Bond dynamic panel-data estimation of the electoral effects of party switching in Canada

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