Abstract:
Studies interested in Indigenous voting in Canada tend to focus on socio-economic, cultural and political factors that explain their lower levels of electoral participation. While highly relevant given Canada’s ongoing reality as a settler-colonial state, these studies are of limited help in making sense of recent increases in electoral engagement in Indigenous communities across the country. Using data from four elections between 2006 and 2015, this study focuses instead on why some Indigenous individuals vote and how they vote. Our analysis suggests that one of many possible reasons for the recent surge in Indigenous turnout has to do with the candidates presenting themselves for elections. Higher voter turnout in Indigenous communities corresponds with a higher proportion of Indigenous candidates. This trend is consistent with the literature on affinity voting. We also find that political parties who present an Indigenous candidate receive more votes in constituencies with a high proportion of Indigenous voters. Résumé Les études qui portent sur le vote des Autochtones au Canada tendent à se focaliser sur l’abstention électorale et les facteurs socio-économiques, culturels et politiques qui l’expliquent. Bien que ces études soient pertinentes, notamment dans le contexte colonial de l’État canadien, elles ne permettent pas d’expliquer l’augmentation récente de la participation électorale dans certaines communautés à travers le pays. À partir de données recueillies pour les quatre élections fédérales entre 2006 et 2015, cet article s’intéresse au pourquoi et au comment du vote Autochtone. Notre étude démontre, parmi d’autres explications possibles, que le taux de participation autochtone est lié à l’identité du candidat qui se présente dans la circonscription. Ainsi, plus la proportion de candidats autochtones est grande, plus le taux de participation sera élevé. Ces résultats sont consistants avec la littérature sur le vote affinitaire. Nous démontrons également que les partis politiques qui présentent un candidat autochtone recevront plus de votes dans les circonscriptions avec une forte proportion d’électeurs Autochtones. Long denied some of the most basic rights of citizenship, including the right to vote, Indigenous peoples still have an ambiguous relationship with the democratic institutions of the Canadian state. While some see the value of engaging in © Canadian Political Science Association (l’Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 2018 Canadian Journal of Political Science (2019), 52, 39–53 doi:10.1017/S0008423918000574 of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008423918000574 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 54.70.40.11, on 30 Jun 2019 at 03:56:31, subject to the Cambridge Core terms electoral politics at the federal and provincial levels to change settler institutions from within, others see participation in the electoral process as an abdication of their status as distinct nations and as an indirect recognition of settler-colonial sovereignty on their lands and communities (Bonspiel, 2015). This latter view is supported by a number of Indigenous intellectuals who see the act of voting as a form of assimilation (Alfred, 1999). Indigenous electoral participation at the federal and provincial levels in Canada reflects this ambiguity. While voting is comparable to the Canadian average in some regions of the country and in some communities, the overall pattern has historically been one of very low turnout and limited engagement in electoral politics (Bargiel, 2012). This pattern, however, appears to be changing. The 2015 Canadian federal election saw an unprecedented mobilization in Indigenous communities to get people to vote. The Assembly of First Nations (AFN), the main organization representing on-reserve Indigenous peoples in Canada, openly encouraged members of First Nations to vote. Without taking a specific partisan stand, the AFN was openly critical of the outgoing government and targeted 51 constituencies where it believed a mobilization of the Indigenous vote could make a difference. This was not the first time the AFN encouraged its members to vote. The Assembly has worked closely with Elections Canada to facilitate turnout in First Nations communities since 2006 (Sadik, 2009). However, the scale of the 2015 mobilization was unprecedented. More spontaneous yet highly visible efforts to encourage Indigenous youth to vote also sprang up in social media (Talaga, 2015). Political parties also made efforts to mobilize the Indigenous vote: a record 54 Indigenous candidates ran for office (Fontaine, 2015). In the days following the elections, Indigenous leaders and organizations like the AFN adopted a celebratory tone: the governing party was defeated, replaced by a potentially much more friendly Liberal party under the leadership of Justin Trudeau. More importantly, however, they celebrated an unprecedented mobilization in Indigenous communities, where voting had skyrocketed. Media reports citing electoral officials and local Indigenous leaders suggested a surge of at least 20 per cent for on-reserve voting. In some communities, the number of ballots cast went up by more than 200 per cent compared with the previous election in 2011 (Puxley, 2015). Elections Canada confirmed that it ran out of ballots in some Indigenous communities (Talaga, 2015). This surge in Indigenous voting raises several questions for students of Indigenous politics and electoral behavior. How can we explain this apparent shift from alienation to engagement amongst many Indigenous voters? By and large, studies interested in Indigenous voting in Canada have tended to focus on the socio-economic, cultural and political factors that explain their lack of electoral participation (Fournier and Loewen, 2011; Harell et al., 2010; Ladner and McCrossan, 2007). While highly relevant in the context of a historically low participation rate, these studies are of limited help in explaining more recent patterns of electoral engagement. Scholars have theorized some of the reasons why Indigenous peoples tend to vote less, but we know little of the voting patterns and motivations of those who actually do vote. In this study, we explored Indigenous voting behavior in Canada by focusing on voter turnout and vote choice in Indigenous communities in recent federal 40 Dabin Simon, Daoust Jean François and Papillon Martin of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008423918000574 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 54.70.40.11, on 30 Jun 2019 at 03:56:31, subject to the Cambridge Core terms elections. Indigenous individuals did vote in greater numbers in the 2015 federal elections, but how did they vote and what motivated their vote choice? Without dismissing the importance of the AFN’s call to vote and related social media campaigns, we hypothesized that one factor motivating Indigenous individuals to vote was the slate of candidates and that higher voter turnout in a number of Indigenous communities would be linked to a higher proportion of Indigenous candidates. This idea is consistent with the literature on affinity voting (Besco, 2015; Bird et al., 2011; Goodyear-Grant and Tolley, 2017), which suggests that historically disadvantaged groups are more likely to vote when there is a candidate with which they can identify. Based on the affinity voting model, we also tested the hypothesis that political parties who present an Indigenous candidate would receive more votes in constituencies with a high proportion of Indigenous voters. After discussing the impact of settler-colonial policies on Indigenous citizenship and voting patterns, we introduce the affinity voting model and the dataset with which we tested our hypotheses. In the absence of easily accessible and precise enough pan-Canadian data on Indigenous voting patterns, we tested the affinity voting hypothesis using pooled data from Elections Canada covering four elections: 2006, 2008, 2011 and 2015. We created a dataset of 734 ballot boxes where at least 95 per cent of individuals in the electorate identified as Indigenous, based on census data. While this dataset was not fully representative of the entire Indigenous population in Canada, it allowed for a relatively fine-tuned analysis of voting patterns in specific areas of the country where Indigenous peoples form a significant majority of the electorate. Our analysis suggests that Indigenous voting patterns are strongly influenced by the presence of Indigenous candidates on the ballot. While this is not in itself a sufficient explanation to account for Indigenous participation in the 2015 federal elections, it nonetheless suggests that the unprecedented number of Indigenous candidates likely had an impact on voting patterns. We conclude with some remarks on the policy implications of these results and, more broadly, for our understanding of changing patterns of Indigenous citizenship in Canada. Indigenous Peoples and the Franchise: An Ambiguous Legacy Although there is significant regional variation (Howe and Bedford, 2016; Ladner and McCrossan, 2007), turnout levels for Indigenous individuals in Canada are comparatively lower than national averages. Voting has been especially low at the federal and provincial levels, with the federal electoral turnout on reserves estimated at an average of 44 per cent between 2004 and 2011, compared with 61 per cent for all Canadians (Bargiel, 2012). There are many explanations for this disengagement, but colonial history figures predominantly in many of them. The three formally recognized Indigenous groups in Canada (Inuit, Métis and First Nations) have distinctive historical relationships with the Canadian franchise. Members of First Nations, formally recognized as “Indians” under the Indian Act, were initially
