Canadians: Do you vote for a party or a candidate?

languagehat, maybe you need to spend less time with your friends and family. Have you been paying attention to your own state? Massachusetts hasn't had a Republican senator in more than 25 years, nor a Republican Representative in nearly 10, yet has had Republican governors for the last 15. Quit making shit up.

Just spoke to my Australian husband, who clarified that the "party dispersing your preferences" thing really only happens at the federal level, since there are so many candidates there. At the local level you have to rank everybody. With regards to the asshat issue, he says that he's never voted against a party he wanted to win because the candidate was an asshat, but he has voted for parties that he wouldn't normally consider because the candidate was a "really top bloke."

One thing to add: the views or behaviour of a particular candidate or sitting MP from a party you generally support may make the difference between going out to vote and staying at home, but it's rare (i.e. Neil Hamilton rare) that it will get you to switch.

Canuckistani here too. I am influenced by party, definitely, but generally for for the candidate that will do the best job in the riding I'm in---which is why I hate the idea of list-based PR so much. I've voted for the three major parties, but tend to vote NDP most of the time. I have voted "strategically" in the past, that is, vote for a party I don't particularly like to force out a particularly bad member from a party I generally favour. As I say, candidates are more important to me than party affiliation.

Well, I am a Tory - a risky thing to admit in this thread I suspect... Nonetheless I have nearly always voted party before persom - if for no other reason than parties cam achieve things, individual MPs or councillors rarely can on their own. Look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyre_Forest_(UK_Parliament_constituency) where a local doctor was successfully elected on a campaign to save the A&E dept at nearby Kidderminster hospital - http://www.worcestershirehealth.nhs.uk/Hospitals_and_services/Hospitals/kidderminster_hospital.asp A very successful local campaignn or excellent candidate != changing anything. A party is much better able to. So - I guess I'll vote tory in most cases - inless the candidate is a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Winterton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Hamilton_%28politician%29.

In the British system, people really do have to be asshats. But it does happen. One famous example was in 1997. Tory MP Neil Hamilton had been accused of taking cash for asking questions in the House of Commons. He sued but dropped the case at the last minute - everyone hence assuming he was guilty after all. Despite this he decided to run again for Parliament in the general election. There was then this big hunt for someone to try and get him kicked out. This was tricky as he was in something like the third safest Tory seat in the country. An ex-BBC journalist called Martin Bell was found to run against him. Bell was uber-clean - morally and sartorially (he wore a white suit) and everyone liked him. He won. On the other hand, George Galloway (a total tool if ever there was one) managed to kick out the perfectly nice Labour MP, Oona King, in Bethnal Green by running on a bizarre anti-war ticket. Galloway had been previously been slung out of the Labour party for his views - his support for Saddam was such that he was dubbed the MP for Baghdad Central. Famously he saluted Saddam's "indefatigability". So people generally do vote for the party not the wo/man. But sometimes they don't. It doesn't make much difference but at least it makes elections marginally more interesting.

(Australian here). Just wading into the debate over loyalty patterns in U.S. voting, remember that the big difference between the U.S. and the UK/Aust/Canadian(?) model are the off-year congressional elections, divorced from the Presidential campaign. Australian federal campaigns, though they might be for the election of a parliament, are almost entirely presidential in nature -- the leaders of the parliamentary parties are the only ones on T.V., and public perception of the leader goes a long way to determining a person's voting choice. When I was in the UK last year for their election, my perception was of an election fought on very similar lines. (I don't know about Canada.) The point that there's often very little focus put on local candidates. What Australian/UK voters miss out on is that opportunity provided by the U.S. off-year elections -- to have an election campaign where the local candidate is the issue. This might go some way to explain why party loyalty is diminished in the U.S. relative to other parliamentary democracies. Place the public and the media's focus on the local candidate and the voter may feel it necessary to make a personal assessment of the candidate, divorced from their party's platform. I'd also put on my psephologist hat here and say on those rare opportunities that Australian voters have had to vote at federal level on their local candidate, outside of the regular nation-wide election campaign schedule (i.e. by-elections following the death/retirement of their local member), they have exhibited some remarkable breaks from the trend, usually in the form of a "protest" vote against the incumbent government. e.g. Voters in the electorate of Higglesthorp, who always vote an X party candidate in, will suddenly switch in droves to the Y party's candidate in a by-election. They will do this as a protest against the X party's policy on widget subsidies and in full knowledge that their protest will not result in the X party losing its parliamentary majority. Then, at the next federal election, the X party will announce $20 bajillion dollars allocated to widget subsidies, and the loyal voters of Higglesthorp will return to the fold (or alternatively, the X party won't announce anything regarding widget subsidies, knowing full well that the voters of Higglesthorp couldn't countenance a Y government.) According to this http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/rb/2005-06/06rb01.htm by the Parliamentary Library, in the 141 by-elections held since Federation (1901): # On 34 occasions (24.1 per cent) the party complexion of a seat has altered at a by-election (i.e. the incumbent party lost). # Twenty-four of these (17.0 per cent) have been in seats lost by the government of the day. # The average two-party preferred swing against the government of the day has been 4.0 per cent, while the average swing in government-held seats was 5.0 per cent against the government. So the outcome appears to be that if you give the electorate the opportunity to have a risk-free shot at their incumbent, they will often grab it with both hands.

I change ridings so much (because I move so frequently) that I rarely consider the local candidate. My main concerns are federal issues, and for the vast majority of issues (recent exception being same sex marriage) MPs are bound to vote with their party. Thus, I definitely vote party lines. Now, depending on the election I may vote *for* a party, or be voting strategically *against* one. For this election, the idea of a Tory majority scares the hell out of me, so I am in a sense voting against them. It works out though, because I am generally an NDPer , and they will almost certainly win my riding regardless.

This might go some way to explain why party loyalty is diminished in the U.S. relative to other parliamentary democracies That's probably a part, but I'd think that the bulk of that is simply due to the legally-enforced weakness of American parties. American parties-as-organizations have very little control over who uses their party labels.