In Canada’s election, Trudeau got the messaging right, as the other parties fumbled.

Last month, Justin Trudeau led Canada’s Liberal Party to victory in the country’s federal election. Cristine de Clercy reviews the election campaign of the three major parties, and examines how the party’s leaders managed their party’s messaging to voters. She writes that in contrast to incumbent Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader, Stephen Harper’s stale, ‘more of the same’ messaging and the diffuse and unfocused messaging of the New Democratic Party, Trudeau’s positive message on the economy and the middle class was clear and continued to be appealing to voters throughout the campaign

On the Intersection of Leadership and Populism in North America and Europe

This editorial introduces the thematic issue and considers what the articles tell us about new approaches to studying political leadership and populism. The editorial surveys the set of eleven articles by referring to their geographic concentration (North America and Europe), along with methodological and thematic similarities. In conclusion, the set of articles displays the diverse theoretical and methodological approaches currently employed in cutting-edge research on populism and political leadership

A languid Canadian election turns into a highly competitive race

Canadians go to the polls on Monday after an unusually long election campaign. Cristine de Clercy writes that since the election was called on August 2nd, the polls have shifted markedly, with the Liberal Party – which has been out of power for a decade – approaching the 40 percent support mark which may allow it to form a majority government. Despite the poll numbers, she cautions that recent boundary changes and the potential for shifts in public opinion and for polling errors mean that the election’s outcome is still anyone’s guess

How Do Populist Voters Rate Their Political Leaders? Comparing Citizen Assessments in Three Jurisdictions

Drawing from the field of management studies, we explore how a sample of voters in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom use a leader character framework to judge political leadership. We ask, how do voters actually assess the character of their current leaders? And, in light of the populist zeitgeist, do people who hold a populist attitude differ markedly in how they judge the character of political leaders? Our results show that voters generally consider character important. However, voters who lean toward populism believe character matters less in political leadership than individuals who scored low on the populism indicator. This durable difference merits more exploration in a political context marked by populism. Our findings about the factors that influence vote choice contribute to this conversation and to extant research that reports that some voters pay greater attention to leader characteristics than do others

Review of False Expectations: Politics and the Pursuit ofthe Saskatchewan Myth

For much of its history Saskatchewan has been a net exporter of people, mainly to adjacent Great Plains locales and across North America. Many expatriates retain psychological ties to this prairie province that stretch beyond familial or historical connections, and this deep sense of identity is puzzling to students of prairie polities. Unlike other established societies with high out-migration levels such as Newfoundland, Saskatchewan was settled fairly recently, and many families lived there for one or two generations at most before leaving. How is it that in a relatively brief period many new immigrants developed such a deep and abiding association with this province