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Climate change in the 2019 Canadian federal election

Faculty Advisor

Date

2021

Keywords

climate change, election, political ideology, candidates, partisanship, digital trace data, survey data

Abstract (summary)

In the weeks before the 2019 federal election, climate change strikes occurred in Canada and across the globe, which may have increased the salience of this policy issue. We use two data sources to examine the role of climate change in the 2019 federal election: a representative survey of 1500 Canadians and 2109 Facebook posts from the five major party leaders. After accounting for political ideology and region, we find that concern about climate change was a strong positive predictor of liberal support. We triangulate these findings by analyzing Facebook posts. We find that left-wing politicians were more likely to post about climate change and that posts about climate change received more likes, comments, and shares than other posts. This higher level of user engagement did not differ depending on which political party posted the climate change message. The combination of sources offers news insights into citizen-elite interactions and electoral outcomes. Climate change was important in the election, whether this importance was measured through survey data or user engagement with leaders’ climate change posts.

Publication Information

Boulianne, Shelley, Stephanie Belland, Nikita Sleptcov, and Anders O. Larsson 2021. "Climate Change in the 2019 Canadian Federal Election" Climate 9, no. 5: 70. https://doi.org/10.3390/cli9050070

Notes

Item Type

Article

Language

English

Rights

Attribution (CC BY)