It's Unemployment, Stupid! Why Perceptions About the Job Situation Hurt the Liberals in the 1997 Election

Richard Nadeau, André Blais, Neil Nevitte and Elisabeth Gidengil

Canadian Public Policy, 2000, vol. 26, issue 1, 77-94

Abstract: The Liberals almost lost their parliamentary majority in June 1997. This article argues that preceptions of the unemployment situation hurt the Liberals and cost them the support of almost three percentage points of votes. We examine the reasons why Canadians did not render a more positive judgement on the job situation despite a decrease of the official unemployment rate in Canada during the Liberal mandate. The results of this study raise a number of questions about voters' behaviour, about the diffusion and penetration of both general and economic information within the electorate, about the criteria with which voters use to judge governments, and on the incentives these governments might have to manufacture political business cycles.

Date: 2000
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0317-0861%2820000 ... USWPA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-4 (text/html)
only available to JSTOR subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpp:issued:v:26:y:2000:i:1:p:77-94

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.utpjournals.com/loi/cpp/

Access Statistics for this article

Canadian Public Policy is currently edited by Prof. Mike Veall

More articles in Canadian Public Policy from University of Toronto Press University of Toronto Press Journals Division 5201 Dufferin Street Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3H 5T8.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Iver Chong ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).