#BankNotable
Today is International Women’s Day and Prime Minister Trudeau took the opportunity to announce that a woman (other than the Queen) would appear on a Canadian bank note. An Advisory Committee will recommend to the Governor of the Bank of Canada a suitable nominee. They will make that decision only after deliberating on choices made…
Electoral Reform at the Manning Centre Conference
On February 27, I was asked to speak on a panel about electoral reform with former B.C. MLA, Nick Loenen and Conservative critic for Democratic Institutions, Scott Reid at the Manning Centre Conference in Ottawa. Nick made the case that single transferable vote would be the best option for any reform while Scott argued that there were many…
Discussing Elections at John Wesley Dafoe Conference, U of Manitoba
I am really looking forward to talking about elections at the John Wesley Dafoe Conference at the University of Manitoba, January 28-29, 2016. The conference is titled “Elections: Democratic Tools or Democracy Denied?” My panel on ‘Future Challenges’ is with Richard Balasko the former CEO of Elections Manitoba and Prof. Tamara Small, with whom I…
Political Advertising in the 2015 Election
I don’t think that many academics do a good job in communicating their findings to a broader public. When we apply for grants or research funds, we are often asked to discuss how we would disseminate our findings. A SSHRCC funding officer once said to me that academics don’t give this much attention. It’s such…
My first AMA on Reddit, Wednesday, Nov. 11
I have heard about Reddit’s AMA’s (ask me anything) for some time. I always thought that they were for famous people but for reasons not known, I am hosting an AMA for the subreddit /Canadapolitics on Wednesday, November 11, from 2- 3 PM. With the new Liberal government promising that the 2015 election would be…
Talking Election Ads At University of Calgary and Mount Royal University
I’m looking forward to giving two talks this week in Calgary on the role of election ads. I’ll be at University of Calgary on Wednesday, October 14 as part of the CMF Speaker Series and Mount Royal University on Thursday, October 16, as part of the SOMAR Speakers Series. If you are near by, stop by…
Photographs as agenda setters: the case of Alan Kurdi
Earlier this week, a remarkable photograph changed the nature of the Canadian election campaign. The death of a two year old boy, Alan Kurdi, whose body was washed up on a beach became a symbol of Canada’s inability or reluctance to deal with the Syrian refugee problem. Up to this point in the election, the…
Pythagorean Win-Loss
A Diversion: So, this is not about political science, the federal election or university teaching. It is about something that has been consuming probably too much of my time these days: baseball. Like many, I have been following the Toronto Blue Jays with great interest this year, more so than in the past. As I…
How data can be both truthful and deceptive
Data can be presented in a number of different ways and tables with their arrays of numbers often hide the real story. The recent explosion of infographics suggests that perhaps people understand complex data when portrayed visually. Edward R. Tufte, in The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, and other works, shows how powerful data can be when…
Recipient of Seymour Martin Lipset Award for Best Book on Canadian Politics
I was thrilled to hear that a book I co-authored along with my colleagues, Patrick Fournier, Henk Vanderkolk, R. Kenneth Carty, and André Blais was the recipient of the Seymour Martin Lipset Award for the Best Book from the Canadian Politics section of the American Political Science Association. The book is called When Citizens Decide: Lessons…