Amid high costs of living and increasing financial instability, rhetorical slogans such as “axe the tax” are emerging as politicians strive to lessen voters’ economic hardships.
But what makes an economy-focused political platform attractive to voters? How important are economic promises in voter decisions?
For decades, researchers have analyzed the connection between economic policy and voter behaviour, zeroing in on the influences behind how people vote.
Tim Abray, who holds a PhD from Queen’s University on the intersection between democratic theory and voter behaviour, said economic and financial concerns consistently occupy the top spot of factors underpinning voter behaviour patterns.
Abray said politicians tend to lean on the concept of “economic voting”: targeting working-class voters using ideologies like the “Canadian Dream” to instill hope for positive financial prospects.
“It’s a very common human instinct to protect the space around hope for the future, and voters will defend it hard without even realizing that’s what they’re doing,” he said. “It tends to get leveraged by politicians and that’s why they go after [working-class] demographics more than wealthy people.”
Behavioural underpinnings
Abray said it’s important to understand the types of behavioural conversations underlying broader economic policy conversations.
The most important element contributing to voter behaviour, he said, is perception of a leader’s intentions to address desires for financial security.
“It’s less about a specific policy outcome and it’s more about signalling to the public that you understand their pain. We’re starting to see the federal government … trying to show materially, in a very day-to-day way, that they appreciate the challenges that people say they’re facing.”
He pointed to the federal government’s recent GST holiday as an example of the Trudeau administration taking steps to publicly acknowledge Canadians’ economic concerns.
“The measures themselves are less important than the acknowledgement of the importance of the issue,” Abray said.
Laura Stephenson, an associate professor at Western University who researches voting and political behaviour, said voter behaviour is less about policy, and more about developing trust in a leader who will make the right decisions for an individual voter.
“It’s not like people tend to look at the economic estimates of how much these platform promises are going to cost … But what does happen is that people want to trust somebody,” she said.
‘Retrospective voting’
The difference between retrospective and prospective viewpoints is also important to consider in understanding voter behaviour, said Jean Guillaume Forand, an associate professor of economics at the University of Waterloo.
He said there’s a fundamental distinction between whether voters look back at the incumbent government’s past performance, or forward at a party’s potential in government.
In the current economic climate, Forand said voters often analyze how they feel the government has previously managed the economy, meaning a significant portion of voting behaviour is retrospective. These retrospective patterns, he said, pose challenges for the incumbents.
“The Liberals are in their third term. The inflation rate is down, but the level of prices is up,” Forand said. “It’s going to be hard for them to avoid being blamed for people being unhappy, and you see this in the polls with the Conservative lead being extremely high.”
“That’s the thing about retrospective voting — it’s based on what happens under your watch, and you can’t change that,” Forand added. “If people are unhappy with what’s happened in the last few years you can try to influence them, but it’s very hard to move people off of that.”
Stephenson added that it’s “an uphill battle for any incumbent,” as voters will seek change of any kind to lessen economic conditions that have worsened while Trudeau has been in office.
“I’m not sure we can blame everything on [Trudeau] — there was a pandemic in there,” Stephenson said. “But the natural tendency is to say, ‘this isn’t working for me. I need to try something new.’
“If Trudeau is making a whole bunch of promises related to what he’s going to do with the economy, then people are going to ask why he didn’t do this before and why he didn’t fix things already.”
However, a recent survey conducted by Research Co. shows that Canadians are not overwhelmingly looking at Poilievre as a well-equipped leader to manage the nation’s finances.
In British Columbia, for example, which tends to be a federal Conservative stronghold, only 37 per cent of survey respondents are confident Poilievre will help the economy. B.C. respondents expressed a similar level of confidence in Trudeau, with 36 per cent of respondents stating the Liberal leader will have a positive economic impact.
There are three components to a political platform, Abray said: On top of persuading voters, platforms aim to mobilize voters, while also trying to dissuade people from siding with the opposition.
With slogans like “axe the tax,” Abray said Poilievre’s platform focuses more on delegitimizing the Liberal leadership rather than promoting a focused economic plan.
He suggested this voter dissuasion is one of the reasons economic confidence numbers remain low among both parties.
In parallel, Abray pointed to the efficacy of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s political messaging in dissuading votes cast for Kamala Harris’s Democrats.
“If you listen to [Trump], there is not a shred of doubt in his messaging or tone about what he’s doing is the correct thing,” Abray said. “He believes anybody who disagrees with him is just an error or is on the wrong path.”
American influence
Following Trump’s re-election, experts say the intersection between voting behaviour and economic interests is coming into an even sharper focus.
Trump has promised to implement 25 per cent tariffs on all Canadian goods shipped into the U.S. The Canadian dollar dropped to its lowest level since May 2020 following this tariff announcement.
Even following Trudeau’s dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago last week, what Trump wants from the Canadian administration in exchange for lifting the 25 per cent tariff remains unclear.
As Canadians experience the first of many projected negative economic impacts of Trump’s re-election, Stephenson said voters will also start to prioritize a “proactive approach” to American relations in their next Canadian leadership.
She said voters may begin to look for a leader who will respond to Trump’s policies and advocate for Canadian economic health.
Trump’s recent re-election is also interesting to examine from a voter behaviour standpoint, Abray added, as “economic questions were front and centre” for American voters.
Trump promised measures like tax relief, cutting prices and implementing tariffs during his election campaign to strengthen the American economy.
But even more important than Trump’s specific platform promises, Forand said, is the President-elect’s proactive acknowledgement of the financial concerns Americans are experiencing.
“It’s debatable the extent to which [Trump’s] promises actually changed anything because people’s dissatisfaction with the level of prices and the perceived declines in their economic standing probably played a bigger role,” Forand said.
Forand said the American election is an example of how retrospective voting makes it challenging for the incumbent to remain favourable.
“It seems like it was mostly an election that was based on retrospective voting motives of people being unhappy with how they perceived the Biden administration handled inflation and other kinds of economic issues,” he said.
Looking ahead
For voters like Carleton University student Matthew Robertson,* no political party provides the perfect financial solution heading into the upcoming Canadian federal election.
“I haven’t made my decision yet, and I think that each party has pros and cons. Some of them may be further from the ideology when it comes to economics,” Robertson said.
While Poilievre may not hold an overwhelming majority in perceived economic strength among voters, the Conservatives continue to hold an 19-point lead over the Liberals and remain in a strong position to win a majority government, according to most recent polls.
The influence of retrospective voting on the upcoming election, which disfavours the Liberals as incumbents, has allowed the Conservatives to lean on the “axe the tax” slogan while being “fuzzy on the details” of its economic plans, Forand said.
“It’s the Conservatives’ job right now to say nothing and wait for the voters to kick out the Liberals,” he said.
Despite the absence of tangible economic plans, Abray said Poilievre’s messaging continues to be successful because he’s continuing to broadly address issues important to Canadian voters.
“There is no question that [Poilievre] is plumbing a well that is full of water,” Abray said. “[Economic concerns] are front and centre in the zeitgeist, and any politician who fails to acknowledge people’s angst about their economic futures at the moment is really making a mistake.”
As a voter, Robertson said he’s frustrated with the lack of tangible plans to address increasing financial instability across Canada.
“A lot of these parties are taking very complex economic situations and reducing them into slogans and talking about how they’re just going to flip a switch and everything’s going to be perfect,” he said. “That’s not going to happen with any candidate.”
On the Liberals’ side, Abray said Trudeau’s plan to hand out $250 rebate cheques is an example of a “blunt, straightforward choice to show people they understand the concern.”
The Liberals’ main opportunity to regain favour is to wait for the opposition to misstep, Forand added.
“The incumbents really need to rely on the opposition making a mistake and appearing not ready to be in government,” Forand said. “The Liberals can only hope that the Conservatives will make themselves so unappealing that people are willing to stick with them.”
While acknowledging the behaviours that underpin voter decisions, Robertson said he often encourages people around him to do research on policy promises before casting their votes.
“I hope people understand that and they don’t just go home and say, ‘Well, this guy is going to make groceries cheaper,’ without really looking into how he’s going to do that.”
*Matthew Robertson has contributed to the Charlatan.
Featured graphic by Alisha Velji/the Charlatan.
