Jack Lucas

Natalia Bueno (Emory): "Coordination Advantage: How Partisan
Favoritism Persists Under Accountability Institutions"

Happening TODAY! Take a break from whatever you're doing and join us for what's sure to be a very interesting talk. ucalgary.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Immigration policy is (a) not an especially high priority for Albertans and (b) not an area in which Albertans' policy attitudes are much different from other Canadians.

When we dig into the issues that Albertans *do* care most about, several stand out as significantly more important than immigration: government spending, economic investment, health care spending, and Canada's independence from the United States. Immigration is very much second-tier.

Nor do Albertans differ from other Canadians in the importance of the immigration issue. If anything, Albertans tend to prioritize immigration *less* than residents of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Ontario, etc.

One issue we included in the survey is immigration. When it comes to general attitudes about immigration, Albertans look very similar to their counterparts in Ontario and Quebec. As we've seen in other surveys, Canadians across the country are in a skeptical mood about immigration levels.

Today I'm wrapping up a survey of more than 7,000 Canadians on dozens of policy issues. The survey is part of a project, co-led by Tyler Romualdi (Western), to track Canadians' policy attitudes since the 1940s. Much more to come on this exciting project! But in the meantime...

I keep telling y’all: there’s nothing more fascinating than Vancouver electoral politics!!!

Next year, I'm hoping for a podium finish.

🧠 Do politicians misread their constituents' preferences?

➡️Using a new method where politicians draw preference distributions, N Dias, @jacklucas.bsky.social & @liorsheffer.bsky.social show that conservative overestimation is smaller than assumed www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #FirstView

New and open access, in @psrm.bsky.social: What happens when we make politicians draw distributions? Nic Dias, @jacklucas.bsky.social and I explore whether the large errors politicians make about public opinion are artificially inflated by how researchers ask them to estimate it /1
cup.org/4kltoyE

Logo of Political Science Research and Methods featuring the initials "PSRM" in a stylized grey font on a black background.

#OpenAccess from @psrm.bsky.social -

Beyond the mean: how thinking about the distribution of public opinions reduces politicians’ perceptual errors - https://cup.org/4kltoyE

- Nicholas Dias, @jacklucas.bsky.social & @liorsheffer.bsky.social

#FirstView

It's officially out! City Politics in Canada, co-edited with @jacklucas.bsky.social and Martin Horak @westernupolisci.bsky.social is in print and available for course adoption. Thank you to all chapter authors for their contributions. bsky.app/profile/did:...

Photo of the book City Politics in Canada.

Picture of the chapter by Luc Turgeon on Ottawa in the book.

Santa came early this year and I just received my copy of City Politics in Canada, edited by Martin Horak, @jacklucas.bsky.social and @bigcitypolitics.bsky.social. I wrote the chapter on Ottawa (dedicated to the late Caroline Andrew).

Final CMB Online Research Workshop of 2025, coming up on Thursday! Allison Verrilli (UT Austin) will be presenting research on gentrification and political participation, with Matt Nelsen (Miami) as discussant. Will be great; email me for the link!

Will ask!

Happening TODAY! The latest CMB Online Research Workshop event, featuring the great Tyler Simko. Email me if you'd like to attend and I'll share the link!

The CMB Online Speakers Series is back! Jérémy Gilbert on Multilevel Climate Governance, Friday October 31st from 11:00am to 12:00pm (MT)/1:00pm to 2:00pm (ET). Email me or @nicolemcmahon.bsky.social for the link if you'd like to join!

Congratulations to our winner, Alex Middleton (@alexyyc.bsky.social)! Twelve correct calls, plus a remarkably low 11.5% overall error in the tiebreaker. Well done!

Political Gossip with Friends Alberta’s 2025 municipal elections are looking different this year. Join Nonprofits Vote on October 23rd for nonprofit focused debrief!

Alberta Voted: Now What?
I'll be moderating this Nonprofits Vote event with panelists Matt Solberg, @markusoff.bsky.social, Rachel Swendseid & @jacklucas.bsky.social discussing the election that was.
Join us at 10 a.m. on Oct. 23. No cost and online, register here: www.eventbrite.ca/e/political-...

No, but we have a post-election survey going into the field today in Calgary (and six other AB muns), and it includes a good issue question. More soon!

Remarkably, because of the low turnout and the number of competitive mayoral candidates, it looks like Jeromy Farkas will win the 2025 mayoral election with 25,000 *fewer* votes than he received in 2021.

OK, that's it for now. Much more to come. Big thanks to the Canadian Municipal Barometer and the UofC Faculty of Arts for supporting this research. Thanks also to our partnership coordinator / survey programmer extraordinaire Reed Merrill, and to any Calgarians out there who completed our survey!

...and here are the feeling scores from the same survey respondents for the provincial parties. The averages are similar to the municipal parties, but notice the polarization in the distributions. Far fewer choose the middle option (5), and more (around one fifth) choose (0) for "strongly dislike."

...here are the feeling thermometer scores for the municipal parties, with the averages at the top, and then the full distribution down below. Notice that many, many respondents choose five on this scale, which in this setting is a bit like the survey-response equivalent of the shrug emoji (🤷).

Feeling thermometer (like/dislike) scales are a common way to measure how people feel about political parties. In Calgary, average feeling thermometer scores for the municipal parties were similar to average scores for provincial parties. But the distributions are very different...

Finally, municipal political parties. Calgarians have mixed views. Overwhelming majorities prefer independent candidates (the questions in the top row). But many also recognize the benefits of municipal parties, especially in the information they provide to voters (bottom centre and bottom right).

(Important note: these policy items were co-developed with my TERRIFIC students in an undergraduate seminar on public opinion and political representation at the University of Calgary; stay tuned for their very cool and much more in-depth analysis of these policy attitudes!)

OK, OK, I hear you saying — enough about ideology! Fine. How about some data on policy? Here's support for nine policy statements among Calgarians (in blue) and among supporters of each mayoral candidate (in black). Clear polarization on some issues. Striking ambivalence across the housing items.

Here's the proportion of Calgarians who supported each mayoral candidate, by their provincial party identity. Gondek and Sharp look like mirror images of each other in terms of NDP/UCP support, whereas Farkas enjoys at least *some* support among all of the partisan identities.

While we're on the subject of ideology, here's the probability of support for each candidate, conditional on Calgarians' own ideological self-placements. There's a strong relationship between ideology and support. But notice the higher support for Farkas on the left, in contrast to Davison/Sharp.