Audrey Brennan, INRS-UCS
This blog post is a follow-up to March’s “Perceptions of the Candidate Registration Process” Blog. In March, I examined how respondents from the CMB-BMC perceived the administrative process of becoming a municipal election candidate. I also investigated whether there were any differences between respondents of a given age and the terms they had served in their current position. Respondents generally find the administrative process relatively easy. However, about thirty percent of CMB-BMC respondents find some difficulty in becoming an election candidate. This month I’m focusing on the four provinces for which the CMB-BMC has the most respondents: British-Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, and Quebec. And, especially with the upcoming municipal elections in the province of Quebec (Lemieux 2025), I look at why respondents reported either high or low perception of difficulty.
I would like to emphasize the argument I made in March about the importance of considering the rules governing ballot access can have important democratic consequences (Jacobs & Leyenaar, 2014). These administrative rules shape who appears on the ballot and can advantage incumbents, deter minor party candidates, or reduce contestation (number of candidates on the ballot) (Anagol & Fujiwara, 2016; Stratmann, 2005; Perez-Vincent, 2023).
To better understand who finds the candidate registration process challenging, I analyzed data from the four provinces with the most respondents: British Columbia (BC), Alberta (AB), Ontario (ON), and Quebec (QC). I recoded the module’s main question about the difficulty of the administrative process to become a candidate in a municipal election. Respondents with a score of 3 or lower were classified as low difficulty, while those with a score of 4 or higher were classified as high difficulty. I recoded the variable as such since there seems to be two distinct distributions (see Figure 1), which justifies grouping scores from 0 to 3 as low perceived difficulty, and scores from 4 and above as high perceived difficulty.
According to this recoding of the difficulty level into low (0-3) or high (4-10), these two groups are composed of 73% councillors and 22% mayors or reeves. Respondents in the low perceived difficulty group served an average of two terms, while the high perceived difficulty group served an average of one term. About half of the respondents in both difficulty groups came from municipalities with fewer than 25,000 inhabitants, and very few from cities with more than 250,000 inhabitants. These categories are listed in Table 1.
Figure 1 shows the percentage of this blog’s subsample and these respondents’ difficulty perception levels, specifically, those who answered the question “On a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 means very easy and 10 means very difficult, how would you rate the administrative process you followed to become a candidate in your most recent municipal election?”. I consider a score of 0-3 low, representing 69.5% of responses (black bars). Conversely, I consider a score of 4 or higher (turquoise bars) a high level of difficulty. Respondents from British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario generally don’t find the process difficult, while Quebec respondents seem to disagree.
Since I am interested in what respondents find difficult, I looked at which administrative barriers contribute to the perception of high difficulty among CMB-BMC respondents. Specifically, the second question of the barriers to entry module “Which of the following influenced your response to the above question? Please select all that apply.” In British Columbia, among those who reported high difficulty, access to information was the most important (59%), and obtaining signatures was chosen by 30.8% of respondents. However, nomination fees are less often reported (25.6%) as influencing perceived difficulty, followed by the need to obtain party support (5.1%). The waiting period and or the option to choose "other" (open-ended response) had similar proportions depending on the level of difficulty.
Respondents from Alberta indicate that access to information (55.2%), as well as nomination fees (24.1%) and signatures (44.8%), contribute significantly to their perception of the difficulty of the nomination process. Wait times and "other" were chosen by 17% of respondents.
Respondents in Ontario, on the other hand, say that access to information (50%) and signatures (44%) contribute to their perception of the nomination process. Unlike other provinces, respondents in Quebec report that party support (13%) contributes to their perception of the nomination process. In addition, Quebecers were more likely to choose nomination fees (27%), access to information (45.1%) and signatures (29.2%) as determining factors.
In short, 69.5% of CMB-BMC 2025 respondents report that becoming a municipal election candidate is relatively easy (score of 3 or lower). However, Quebec respondents found the process more challenging compared to British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario. Given the upcoming Quebec municipal elections, it will be interesting to ask respondents in next year’s CMB-BMC annual survey how they found the administrative process of becoming a municipal election candidate.
Anagol, S. and Fujiwara, T. (2016). The runner-up effect. Journal of Political Economy, 124(4):927–991.
Jacobs, K. and Leyenaar, M. (2014). A conceptual framework for major, minor, and technical electoral reform. In Understanding Electoral Reform, pages 59–77. Routledge.
Lemieux, Olivier. « Candidats parachutés aux élections municipales : une pratique controversée ». ICI Radio-Canada, 5 juin 2025. https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2168763/candidats-parachutes-municipal.
Perez-Vincent, S. M. (2023). A few signatures matter: Barriers to entry in Italian local politics. European Journal of Political Economy, 78:102333.
Stratmann, T. (2005). Ballot access restrictions and candidate entry in elections. European Journal of Political Economy, 21(1):59–71.
