Audrey Brennan, INRS-UCS
In November, Valérie Plante, Mayor of Montreal, announced she would not seek a third term, citing concerns about her ability to maintain the same level of energy she brought to her first two mandates. Shortly after, Catherine Fournier, Mayor of Longueuil, held a press conference to confirm her intention to seek re-election, aiming to challenge the prevailing negativity around serving consecutive terms. In December, the CBC shed light on another issue: the growing difficulty of recruiting young municipal candidates in Quebec, a challenge exacerbated by the harassment faced by elected officials.
In this blog post, I broaden the focus to data from the Canadian Municipal Barometer (CMB), exploring a key question: which municipal officials expressed an intention to run for another term?
Here’s a small spoiler: the majority of respondents in our sample indicated they plan to run again at the time they participated in the CMB. So, while the short answer to this blog post’s question is that most officials intend to run in the next municipal election, it opens up another important discussion: are there differences in these intentions based on gender, age, or other factors?
The CMB included a variant of this question in its 2020, 2021, 2023, and 2024 surveys. In the 2020 and 2021 waves, respondents were asked a straightforward yes-or-no question about their intention to run for another mandate. In contrast, the 2023 and 2024 surveys allowed respondents to estimate their likelihood of running. In this blog post, I analyze the responses from these surveys, focusing on municipal officials in the provinces while excluding respondents from the territories.
In the following figures, I compare responses from men (1817 respondents) and women (1019 respondents) across all survey waves, without distinguishing between individual years. Among those who indicated they would run again, 65.88% are men (teal), and 34.12% are women (grey). Similarly, among those who stated they would not run again, 68.26% are men (teal), and 31.84% are women (grey).
Figure 1: Running versus Not Running (%)
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Second, when comparing men and women on the same question, we find no significant differences in their responses. Among men respondents, 24.55% indicated they would not seek re-election (light blue), compared to 22.69% of female respondents. Similarly, 75.45% of men and 77.31% of women stated they would seek re-election (dark blue).
Figure 2: Men compared to women (%)
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I now examine the data on a yearly basis. In 2020 and 2021, the CMB posed the following question to municipal officials: Do you intend to run in the next municipal election? The responses are summarized in Table 1.
Table 1: Will Run again ? 2020-2021
Yes |
No |
|
2020 |
552
(77.09%) |
164 (22.9%) |
2021 |
573
(79.14%) |
151 (20.85%) |
Table 1 shows that in both 2020 and 2021, approximately 20% of respondents indicated they did not intend to run again.
In 2023 and 2024, the question was adjusted to a scaled format, asking: How likely is it that you will run again in the next municipal election? The responses for these years are presented in Figure 3. As with the earlier years, a similar trend emerges: respondents were more likely to indicate that they might run again than to report low chances of doing so. However, the response category with the highest proportion for both 2023 and 2024 was “50-50,” indicating that many municipal officials were undecided about their intentions to run in the next election.
Figure 3: Perceived likelihood of running again 2023 and 2024
Figure 3 is thought-provoking. While I initially focused on clear yes-or-no answers, allowing respondents to express uncertainty reveals a different picture. Unfortunately, we lack data on whether respondents were undecided in earlier waves of the CMB. This leaves us wondering how levels of undecidedness may have evolved over time.
Finally, I return to the clear “Yes” or “No” responses across all four years in which CMB participants were asked about their intention to run again. Here, I examine how these responses vary based on respondents’ year of birth and gender for the 2020, 2021, 2023, and 2024 surveys.
In Figure 4, I present a graphical breakdown of the number of respondents by birth year and their intention to run again. Each line represents the respondent’s gender: the dotted line corresponds to women, while the solid line represents men. Although men and women generally follow similar trends, a closer look at Figure 4 reveals a few notable takeaways.
First, among younger respondents, men born between 1975 and 1985 (top right quadrant of Figure 4) more frequently indicated that they would run again compared to their women counterparts. Second, men born between 1950 and 1960 (top left quadrant of Figure 4) were more likely to state that they would not seek re-election.
Figure 4 Running again by year of birth and Gender (Yes/No)
Predicting the retention of sitting municipal officials in Canada remains challenging. However, the CMB survey waves from 2020 to 2024 highlight notable age and gender differences among respondents, offering valuable insights. These findings align with and substantiate the concerns raised in the CBC article regarding the retention of young women as elected municipal officials. But, despite the high response rate to the likelihood of running gain, most of the respondents in our sample are men, hence making it difficult to fully measure the scope of the age and gender differences in the likelihood of running for another municipal election.
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