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May 6, 2005
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Independent MP’s: Constituents’ Opposition to Election Call Does Not Affect Members’ Re-Electability
A COMPAS Report to CNS/National Post/Global TV
According to political convention, the Prime Minister is the most powerful person in federal politics. According to legal fiction, power resides in the Crown and hence the Governor-General. In the current Parliament, reality points to power being concentrated in the three independent Members of Parliament and potentially their constituents.

Representative surveys of voters (n=300 each) were conducted in the federal ridings of Surrey North, Edmonton-Mill Woods-Beaumont, and Mississauga-Erindale, held respectively by Independent Members of Parliament Chuck Cadman, David Kilgour, and Carolyn Parrish. The studies were conducted for CanWest News Services, the National Post, and Global Television on May 3-4, 2005.

In principle, voters in all three ridings appear dovish about an immediate election. All three say that they want their Member of Parliament to support the budget and avoid an election if the budget includes tax cuts. Without tax cuts in the budget, David Kilgour’s Edmonton riding is split about whether he should support or oppose the budget while the other two ridings tend to want their Members to vote for the budget nonetheless, thereby not forcing an election.

In practice, the electoral prospects of all three Members are unaffected by the position they would take on the budget in Parliament. The issue of the budget and forcing an election is not important enough to change more than a small percentage of votes in the three ridings. The greatest impact would be 4 percentage points in the case of Carolyn Parrish, who would place third anyhow. Irrespective of their role in forcing or not forcing an election,
  • Chuck Cadman faces almost certain re-election with prospective Liberal and NDP candidates far in the distance;
  • David Kilgour, the one time Conservative Member-turned Liberal, is likely to place second to a victorious Conservative opponent unless he were to successfully return to the Conservative fold himself; and
  • Carolyn Parrish, who left the Liberal caucus following controversy over her voluble anti-Americanism, would place a distant third in her riding unless she were able to ingratiate her way back into her former party.

Respondents were asked to score the performance of their respective Member on a 100 point, school report-type scale, an election survey tradition in COMPAS studies. In a pattern consistent with their prospects for re-election, Chuck Cadman earns once again a record 75% performance score while Carolyn Parrish elicits an average score of 51%. Furthermore, 36% of her constituents’ give her a failing grade (i.e. less than 50% performance score). By contrast, Cadman and Kilgour receive failing grades of less than a 50% performance score from 6% and 15% of their constituents, respectively.

David Kilgour is in a unique position. His score of 65% is strong, one of the highest for a politician ever in COMPAS’ normative database of performance scores. Yet, he stands to be defeated. Kilgour’s 65% score is far ahead of Joe Clark’s 55% score in 2004 in his Calgary riding and Anne McLellan’s 57% score that year in her Edmonton riding. It looks as if Kilgour’s prospective defeat as an Independent is driven by his riding’s dismay with the Liberal government and resulting enthusiasm for the Conservatives rather than by disappointment with his own individual performance.
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