Can election results be explained, given that each ballot reflects the influence of countless impressions, decisions, and attachments? Leading young scholars of political behaviour piece together a comprehensive portrait of the modern Canadian voter to reveal the challenges of understanding election results. By systematically exploring the long-standing attachments, short-term influences, and proximate factors that influence our behaviour in the voting booth, this theoretically grounded and methodologically advanced collection sheds new light on the choices we make as citizens and provides important insights into recent national developments.

All governments require popular support, and in democracies this support must be maintained by noncoercive means. This book analyzes the question of political support in Canada, a country in which the maintenance of the integrity of the political community has been and continues to be, in the words of the editors, "the single most salient aspect of the country's political life." The nature of popular support is first considered in broad, theoretical terms, then from the standpoint of those agents most responsible for maintaining support in Canadian democracy, then as influenced by particular issues and policies, and finally as it affects and is affected by the separatist movement in Quebec.

The Liberal Party has fallen on hard times since 2006. Once Canada’s natural governing party but now confined to the opposition benches, it struggles to renew itself – presumably without the support of the provincial-level Liberal parties. Drawing on interviews and personal observations in cross-country ridings, Royce Koop reveals that although the Liberal Party, like other parties, disassociated itself from its provincial cousins to rebuild itself in the mid-twentieth century, grassroots Liberals and other partisans continue to build bridges between the national party and the provinces. This insider’s view of Liberal party politics not only challenges the idea that Canada has two distinct political spheres – the provincial and the national – it suggests that national parties can overcome the challenges of multi-level politics, strengthen their ties to provincial politics, and deepen their legitimacy by tapping the activism, energy, and support of constituency associations and local campaigns.

The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Politics provides a comprehensive overview of the transformation that has occurred in Canadian politics since it acheived autonomy nearly a century ago, examining the institutions and processes of Canadian government and politics at the local, provincial and federal levels. It analyzes all aspects of the Canadian political system: the courts, elections, political parties, Parliament, the constitution, fiscal and political federalism, the diffusion of policies between regions, and various aspects of public policy.