Author

Angela Kothe

Date of Award

2022

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Reilly, Jack

Area of Concentration

Political Science

Abstract

The Liberal Party of Canada has governed for 78 of the past 110 years. Current analyses of Liberal success tend to focus on the impact of population distribution, and fail to adequately explain how the Party has continued to succeed despite electoral losses and changes in electorate composition. To explore the origins of party success and failures, I form a theory that ties long-term success to cultural accommodation and electoral losses to conflict. I will use the implications of this theory to test two hypotheses with a regression analysis of electoral districts from 1997 to 2019. The results demonstrate that recent Liberal Party victories are due to the successful management of bilingual coalitions, and that past losses were caused by coalitional collapse.

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