(Page 9 of 24) - "The Local Bases of National Parties" authored by Carty, R..

established and entrenched interests. Thus, they tend to have slightly higher levels of
nomination contestedness than the traditional parties.

While nominations for the governing party might be expected to be especially

valuable, this does not appear to be the case for the Conservatives, who formed the
government over the period covered. In the 1988 election, this is likely to be the result of
the party protecting its many MPs who wished to reoffer (see below). In the subsequent
contest, the party’s shaky electoral prospects, signaled by the resignations of many sitting
Tories, accounts for some of the increased competition for that party’s candidacies in
1993. Table One gives a rough regional breakdown of contested races, and reveals that
the province of Ontario tends to lead the way among the traditional parties in this respect.

Table One about here

In most cases, we could expect that parties might wish to protect their sitting MPs

from challenges (Gallagher, 1988: 248). Unfortunately, no direct item on incumbency
was included on the Royal Commission’s survey of party association presidents, and the
intervening boundary adjustment makes any straightforward post-hoc identification of
incumbency difficult. Fortunately, however, the survey of official agents carried out for
the Royal Commission by Carty and Erickson (1991: 120) reveals that only 12% of MPs
reoffering in 1988 faced a nomination challenge. Coupled with this, Table One reports
data from the survey of candidates in 1993. In that election only about 9% of MPs who
ran again at that time faced challenges. It seems clear that would-be challengers deterred
by the advantages in name-recognition and experience enjoyed by sitting
parliamentarians. In some cases, however, incumbents manipulate the rules to safeguard
their status (Carty & Erickson, 1991: 118-19). In the 1993 race, for example, Liberal MP
for Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke Len Hopkins sidestepped a likely nomination challenge
by calling a snap nomination contest on the first day permissible under party rules. When
the local association protested and accepted a formal challenge to Hopkins, Liberal leader
Chrétien had to step in and appoint Hopkins as the candidate. This controversy left a
bitter taste in the mouths of local Liberals and Hopkins decided not to run in the 1997
campaign (Cross, 2002: 376). In that contest, the local Liberal association selected Hec
Clouthier, the same candidate it had preferred in 1993.

If prospective candidates for a party’s nominations are generally-speaking

rational, they should be most interested in contesting seats that are likely to prove
“winnable” in the following election. Unfortunately, items tapping the local
competitiveness of the parties was not included on the Royal Commission’s survey of
local association presidents, and because of the changed electoral boundaries between
1984 and 1988, it is difficult to construct from the electoral data at hand. Using Carty and
Erickson’s survey of local party agents in the context of the 1988 campaign, however,
there does seem to be some relationship between electoral competitiveness and
nomination contests. In “open” races (without sitting MPs reoffering), 57 percent of
seats considered “safe” experienced nomination contests with more than one candidate,
compared to the 21% of “hopeless” seats. This pattern is more pronounced in 1993, when
almost 83% of seats considered “safe” experienced nomination challenges whereas less