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RESEARCH NOTE/NOTE DE RECHERCHE
Incorporating Immigrants into Canadian Politics:
An Experiment on the Effects of Attentiveness to
Elections in the Country of Origin
James A. McCann1and Ronald B. Rapoport2
1
Department of Political Science, Purdue University, 100 N. University Street, West Lafayette, Indiana, IN
47907, USA and
2
John Marshall Professor Emeritus, Government Department, College of William & Mary,
PO Box 8795, Williamsburg, Virginia, VA 23187-8795, USA 1+757-221-3020
Corresponding author: James A. McCann; Email: mccannj@purdue.edu
Abstract
In recent decades, Canada and other democracies have experienced a significant rise in
migrant settlement. This has sparked much interest among scholars and policy makers
in the forces that encourage or impede the political incorporation of newcomers. In
this research note, we consider a factor that has received relatively little scrutiny, the
impact of immigrants’attention to native-country politics on willingness to participate
in residential-country elections and affiliate with a political party in that country. We
examine this through an original survey of Americans in Canada conducted during the
2020 US election cycle. A randomized experiment demonstrates that directing the atten-
tion of American emigrants to US campaigns can lower interest in Canadian elections and
weaken attachments to a Canadian political party, particularly for those who are less inte-
grated into Canadian society. These findings point to a potential tension between political
engagement as an emigrant versus as an immigrant.
Résumé
Au cours des dernières décennies, le Canada et d’autres démocraties ont connu une aug-
mentation significative de l’établissement de migrants. Cette situation a suscité beaucoup
d’intérêt de la part des chercheurs et des décideurs pour les forces qui favorisent ou en-
travent l’intégration politique des nouveaux arrivants. Dans cette note de recherche, nous
examinons un facteur qui a été relativement peu étudié, à savoir l’impact de l’attention
portée par les immigrants à la politique de leur pays d’origine sur leur volonté de par-
ticiper aux élections de leur pays de résidence et de s’affilier à un parti politique dans
ce pays. Nous examinons cette question à l’aide d’une enquête originale menée auprès
d’Américains au Canada pendant le cycle électoral américain de 2020. Une expérience
randomisée démontre que le fait d’attirer l’attention des émigrants américains sur les cam-
pagnes américaines peut diminuer l’intérêt pour les élections canadiennes et affaiblir l’at-
tachement à un parti politique canadien, en particulier pour ceux qui sont moins intégrés
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Canadian Political Science Association
(l’Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique. This is an Open
Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly
cited.
Canadian Journal of Political Science (2024), 1–15
doi:10.1017/S000842392300080X
https://doi.org/10.1017/S000842392300080X Published online by Cambridge University Press
dans la société canadienne. Ces résultats mettent en évidence une tension potentielle entre
l’engagement politique en tant qu’émigrant et en tant qu’immigrant.
Keywords: political transnationalism; campaigns; American (or US) emigrants
Mots clés: transnationalisme politique; campagnes; émigrants américains (ou US)
Introduction
In recent decades, Canada, the US, and the industrialized democracies of Europe
have all experienced a remarkable rise in migrant settlement. This substantial
expansion of immigrant populations across the Western world has sparked much
interest among scholars and policy makers in the forces that encourage or impede
the political incorporation of newcomers. Much of this research focuses on condi-
tions and opportunities within a particular settlement country. The extent to which
native-born citizens discriminate against or accept immigrants (for example,
Bilodeau et al., 2023; Fischer-Neumann, 2014; Oskooii, 2016; Paquet and Lawlor,
2022); outreach on the part of local civic organizations and political parties (for
example, Dancygier et al., 2015; McCann and Nishikawa Chávez, 2016; Wong,
2006); the accessibility of public services in education, healthcare, and housing
(for example, Freeman, 2004; Givens, 2007); policies concerning naturalization
and the acquisition of full citizenship rights (for example, Just and Anderson,
2012)—all of these factors, among others, have been found to have substantial
effects on immigrant acculturation and involvement in a new democratic system.
In this note, we pursue a line of inquiry that has received considerably less scru-
tiny in the scholarly literature on immigrant incorporation: how immigrants’atten-
tiveness to politics in the country of origin shapes attitudes and aspirations
regarding elections and parties in the settlement country. Does such attentiveness
undercut immigrant political incorporation in the country of residence, which
would suggest a “zero-sum”relationship between political engagement in a national
versus transnational context? Or can attention to politics from the distance as an
emigrant spur greater engagement in the adoptive country as an immigrant?
Theoretical Background and Hypotheses
Over one hundred nations or territories now allow expatriates to participate in elec-
tions via absentee ballot (Lafleur, 2013; Umpierrez de Reguero et al., 2023; McCann
et al., 2019; Wellman et al., 2023). This expansion of voting rights ensures that a
great many migrants will be drawn in some fashion into native-country politics
when elections take place there, casting absentee ballots or donating to political par-
ties, talking about politics with friends and relatives from the native country, or
simply paying close attention to the contest from the distance (Burgess and
Tyburski, 2020; Paarlberg, 2020).
Focusing on this latter form of engagement, what are the implications of atten-
tion to native-country politics for immigrant incorporation in the country of resi-
dence? One plausible scenario is that when immigrants turn their attention towards
elections in their native country, they become less open to taking part in the coun-
try where they have settled. Following from Tsuda (2012), we label this a “zero-
2 James A. McCann and Ronald B. Rapoport
https://doi.org/10.1017/S000842392300080X Published online by Cambridge University Press
sum”model of bi-nationalism (see also Black, 2011: 1171; Black, 1987; Peltoniemi
2018). The key theoretical premise of this model is that in an immigrant’s country
of origin, campaigns and elections would likely tend to focus on topics that are
salient for voters within that country, such as the job performance of incumbent
leaders or the attractiveness of specific national policies and ideological positions.
These considerations may have little bearing on political debates, ideologies and
agendas in the settlement country (Zechmeister, 2006). It is a truism that involve-
ment, including simply paying attention to politics, can be costly for individuals.
Many people may turn away from politics because they lack the wherewithal to
keep track of public affairs and take part (Verba et al., 1995). For immigrants,
the prospect of following politics in two distinctive national contexts could be
daunting; an immigrant whose attention is directed towards campaigns and elec-
tions in the country of birth may naturally pull back from politics in the residential
country due to these limitations.
It is possible, however, to imagine a contrasting dynamic, where remote atten-
tiveness to country-of-origin elections promotes deeper engagement in the settle-
ment country (Levitt, 2000: 460; Tsuda, 2012: 635).
1
Various mechanisms could
account for this. Attention to elections as a transnational citizen may reinforce a
general sense of social obligation and civic duty or bolster beliefs about personal
efficacy in politics (see, for example, Mansbridge, 1999; Superti, 2023). These effects
could in turn lead to higher levels of enthusiasm to take part in politics where one
has settled. At the very least, this hypothesis posits that there is no inherent tension
between democratic incorporation as both an immigrant and emigrant (cf. Finn,
2020).
We explore these contrasting possibilities by focusing on a sizable immigrant
population in a Western democracy that has received scant scholarly attention:
Americans living in Canada. The United States has long considered itself a nation
of immigrants, but it is also a nation of emigration. In a 2018 report, the Federal
Voting Assistance Program estimated that nearly five million voting-age
Americans live abroad. Canada is the leading destination country for American
emigrants, with some 860,000 US citizens having relocated north of the border
(FVAP, 2020). Within this population, the FVAP indicates that 516,309 were eligi-
ble to vote in the US—a far higher number than in any other country, and more
than half again as many as in the UK, which has the second-largest number of
American emigrants.
This focus on the American-born population in Canada is theoretically advan-
tageous for several reasons. Most residents of Canada live close to the US-Canada
border, and American elections receive extensive coverage in English-language
Canadian media outlets (Matthews and Satzewich, 2006). In any US election
cycle, there would be ample opportunities for Americans living north of the border
to take part in a campaign. It would do little good to examine whether directing
attention to elections in the country of origin undercuts or promotes involvement
in the residential country for an immigrant group that would not have much poten-
tial to become informed about politics in the country of origin.
2
Another advantage of focusing the analysis on Americans in Canada is that the
relationship between political attentiveness in the US context and engagement in
the Canadian context—be it “zero-sum”or positively reinforcing—may be more
Canadian Journal of Political Science 3
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readily gauged. The United States and Canada are similar in many respects, some-
times described by researchers and observers as “two peas in a pod”(Bloemraad,
2011). Both are first-world industrialized democracies where English is spoken
most. Few Americans in Canada would be considered economic migrants who
live on the margins of society. Rather, Americans who are most open to settling
in Canada tend to have personal finances that are somewhat better than average
(Marrow and Klekowski von Koppenfels, 2020). If attention to politics in the native
country is compatible with or even boosts political incorporation in the settlement
country, this effect should be most noticeable for an immigrant population that is
not otherwise excluded from civic life because of social or economic marginaliza-
tion, as many “South to North migrants”are.
The limited prior research on the American immigrant population in Canada
suggests that migrants’attention to native-country politics does not undercut polit-
ical incorporation in the Canadian context. The participants in Croucher’s(2011)
study were said to be “perfectly at ease with and fully entitled to possess and
practice citizenship in a country where they did not reside …and to practice simul-
taneous membership”in two nation-states (126; see also Dashefsky and
Woodrow-Lafield, 1992 and Matthews and Satzewich, 2006). Yet while everyday
life in Canada is in many respects similar to life in the United States, there is no
denying that the two countries differ markedly in their party organizations, govern-
ing agendas, federal structure, and formal institutions of representation (Bilodeau
et al., 2010). Such differences lend credence to the “zero-sum”view of
bi-nationalism. Americans in Canada whose attention is drawn into US elections
may well grow less enthusiastic about taking part in Canadian politics because of
the distinctive features of each political system and the challenges of engagement
in the two domains.
When probing such dynamics, we will be mindful of subgroup variations.
Whether or not remote attention to US politics is compatible with political
incorporation in the Canadian context, the effects of transnationalism could be
most evident for Americans who have not yet put down deep roots in Canada.
All immigrants lead lives that to an extent fall “in between”two countries (cf.
Jones-Correa, 1998). This would be especially true for those who do not yet identify
as a member of the country of residence, continue to identify as still part of the
country of origin, or have lived a relatively short while in the new country. For
such immigrants, the trade-off between attention to native-country politics and
political engagement in the country of residence may be most apparent (Tsuda,
2012).
As immigrants become more established in the residential country and grow
to see themselves as bona fide members of it, their level of political engagement
in that country might tend to depend more on domestic mobilizing factors, such
as patterns of outreach from political parties and interest groups and less on lev-
els of transnational connections. In the analysis below, we also investigate the
potential moderating influence of education level. If attentiveness to politics in
the country of origin undercuts a willingness to become involved in the residen-
tial country because of the cognitive costs of involvement in two separate polit-
ical systems, this tension could be more readily apparent for less educated
migrants.
4 James A. McCann and Ronald B. Rapoport
https://doi.org/10.1017/S000842392300080X Published online by Cambridge University Press
Research Design and Findings
The analysis draws from an original web survey of Americans over eighteen living
in Canada (N= 686). Respondents were sampled via large opt-in panels from two
different sources, Qualtrics and Asking Canadians. Each firm creates large-Npanels
from loyalty program websites that attract a diverse set of Canadians. In both cases,
the panel from which our samples are drawn was tailored to ensure that it is rep-
resentative of census data as reported by the official Statistics Canada agency.
Background information in both panels included place of birth, which allowed
us to target American-born respondents, including Americans who were not
Canadian citizens.
3
It is worth noting with respect to the representativeness of
this sample that it is similar to the 464 American-born respondents in the 2019
Canadian Election Study, a large nationally representative survey that included both
Canadian citizens and non-citizens (Stephenson et al., 2000;seetheonlineappendix).
This survey was conducted in August of 2020, near the time of the Democratic
and Republican national conventions. A few minutes into the survey, a randomized
experimental treatment was applied. Approximately half of the respondents
(N= 356) were exposed to vivid images of the two major party presidential nomi-
nees, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, rallying supporters (see Figure 1).
4
These
respondents then reported their impressions of the pictures, whether the images
prompted feelings of anger, hopefulness, fear and/or pride.
5
Respondents assigned
to the control group were not exposed to US campaign images or prompted to
report any personal reactions to the presidential candidates.
The goal of showing randomly selected study participants colourful imagery of
political rallies in the United States was to concentrate the attention of emigrants on
the presidential contest south of the border and reinforce their standing as potential
participants. Relatively few rallies were held during the 2020 American elections
due to COVID restrictions, which would likely have made these images particularly
striking. The subsequent items on reactions to the pictures provided a rationale for
exposing respondents to such images and served as a manipulation check to con-
firm that subjects had indeed paid attention and were personally moved in some
way. Over 90 per cent of the members of the treatment group reported having
an affective reaction, a very high level of responsiveness demonstrating that, at
that moment, American electoral politics was indeed a salient focus of attention.
This experimental treatment is admittedly exploratory. No previous research has
sought to direct migrants’attention towards elections in their country of origin
to observe downstream effects on orientations towards country-of-residence
politics.
6
What are the implications of such mobilization on engagement in Canadian
politics? We focus on two outcome measures: level of willingness to take part in
Canadian elections when given the chance and level of identification with one of
the Canadian political parties.
Interest in Participating in Canadian Elections
Table 1 presents findings from five OLS regression models. The dependent variable
in each case is a four-point item on general willingness to turn out for a hypothet-
ical Canadian election, which was asked after the treatment. This item was worded
Canadian Journal of Political Science 5
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so that all respondents, including those who were not registered to vote in Canada,
could report their general attitude towards taking part: “If elections were being held
in Canada and you were eligible to vote, how likely is it that you would participate—
very likely [4], somewhat likely [3], not too likely [2], or very unlikely [1]?”
7
Predictors in the first model include the treatment indicator plus a four-point
scale measuring the degree of identification as a “Canadian”(4 = very strongly,
1 = not strongly at all), a similar measure asking about identification as an
“American,”the number of years the respondent had lived in Canada (5 years or
fewer, 6 to 10 years, 11 to 20 years, or more than 20 years), and level of formal
education (high school or less, some college or trade school, college degree, or
post-graduate studies). The subsequent models in this table include multiplicative
interaction terms to assess potential subsample variations in treatment effects.
8
As shown in the first specification, exposure to images of American campaign
rallies had only a very slight and statistically insignificant demobilizing effect on
Figure 1. Pictures Used for the Experimental Treatment
6 James A. McCann and Ronald B. Rapoport
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Table 1. Effect of Treatment on Likelihood of Canadian Vote Turnout
bSE bSE bSE bSE bSE
Treatment −.043 .061 −.493 .202*** .092 .147 −.475 .265* −.144 .189
Canadian identification .238 .035*** .165 .047*** .235 .036*** .243 .036*** .239 .036***
American identification −.027 .030 −.022 .030 −.000 .040 −.026 .030 −.027 .030
Years in Canada .016 .038 .020 .038 .016 .038 −.057 .058 .016 .038
Education level .232 .031*** .233 .031*** .233 .031*** .231 .031*** .213 .046***
Treatment X Canadian ID .142 .061**
Treatment X American ID −.054 .053
Treatment X years in Canada .122 .072*
Treatment X education level .035 .062
Constant 2.22 .216*** 2.42 .232*** 2.15 .225*** 2.46 .262*** 2.27 .239***
Note:‘*’=p< .10; ‘**’=p< .05; ‘***’=p< .01. Coefficients estimated through ordinary least squares regression. The dependent variable is a four-point scale ranging from “very unlikely to vote”(1)
to “very likely to vote”(4). Results from ordered logistic regression models are substantively identical to these. N= 686.
Canadian Journal of Political Science 7
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willingness to vote in Canadian elections.
9
However, the second model suggests that
the experimental treatment had a greater effect on Americans who do not see them-
selves as fully Canadian.
10
The negative sign of the interactive effect of exposure to
the treatment and level of Canadian identification imply that American migrants
who were exposed to scenes of US campaign rallies and did not identify as
“Canadian”were significantly demobilized in the Canadian context. This offers
support to the zero-sum hypothesis for this subpopulation and is in keeping
with Tsuda’s(2012: 635) conjecture that the “less integrated immigrants are in
the host society,”the more such zero-sum relationships would likely surface.
The chart in Figure 2 clarifies this effect. Among Americans who did not identify as
Canadian, the treatment reduced enthusiasm by approximately one-third of a point, a
pronounced and significant effect. The impact of the treatment diminishes to insignif-
icance for respondents who strongly or very strongly identified as Canadian.
Turning to the third regression model in Table 1, the negative sign for the “treat-
ment X American identification”interaction term implies that migrants who iden-
tified more strongly as Americans tended to lose interest in Canadian electoral
politics following exposure to the treatment, an effect that complements the find-
ings in the second model. This coefficient, however, does not rise to the level of
statistical significance ( p= .31). The fourth model provides further evidence for
the zero-sum view of transnationalism for less incorporated immigrants. Here we
find that exposure to US campaign rally images primarily affected Americans with-
out deep roots in Canada. Figure 3 shows these distinctive effects. For Americans
who had resided in Canada for less than five years, the negative impact of the treat-
ment is approximately as strong as that for respondents who did not identify as
“Canadian.”With respect to education level (fifth model in Table 1), we find no
evidence of such moderating effects.
Effect on Canadian Partisanship
Does this conditional “zero-sum”finding carry over from voting intention to party
identification in the Canadian context? After the treatment was administered, all
respondents indicated whether they identified strongly with a Canadian political
party (coded 4), identified weakly (3), leaned towards a Canadian party (2), or
did not identify at all with one of the parties (1). Table 2 presents findings from
five regression models that are comparable to those in Table 1. As was the case
with the item on turning out to vote in a Canadian election, there is only a very
modest negative relationship between exposure to American campaign images
and the level of Canadian partisanship.
11
The second specification in this table indicates, however, that the degree of iden-
tification as a “Canadian”interacted with the treatment; Americans who did not see
themselves as Canadian were somewhat more responsive ( p< .10 for the interac-
tion term). Figure 4 shows this effect. Less incorporated Americans who were
reminded of the US campaigns saw a drop in Canadian partisanship (−.37) that
essentially matches the drop in interest in taking part in Canadian elections. The
other potential moderating variables (strength of identification as an American,
time spent in Canada, and education level) do not, however, have similarly signifi-
cant effects on the treatment.
8 James A. McCann and Ronald B. Rapoport
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Figure 3. Treatment Effect on Interest in Voting in a Canadian Election, by Length of Time Living in
Canada
Note: Predictions are derived from the fourth regression model in Table 1. Grey shading indicates significance at the
.10-level.
Figure 2. Treatment Effect of Interest in Voting in a Hypothetical Canadian Election, by Strength of
Identification as “Canadian”
Note: Predictions are derived from the second regression model in Table 1. The dependent variable is a four-point
scale measuring interest in voting in a Canadian election (very unlikely to vote [1]; not too likely [2]; somewhat likely
[3]; very likely [4]). Members of the randomly assigned treatment group were exposed to pictures of American pres-
idential campaign rallies. Dark grey shading indicates statistical significance at the .05-level; lighter grey shading
indicates significance at the .10-level.
Canadian Journal of Political Science 9
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Table 2. Effect of Treatment on Identification with a Canadian Political Party
bSE bSE bSE bSE bSE
Treatment −.067 .075 −.499 .250** −.188 .181 .158 .327 .072 .233
Canadian identification .193 .044*** .123 .058** .196 .044*** .191 .044*** .193 .044***
American identification −.037 .037 −.032 .037 −.061 .049 −.037 .037 −.036 .037
Years in Canada −.035 .047 −.032 .047 −.035 .047 .003 .072 −.035 .047
Education level .160 .038*** .161 .038*** .159 .038*** .160 .038*** .186 .057***
Treatment X Canadian ID .138 .075*
Treatment X American ID .048 .066
Treatment X years in Canada −.063 .090
Treatment X education level −.048 .076
Constant 2.07 .267*** 2.27 .287*** 2.13 .277*** 1.95 .323*** 2.00 .295***
Note: ‘*’=p< .10; ‘**’=p< .05; ‘***’=p< .01. Coefficients estimated through ordinary least squares regression. The dependent variable is a four-point scale ranging from “do not identify with a
Canadian party”(1) to “strongly identify with a Canadian party”(4). Results from ordered logistic regression models are substantively identical to these. N= 686.
10 James A. McCann and Ronald B. Rapoport
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Conclusion
Individuals who leave their native country to reside in another live their lives to an
extent between the two nations (Jones-Correa, 1998). When major national elec-
tions are taking place in one’s country of origin, many emigrants are likely to be
drawn into the process either formally, by voting and giving material support to
a campaign, or informally, by encouraging friends and family “back home”to
vote a certain way or simply becoming intellectually engaged from a distance.
Relatively little is known about the implications of emigrant attentiveness to
home-country politics for immigrant incorporation in the settlement country. To
our knowledge, this is the first study to use experimental methods to trace the
impact of transnational attentiveness on willingness to take part in settlement-
country elections and identify as a partisan in that context. As with all experiments,
there is a degree of artificiality in this analytical framework. The experimental treat-
ment was meant to remind American emigrants in Canada of the lively and con-
tentious campaigns taking place south of the border and reinforce their standing as
participants. We could not, of course, randomly assign respondents to participate in
the US election in a more formal way. Nevertheless, the evidence we uncover is sug-
gestive, albeit exploratory and worthy of further investigation. For respondents who
do not identify as Canadian or who have lived in the country for a relatively brief
period, exposure to images of the Trump and Biden campaign rallies followed by
reflections on one’s personal feelings about the events led to a significant decline
in enthusiasm to take part in Canadian politics. This effect may stem from wariness
about the challenge of focusing attention on US politics while simultaneously
Figure 4. Treatment Effect on Level of Identification with a Political Party in Canada, by Strength of
Identification as “Canadian”
Note: Predictions are derived from the second regression model in Table 2. The dependent variable is a four-point
scale measuring level of identification with a Canadian political party (no identification [1]; “leaning”identification
[2]; weak identification [3]; strong identification [4]). Members of the randomly assigned treatment group were
exposed to pictures of American presidential campaign rallies. Dark grey shading indicates statistical significance
at the .05-level; none of the other effects are significant ( p> .10).
Canadian Journal of Political Science 11
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engaging in the civic life of another country that is not yet familiar or approachable.
The limited prior research on American immigrants in Canada suggested that
attention to US politics was compatible with integration into Canadian democracy.
Indeed, Americans in Canada were said to feel entitled to take part in both domains
(Croucher, 2011). Our findings put a finer point on this characterization.
To expand on these findings, future research should investigate more closely the
mechanisms behind the experimental effects and how more overt and sustained
transnational mobilization by campaigns, parties, and groups may affect the trajec-
tory of immigrant incorporation. In addition to the theoretical mechanism posited
above—American emigrants who engage in some fashion in US politics might pull
away from Canadian politics because of implicit “cost constraints”—the feelings
that respondents in the treatment group noted after seeing the campaign images
point to another possible mechanism. Negative reactions to the rallying pictures
were somewhat more common than positive ones. This tendency raises the possi-
bility that the outcome of transnational political engagement for an emigrant could
affect political attitudes and aspirations in the residential-country context. That is,
political bi-nationality may not be strictly a zero-sum or mutually reinforcing prop-
osition. Emigrants who find their attentiveness to home-country politics to be sat-
isfying may in turn grow more enthusiastic about political engagement in the
settlement country. But if transnational engagement in whatever form is unsatisfy-
ing, then the prospect of taking part in politics in the residential country could
become less attractive. Within our dataset, there is some evidence to suggest that
pulling away from Canadian politics stemmed in part from having a more negative
reaction to the rally pictures.
12
Future work should investigate more systematically
how the outcomes from particular transnational political activities, rather than
transnational attentiveness among emigrants per se, affect involvement as an
immigrant.
Finally, we should underscore the need for further comparative analysis. By
focusing on the American immigrant population in Canada, we control for various
factors that could make it difficult to assess how attention to campaigns in the
country of origin might affect political incorporation in the settlement country.
At the same time, we recognize that this is a rather select group of immigrants.
Future work should examine whether the findings presented here can be general-
ized to cover other cases of transnational campaign exposure, where the more
numerous populations of “South to North”migrants direct their attention to
native-country politics. Many of these migrants might be classified as economic
migrants or refugees who grudgingly emigrated to a developed democracy under
duress or persecution. These migrants may never identify with the settlement coun-
try to the degree that US-born residents of Canada grow to see themselves as
“Canadian.”It is, therefore, possible that for migrants who settled not so much
by choice but by necessity, the effect of transnational political engagement on atti-
tudes towards politics in the residential country would be comparatively more
influential.
Acknowledgements. We thank Walt Stone, Lonna Atkeson, Adrian Singleton, Clay Clemens, Mark
Mullen, Larry LeDuc, Jon Pammett, Richard Johnston, Amanda Klekowski von Koppenfels, Michael
Jones-Correa, Elizabeth Iams Wellman, Nikola Mirilovic, Victoria Finn, Chris Alcantara, Janique
Dubois, and the anonymous CJPS reviewers for helpful feedback. Much of the analysis was conducted
12 James A. McCann and Ronald B. Rapoport
https://doi.org/10.1017/S000842392300080X Published online by Cambridge University Press
while the first author was in residence in the Department of Political Science at Carleton University as the
Fulbright Canada Research Chair in North American Politics. An earlier version of this research note was
presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in Seattle, WA, September
30–October 3, 2021.
Competing interests. The authors declare none.
Supplementary Material. The supplementary material for this article can be found at https://doi.org/10.
1017/S000842392300080X.
Notes
1Tsuda (2012) and Chaudhary (2018) note that this hypothesis could also imply that political involvement
in the residential country has the potential to spur engagement in origin-country politics, a dynamic that is
not considered here.
2Under a 1986 federal law in the United States, Americans in Canada (and other countries) have the right
to vote via absentee ballot. Turnout rates for expatriates tend to be low but are not trivial. In the US pres-
idential election of 2016, for example, approximately five percent of voting-age Americans in Canada cast a
ballot. Over the last several decades, the two major US political parties have sought to mobilize Americans
living abroad, with the Democratic Party investing far more than the Republican Party in transnational out-
reach (Dark, 2003; Klekowski von Koppenfels, 2020; Kalu and Scarrow, 2020). One recent survey of
Americans living in Canada found that approximately one in four were exposed to political ads from
the US via social media, text messaging, or email (McCann and Rapoport, 2023).
3While surveys on political attitudes in Canada typically sample citizens, it was important for our pur-
poses not to make sampling conditional on being a Canadian citizen. According to data from the 2019
Canadian Election Study, citizenship status is significantly correlated with the length of time an immigrant
has lived in the country and positive feelings towards Canada. In that study, approximately three out of ten
US-born respondents are not naturalized Canadian citizens. Our own survey did not include an item on
formal citizenship status. Had we included such an item and excluded non-citizens from the sampling
or modelling, a considerable amount of variation in the two measures of “rootedness”in Canadian society
would have been lost.
4The application of the randomized experimental treatment was balanced with respect to age, education,
gender and time living in Canada.
5Question wordings are provided in the online appendix.
6The Institutional Review Boards of Purdue University and the College of William & Mary approved the
study protocol. We did not further preregister the study, given uncertainties at the outset about sampling
procedures and the more exploratory nature of the investigation. As noted in the previous section, prior
research has yielded mixed expectations regarding the impact of transnational involvement on residential-
country politics. We therefore had no firm expectations about causal effects when implementing this first-
ever experimental design in this area. In such instances, the value of preregistration is relatively limited
(Pham and Oh, 2021).
7Results from ordered logistic regression models are substantively identical. Of course, if we had asked
about actual turnout behaviour, Americans who were not eligible to vote in Canada would have to be
excluded from the analysis, which would have left us with a truncated sample. Such a focus in question
wording would also have been problematic because the next round of federal elections in Canada, which
took place in September of 2021, had not yet been announced at the time of the survey (August 2020).
For these reasons, we framed the dependent variable in hypothetical terms, with respondents asked to
assume that elections were taking place at that time and that they were eligible to participate. The aim
was to gauge a general orientation towards electoral involvement in the settlement country.
8The items on national identification, education, and years spent in Canada were asked before the treat-
ment. The online appendix provides a correlation matrix for these predictors.
9Among survey respondents who were exposed to images of US campaigning, the mean level of interest in
taking part in a hypothetical Canadian election is 3.58, as compared to 3.65 for Americans who were not
exposed; the standard error for this difference is .064, which makes this difference in means statistically
insignificant ( p= .28).
Canadian Journal of Political Science 13
https://doi.org/10.1017/S000842392300080X Published online by Cambridge University Press
10 That is, compared to members of the control group, identification as a Canadian became more relevant
as a predictor for Americans whose attention had been directed to the US campaigns.
11 The mean level of identification with a Canadian political party for respondents who were not exposed
to images from US campaigns was 2.94; for those in the exposure treatment group, this mean drops slightly
to 2.86. The standard error for this difference is .08, indicating that this difference is not statistically sig-
nificant ( p= .29).
12 Within the treatment group, a scale that gauges the number of positive emotional reactions to the rally
images relative to negative reactions correlates modestly but significantly with interest in voting in
Canadian elections (r= .11, p= .04); this scale also correlates positively with identifying with a Canadian
political party, but this relationship is not significant (r= .05, p= .32). Since these emotional reactions
were freely expressed and not experimentally manipulated, any causal inferences are necessarily limited.
Nevertheless, such correlations suggest that how satisfying or unsatisfying political encounters and
activities are in the context of the native country could shape the trajectory of incorporation in the country
of residence.
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Cite this article: McCann, James A. and Ronald B. Rapoport. 2024. “Incorporating Immigrants into
Canadian Politics: An Experiment on the Effects of Attentiveness to Elections in the Country of
Origin.”Canadian Journal of Political Science 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1017/S000842392300080X
Canadian Journal of Political Science 15
https://doi.org/10.1017/S000842392300080X Published online by Cambridge University Press
