Macro-Political Structures, Change, and Stasis in Undergraduates' Political Identities in Canada and the United States – A Comparative Historical Analysis

Abstract

American research has found that change in political identification is a possible outcome of a university education, particularly in the liberal arts. By contrast, Canadian survey data collected in 1963, 1967, 2013, and 2017 point to there being no change in political identification on the part of undergraduates in a Canadian university with a liberal arts curriculum. In contrast to the United States, by means of cluster analyses conducted on the results of surveys of the American federal elections of 1964 and 2016, and the Canadian national elections of 1965 and 2015, I show that the political identification of two cohorts of Canadian undergraduates is more likely an artifact of the national multi-party system in Canada than it is the result of a university education.