Why increased candidate diversity can help rebuild trust in Canadian politics

Interesting experiment:

Inside our national experiment on trust

How do we do so? In 2023, we ran an online national survey which presented 4,950 respondents from all backgrounds with fictional candidate profiles, each with a set of randomized attributes (for example, race, gender and political party).

We asked respondents to rate the trustworthiness of these fictional candidates. We use these responses to determine what kinds of candidates are more or less trusted and what kinds of Canadians the respondents tend to trust or distrust. We also look at racialized and gender aspects of both candidates and voters.

We then consider the role of context in trust, including things such as racial diversity and socio-economic status at the level of communities within which racialized Canadians live.

Finally, we examine how trust based on shared racialized status can translate to broader system-level attitudes such as being satisfied with Canadian democracy.

What the findings show

We’ve already learned a few interesting things. For example, our experimental results suggest that racialized candidates are on average assessed as more trustworthy than others by Canadians of all backgrounds, but that racialized Canadians are less trusting generally.

We also find that both women and racialized candidates are more trusted than their male and white counterparts, but the intersectionality of women and racialized candidates creates weaker trust than expected. We also uncovered some evidence that racialized Canadians are more satisfied with democracy when there are more racialized candidates running in their districts.

Trust is fragile and while there may be some hope that Canada is in a stronger position relative to our closest friends and allies globally, we need to be vigilant about how we can build and strengthen trust relationships between Canadians and our politicians.

Source: Why increased candidate diversity can help rebuild trust in Canadian politics