A recent study published in Public Opinion Quarterly suggests that the skepticism surrounding mail-in voting, heavily popularized during Donald Trump’s 2020 U.S. presidential campaign, may have influenced Canadians’ attitudes toward their own mail-in voting process. Researchers found that Canadians with populist, particularly right-wing, views were more likely to distrust mail-in voting. This study sheds light on how political narratives from one country can affect attitudes in another, even when those narratives are based on false claims.
Trump repeatedly criticized mail-in voting in the lead-up to the 2020 U.S. presidential election, claiming that it would lead to widespread fraud. Trump suggested that mail-in voting would be “substantially fraudulent” and described it as a system that could be easily manipulated, with ballots allegedly being forged, stolen, or fraudulently signed. He emphasized concerns about “unsolicited” ballots, referring to states sending out ballots to voters who had not specifically requested them, and claimed this could lead to chaos and a “rigged election.”
Despite these assertions, multiple fact-checking organizations and election experts have found little to no evidence to support these claims, and courts dismissed numerous lawsuits challenging the integrity of mail-in voting.
The motivation behind the new study was to investigate whether this rhetoric, particularly Trump’s claims about mail-in voting fraud, had an influence beyond the United States. With Canadians closely following U.S. news, the researchers aimed to explore how political discourse in the U.S. could affect public trust in democratic processes in neighboring countries like Canada.
“I have a long-standing research interest in public opinion, political trust, and issues that relate to democracy,” said study author Cary Wu, a York Research Chair and Associate Professor of Sociology at York University. “People’s trust in elections is critical to democracy. If people have no trust, they are less likely to come out and vote. Low trust in elections could also lead to political riots, as demonstrated by the January 6 United States Capitol attack in the United States. The increased use of mail-in voting, after the pandemic, and in the future in Canada, underscores the need to consider whether people perceive it to be as trustworthy as in-person voting.”
To investigate this, the research team conducted an in-depth analysis of data collected from the 2021 Canadian Election Study, a long-standing national survey that gathers political opinions and behaviors from Canadians during election periods. The sample for this study included over 10,000 Canadian citizens, making it one of the most comprehensive datasets available for examining public opinion during the election.
The researchers examined several factors that could influence trust in mail-in voting. First, they measured participants’ political ideology, asking them where they placed themselves on a spectrum from left to right. To gauge populist attitudes, they used questions such as whether participants agreed with the statement that “politicians do not care about the people” or that “ordinary people, not politicians, should make the most important policy decisions.”
The study also looked at participants’ exposure to political news, with particular emphasis on the consumption of U.S. media. The researchers explored whether those who consumed more political news, including U.S. sources, were more likely to be influenced by the narratives around mail-in voting popularized by Trump. In addition, the researchers conducted a separate analysis of respondents from Quebec, where French is the dominant language, to see if the impact of U.S. media was less pronounced.
The study confirmed that Canadians with right-wing populist views were indeed more likely to distrust mail-in voting. This group expressed significantly less confidence in the reliability of mail-in ballots, even though the Canadian electoral system has a long history of successful mail-in voting with few reported issues.
“Our analysis suggests that Canadians holding populist views—and, in particular, those holding right-wing populist views (would-be Trump supporters)—are less trusting of voting by mail,” Wu told PsyPost.
One of the key drivers behind this distrust appeared to be exposure to political news, particularly from U.S. sources. The study found that Canadians who frequently engaged with political news were more likely to exhibit skepticism toward mail-in voting if they also held populist views. This media exposure amplified the effect, suggesting that narratives from the U.S. had a measurable impact on how some Canadians viewed their own electoral process.
Interestingly, in Quebec, where French-language media dominates and where there is less direct exposure to U.S. news, the influence of political news on attitudes toward mail-in voting was significantly weaker. This further supports the idea that media narratives from the U.S. contributed to the skepticism seen in English-speaking Canada.
Overall, the researchers concluded that Trump’s claims about mail-in voting fraud had crossed the border, shaping public opinion among right-wing populists in Canada. Despite the lack of evidence for widespread fraud in both countries’ mail-in voting systems, the political and media discourse in the U.S. had an observable influence on Canadian views.
“Donald Trump’s attacks on voting by mail have global implications,” Wu said. “It lowers people’s trust in voting by mail in the United States and in Canada, as we have shown, and probably in other parts of the world as well.”
While this study provides evidence of a “Trump effect” in Canada, there are limitations to the research. First, the data used in the study were collected during the 2021 federal election, so it is difficult to compare whether Canadians’ views on mail-in voting had shifted significantly since before the 2020 U.S. election. Ideally, the researchers would have had data from earlier elections to establish a clear baseline of trust in mail-in voting among right-wing populists.
Additionally, while the researchers controlled for political ideology, they were unable to directly measure the impact of specific news sources, such as which U.S. networks or websites were most influential in spreading mistrust. Future research could benefit from a more detailed analysis of the role that individual media outlets play in shaping public opinion in Canada.
Looking forward, the researchers suggest that further studies could examine how other political narratives from the U.S. affect Canadian public opinion. For example, future research could explore whether other claims about election integrity, public health measures, or immigration have polarized Canadians in the same way that Trump’s rhetoric about mail-in voting did. The close relationship between Canada and the U.S. offers a unique opportunity to study how political discourse in one country can influence public opinion in another.
“I am interested in looking how other political/false claims from the Southern border can polarize Canadians,” Wu said.
The study, “The Trump Effect? Right-Wing Populism and Distrust in Voting by Mail in Canada,” was authored by Cary Wu and Andrew Dawson.