Gender and Elections: An Examination of the 2006 Canadian Federal Election

The existing literature on gender effects in the electoral process offers little evidence of significant gender vote share differentials. In this paper it is shown that for the 2006 Canadian federal election, once candidate campaign spending is introduced into the model with appropriate flexibility in the vote share responsiveness across genders, significant differences are found to exist between male and female candidates. The findings Suggest that. For equal levels of spending. male incumbents have a vote share advantage relative to Female incumbents, though this vote share advantage is found to diminish with increased expenditures. Female non-incumbent candidates. on the other hand, have a vote share advantage over male non-incumbent candidates for higher levels of expenditure and this advantage was found to increase with increased expenditures.