A LEADERSHIP SELECTION INDEX FDR MULTI-BALLOT POLITICAL-PARTY CONVENTIONS IN CANADA

Eugene McGregor (Journal of Politics 35, 459-478, 1973) recognized a r egularity in multi-ballot leadership conventions in the United States. He hypothesized that the change in absolute votes between the first a nd the second ballot could be used to forecast the eventual winner of a leadership race. When the McGregor model is applied to the Canadian multi-ballot conventions the prediction rate is only 57 per cent. This paper seeks first to discuss the qualitative similarities found betwe en these Canadian conventions and then use this as a basis to develop and to apply a model that extends on McGregor's work. The developed mo del is called the Leadership Selection Index (LSI). We find that the w inner of most Canadian multi-ballot conventions (86%) could be forecas ted after the second ballot by using the LSI method of analysis. Based on the evidence from the literature and a survey of Canadian politica l conventions, we develop a hypothesis of 'two critical conjunctures' for multi-ballot leadership conventions. This hypothesis provides a su itable theoretical framework to interpret the performance of our empir ical model. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.