Getting citizens engaged with politics and mobilizing them to participate in elections is a significant challenge at any level of government. There is a great deal of concern with low levels of voter turnout in federal and provincial elections, but this challenge is even more pronounced at the local level, where turnout often falls below 50 percent of eligible voters. In addition, municipalities often face a shortage of candidates for mayor and council seats, especially in rural areas, which prevents many of them from holding competitive elections or even from filling the positions.<\/p>\n
Candidate recruitment can be quite difficult in municipal elections; the November 2017 municipal elections in Quebec seem to have been no different. According to government statistics<\/a>, of the 8,031 races for mayor, councillor and prefect positions across the province\u2019s municipalities, a total of 4,471<\/a> (55.7 percent) were decided by acclamation, where a single candidate won office without competition. Although the number of candidates acclaimed increased slightly in 2017, the total number of municipalities that did not hold competitive elections declined from 246 in 2013 to 217. Moreover, 80 positions \u2014 75 for councillor and 5 for mayor \u2014 remained vacant due to the inability to find even one candidate.<\/p>\n Clearly, in Quebec, as in other jurisdictions, the challenge of mobilizing participation in local elections is not only about getting people to the polls, it is also about getting them on the ballot. To better understand the motivations that lead citizens to become candidates in municipal elections, we conducted a survey of candidates during the 2017 Quebec municipal election campaign.<\/p>\n Our survey<\/strong><\/p>\n Following the public release of the final list of candidates before the 2017 municipal elections, we reached out to those contesting mayoral and council races across the province by drawing on publicly available email addresses. Many candidates, or even entire teams of candidates (parties), did not have publicly available contact information, but we were able to reach 819 individuals across Quebec. Of these, 230 candidates participated in our survey, a response rate of 28 percent.<\/p>\n Our respondents came from 81 municipalities across the province. Nineteen candidates (8.3 percent) were campaigning on the island of Montreal. Our sample consisted of 154 men (67.0 percent) and 76 women (33.0 percent), a gender ratio comparable to that of all candidates<\/a> in these elections.<\/p>\n Among our respondents, 177 candidates (77.0 percent) were contesting a council position, while the remaining 53 (23.0 percent) were running for mayor. Thirty-four (14.8 percent) respondents were acclaimed; the other 196 (85.2 percent) ran in competitive elections.<\/p>\n We asked candidates how long they had been involved in politics. Of the 192 who answered the question, 16.7 percent said this was their first experience. Another 29.7 percent had less than 5 years\u2019 experience. About a fifth (21.4 percent) had been in politics for 5 to 10 years, and 32.3 percent had been involved for a decade or more.<\/p>\n Motivations and issues<\/strong><\/p>\n What motivates candidates to get involved in municipal politics? Overall, responses to our survey suggest that candidates were primarily motivated to run by community-oriented, as opposed to personally oriented, considerations (figure 1). (Respondents could choose more than one motivation.)<\/p>\n