Ethnocultural identity and candidate self-presentation in Canadian elections

Local campaigns offer political candidates a chance to highlight or downplay certain aspects of their identities. This article examines how ethnocultural minority and immigrant candidates in Canada’s largest provinces present their identities to voters. Drawing on 978 online candidate biographies from 2022 elections in Ontario and Quebec, it focuses on four contextual factors that shape candidate self-presentation. Our findings suggest that district diversity matters most to whether a candidate emphasizes an ethnocultural minority identity. For their part, district competitiveness and party affiliation are less significant. Despite different discourses on ethnocultural diversity in Ontario and Quebec, we find minimal effects based on the province in which a candidate is running. This provides insight not only into the numeric presence of candidates from ethnoculturally diverse backgrounds, but also when such candidates make ethnocultural identity a part of their campaign messaging.