The article carries out a case study of alleged “marriage gap” in Canadian politics that were thought to have been American-specific. This follows a literature explaining perceived “marriage gap” in American voting patterns, indicating the inclination for married voters to prop up the American Republican party. In order to check the relevance of the “perceived marriage gap” elsewhere, the authors try to study the voting as well as social and economic patterns of the Canadian voters. Using data obtained from previous and current Canadian Elections, the authors’ primary purpose is to ascertain the possible existence of a marriage gap in Canada. They also seek to establish whether the marriage gap – if any – is driven by any form of socio-demographic outlines or attitudes. From the analysis of the data, it is clearly evident that there exists a real marriage gap in Canada, which could be even bigger in magnitude than the one in America. However, the authors find that while it is true that the socio-demographic factors partly contribute to the marriage gap, they are of little help in explaining the variance. Further probing the issue of attitudinal inclination of the marriage gap, the authors find that married Canadians strongly differ from the unmarried on matters relating to moral traditionalism. However, they differ less when it comes to matters that define generalized conservatism.
The study sub-divides socio-political questions into two categories: those touching on traditional morality and those relating to generalized conservatism. The traditional morality question mainly involves such aspects as respondents’ outlook on legalized abortion, traditional family concepts, homosexuality, and views on whether the mother should be left at home to nurture young ones. On the other hand, generalized conservatism questions involve aspects such as taxes, immigration and foreign policy, military policy, civil liberty and bill of rights, the environment, and Quebec autonomy. The results from the study indicate little or no relationship between marital status and conservatism on the above questions. It is only on tax policy (and this happens only in 1997) that married respondents show greater attitudes of conservatism than their unmarried counterparts. The study in 2000 takes a contrastingly different angle; it shows considerable conservatism for the unmarried respondents on issues relating to immigration (foreign policy). In this case, the married Canadians seem to be more liberal on immigration policies than the unmarried respondents. An interesting summary on issues of traditional morality reveals that the married Canadians are substantially more conservative on all matters in 1997 and 2000. This is even after controlling for generalized ideologies and religious attachments.
Presidential Candidacy Announcement
American traditions view the presidency as the most powerful office in the world. This is obviously in line with most global traditions that consider the presidency as the symbol of power and authority. As such, the American presidential announcement involves a series of tours and speeches to the public indicating an aspirant’s decision to contest for the presidency. Usually, this is done prior to the first hurdle of presidency, which is the nomination stage. The nomination stage is done at the party level in order to select or elect the best party representative for the presidency. Before an aspirant submits their request to become a candidate, they engage in multiple tours around the states informing people of their intentions as well as speaking on what they feel deserves to be achieved in case they are elected in office. Later, an aspirant presents their request officially before being engaged in a series of primary contests or debates. In such forums, the aspirants give their views, achievement records and competence to the public. In every primary (or contest), the aspirant must file their intention to run for the presidency so that they are considered for that particular primary. In summary, therefore, a presidential candidate announcement reflects the beginning of a political campaign for a specific candidate.
America Poor, Texas Poor
Texas ranks highly amongst the highly Black populated states in the United States. It also ranks highly amongst those states that have the highest levels of poverty according to recent data from the US census. A report released recently by The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation: The Coverage Gap: Uninsured Poor Adults in States that Do Not Medicaid – An Update (November 12, 2014) places Texas on the frontline of those states that do not advocate for the expansion of Medicaid programs. This is alongside other states like Florida and Georgia, which apparently have got one of the highest Black populations in America. The Black population accounts for a significantly higher proportion of people involved in the Medicaid coverage gap in, comparison to the total uninsured adult population. This is in stark contrast to the Hispanics population, which is widely covered by the Medicaid programs. In summary, therefore, it can be seen that the racial and/or ethnic characteristics of the uncovered population greatly vary by state, confirming the principal characteristics of the population of a state as in the Texas case.
Efforts to expand the Medicaid programs at the state level have mostly been ignored by the Texas executive branch partly due to the financial burden that the program places on the state. Due to constraints in their financial capability, the Texas executive branch has worked hand in hand with the legislature in passing laws that suppress expansion of insurance Medicaid programs. On the other hand, the judicial arm plays a vital role in the execution of this law in ensuring its subsequent enforcement and adjudication. The poor state of affairs in Texas may be as a result of poor governance, especially reflecting weak governance strategies amongst the Black populated states.
References
Texas. (2002). Interim report to the 78th Legislature. Austin, Tex: The Subcommittee.
The Spouse in the House: What Explains the Marriage Gap in Canada? (2004) Canadian Journal of Political Science, (37), 979-995.
