Note The Impact of Issues and the Economy in the 1997 Canadian Federal Election André Blais Université de Montréal Richard Nadeau Université de Montréal Elisabeth Gidengil McGill University Neil Nevitte University of Toronto In the Canadian federal election of 1997, the Liberal party was re- turned to of ce. It was a small victory, as the party managed to garner only 38 per cent of the vote, 3 points less than in 1993, and won only 155 of 301 seats, just enough to form a majority government. But a victory it was nonetheless. There are at least two interpretations for the Liberal victory. The rst is the economy. According to that interpretation, the Liberals were re-elected because Canadians were mostly satis ed with the per- formance of the Canadian economy and consequently rewarded the party in power. There are good reasons to assume that relatively favourable economic conditions may have helped the Liberals in 1997. There is a vast literature showing that economic conditions affect elec- Acknowledgments: We thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for its nancial support, and Mathieu Turgeon for his research assistance. André Blais, Département de science politique, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Quebec H1G 5R2; andre.blais@umontreal.ca Richard Nadeau, Département de science politique, Univers i t é de Montréal, Montréal, Quebec H1G 5R2; nadeauri@poste.umontreal.ca Elisabeth Gidengil, Department of Political Science, McGill Univer s i ty, Montreal, Quebec H3A 2T7; elisabeth.gidengil@mcgill.ca Neil Nevitte, Department of Political Science, Univer s i t y of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G3; nnevitte@chass.utoronto.ca Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique 35:2 (June/juin 2002) 409-421 © 2002 Canadian Political Science Association (l’Association canadienne de science politique) and / et la Société québécoise de science politique