Audrey Brennan

PhD Candidate & FNRS Research Fellow, Université libre de Bruxelles / Université Laval

Political parties, Canadian politics, Westminster-type systems, comparative politics, leadership selection, candidate selection, intra-party democracy, elections, electoral reform

Media

Législatives au Canada : les enjeux décryptés

Radio-Canada, December 8, 2019Radio/Podcast

URL: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/premiere/emissions/du-cote-de-chez-catherine/episodes/450010/rattrapage-du-dimanche-8-decembre-2019

Discussion autour des choix de chefs de partis politiques.

Ici-PremièreRadio/Podcast

URL: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/premiere/emissions/style-libre/episodes/405744/audio-fil-du-mercredi-25-avril-2018/7

Explanation of the multiple voting systems after the opposition parties in the Quebec Assemblée nationale promised to reform the electoral system.

Most Canadians comfortable with an election amid coronavirus — what would it look like?

Les candidats de partis marginaux : faire campagne à l’ombre des grands

Tories won the popular vote but the Liberals will govern. Here’s why

Pétitions électroniques au Québec : entre transfert et résistance

by Eric Montigny & Audrey E. Brennan

Published by Participation (Forthcoming)

In 2009, the National Assembly of Québec introduced e-petitions. Has this reform changed the parliamentary agenda and contributed to more citizen participation? In fact, parliamentarians have not fully adopted those new mechanisms for monitoring petitions. Only issues that transcend partisan divides have been studied in depth. To attack the government and collect personal data, parties opt instead for their own platforms. Finally, see an increase in the number of petitions, but without an increase in the number of signatories.

Opening the Opaque Blank Box: An Exploration into Blank and Null Votes in the 2018 Walloon Local Elections

by Jean-Benoit Pilet, Maria Jimena Sanhueza, David Talukder, Jérémy Dodeigne, and Audrey E. Brennan

Published by Politics of the Low Countries

November 22, 2019

In this article, we propose an in-depth exploration of blank and null ballots in the recent 2018 local elections in Wallonia (Belgium). In the official results, both blank and null ballots are merged together and are classified as invalid votes. After obtaining the authorization to access genuine electoral ballots, we study the votes which were not considered for the composition of local councils in detail. The dataset is a representative sample of 13,243 invalidated ballots from 49 Walloon municipalities. We first describe how many of these invalidated ballots are blank and how many are null votes, as well as the nature of the nulled votes (unintended errors or intentionally spoiled ballots). Second, we dig deeper into the differences between ballots that have been intentionally invalidated by voters (blank votes and intentional null votes) and ballots non-intentionally invalidated. Our results show that most of the ballots (two-thirds) are null ballots and that among them, half are unintentional null ballots. Finally, we show that contextual (socio-demographic and political) factors explain the variations in intentional and unintentional null votes across municipalities.

URL: https://www.elevenjournals.com/tijdschrift/PLC/2019/3/PLC_2589-9929_2019_001_003_003

Biography

Audrey E. Brennan is a doctoral candidate at Université Laval and Université libre de Bruxelles. Her research focuses on intra-party democracy (leadership & candidate selection) and its effects on political participation. She specializes in Canadian politics, Comparative Politics, and political parties. She has a B.A. in political science from Concordia University, and an M.A. in Political Science from Université Laval. Her M.A. thesis studied the effects of the Conservative party of Canada's Leadership race (2016-2017). Her dissertation looks at how and why political parties reform their leadership selection rules. The dissertation project is funded by Mini-ARC seed money (2018-2019), an FNRS research fellowship (2020-2024 ), and the Fondation de la Famille Choquette (2021).

Research Grants

Research Fellow

Organization: Fonds de la recherche scientifique (FNRS)
Date: October 1, 2020
Grant amount: 27,836.40 € / year

Details:

2 year renewable doctoral research grant to conduct dissertation.

Mini-ARC seed money (2018-2019)

Organization: Université libre de Bruxelles
Date: October 1, 2018
Grant amount: 23,568€

Expertise

  • political parties
  • politics
  • Canadian politics
  • British politics
  • Westminister-type systems
  • comparative politics
  • leadership selection
  • candidate election
  • intra-party democracy
  • elections