Article content

OTTAWA — An exciting party should have both blondes and brunettes, said Pierre Trudeau in 1968, leaving it ambiguous whether he meant festive gatherings or political organizations.

His son seems to agree – fully one third of the Liberal Party’s new candidates are female. Now we know why. Far from being an exercise in tokenism, recruiting women as candidates is enlightened self-interest.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or John Ivison: Everything else being equal, it pays to be a woman in politics, new research finds Back to video

New research by Abacus Data suggests two-thirds of voters will pick a woman over a man, if they are the only two candidates running and all respondents have to go on is their picture.

Bruce Anderson and David Coletto at Abacus are experienced practitioners and got their disclaimers out of the way early – voters vote for leaders, campaigns and issues, not just local candidates.

But when respondents were asked who they would vote for – Jane or Perry – 67% said Jane and 33% said Perry. (Both people whose photos were used in the survey work for the pollster.)