Abstract
<p>Federal political representation in Canada is geographical: one Member of Parliament (MP) represents one electoral district. Despite this representational structure, Canadians can legally donate to a host of political entities, regardless of proximity. Using a public dataset from Elections Canada’s Open Data on Contributions matched with census data from Statistics Canada, we characterize broad patterns in Canadian out-of-district donation from 2015 to 2024. We find that out-of-district donations form a persistent share of donor-sourced funding to both candidates and district associations, averaging 40% across time, election periods, and party lines. While relatively constant through time, the propensity for out-of-district donation varies substantially across districts, beyond what spatial proximity alone would predict. Districts with higher population density, median household income, educational attainment, and visible minority proportions see higher rates of out-of-district giving, the same traits that predict donor prevalence generally in Canada. Despite its frequency, out-of-district donation in Canada remain largely regionalized; nearly half of donations that leave their district are received by a political entity in a neighbouring one, and few cross provincial lines. These and other findings provide a helpful characterization of this largely undocumented facet of Canadian political financing, and inform further research on effective representation in Canada and other nations with similar representational structures.</p>