How would you rank Canadian provinces/territories, from most leftwing to most rightwing?

[Blue3]

How would you rank Canadian provinces/territories, from most leftwing to most rightwing?




Also, how would you rank the biggest cities in Canada, from most leftwing to most rightwing?

[brucejoel99]

Quebec
Nova Scotia
Prince Edward Island
Newfoundland & Labrador
Northwest Territories (?)
British Columbia
Ontario
New Brunswick
Yukon (?)
Nunavut (?)
Manitoba
Alberta
Saskatchewan

Mostly unsure about the territories (hence the ?-marks), put them where I guess they seemed like they should be.

[CumbrianLefty]

Sask more right wing than Alberta? Dougie Toms will be turning in his grave.

[Estrella]

Sask more right wing than Alberta? Dougie Toms will be turning in his grave.

Ah, he already is. Rural areas west of Quebec have decided they like voting as if they were in the US and the result is this. Alberta has a more urban population than Sask, so it's likely true on social issues. Back when they weren't a joke party outside cities, Sask NDP was pretty socially conservative, too - Tommy was a Baptist minister, after all. I recall someone on this forum saying an NDP provincial minister wanted to ban people from wearing spandex in parks sometime in the 90s.

Alberta is a SSR, after all.

[mgop]

in what universe is saskatchewan more conservative than alberta? was there ever federal elections where sk voted more right-wing than ab? even with edmonton and calgary, alberta is far more conservative.

[Estrella]

in what universe is saskatchewan more conservative than alberta? was there ever federal elections where sk voted more right-wing than ab? even with edmonton and calgary, alberta is far more conservative.

Admittedly, none yet (in recent history at least, I'm not going back to the days of UFA). In 2019, Conservatives got 69.2% (+2.2% for PPC) in AB and 64.3% (+1.8% for PPC) in SK*. In 2015, the numbers were 59.5% in AB and only 48.5% in SK. By the next election, Sask may well overtake Alberta, but IMO these numbers overlook the fact that a lot of that Alberta vote is coming from Edmonton and Calgary, places where a lot of people vote Tory because of regionalism and oil issues. That's not to say that Alberta is some amazingly liberal place, even compared to Sask - it's probably a very close fight between the two.

Think of SK as West Virginia (or, for a closer example, rural Minnesota) and of AB as Oklahoma.

* For some inexplicable reason I had to go to French Wikipedia to get these popular vote results by province - they are literally nowhere else _{wiki et médias anglaises de tabarnak}

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Quebec
Newfoundland
PEI
Nova Scotia
BC
Ontario
New Brunswick
Manitoba
Sask
Alberta

Not even going to bother trying to rank the territories, because their politics are so localized and tbh I know more about the politics of many foreign countries than the territories.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Quebec
Nova Scotia
Prince Edward Island
Newfoundland & Labrador
Northwest Territories (?)
British Columbia
Ontario
New Brunswick
Yukon (?)
Nunavut (?)
Manitoba
Alberta
Saskatchewan

Mostly unsure about the territories (hence the ?-marks), put them where I guess they seemed like they should be.

Saskatchewan may have more conservative social attitudes due to it being a more rural province, but keep in mind that it is also a big government province. Even though the Sask Party pretty much has a monopoly on provincial politics, they haven't really tried to been able to dismantle the NDP legacy of government agencies/crown corps for everything. As a result, everything from auto insurance to telecom is a government monopoly. I'd argue Alberta is more genuinely right wing, while Saskatchewan still retains some of its prairie populist character.

[T'Chenka]

Quebec is definitely the most liberal, but with a few specific issues they are conservative on.

British Columbia is the most liberal anglophone province IMO.

Ontario is in MY view the third most liberal, but I have a bias as I live in the socialist greater Toronto area of the province.

--------------------------

Nunavut is very sparsely populated but they're majority-native and not generally conservatives as a voting block when it comes to environmentalism, anti-poverty and discrimination.

The 4 Atlantic provinces fit right here.

Manitoba slightly lower than the Atlantic areas (I think?)

Maybe Yukon and Northwest Territory fit here?

--------------------------

Saskatchewan is conservative compared to Ontario for sure. Our version of Iowa.

Alberta is like our version of Texas and it's our most conservative province.

----------------------------

[Filuwaúrdjan]

If Quebec is so left-wing, why does it keep electing right-wing provincial administrations?

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Saskatatchawen has a similar vibe to North Dakota - a lot of big state mechanisms shepherded by a political tendency that is now largely defunct, but kept alive by a small c conservative party with little time for the ideological trappings of modern conservativism beyond lip service. Alberta's constant influx and churn of new arrivers, as well as its big cities, create a much different form of conservatism. In Alberta, lines like "saving/investing for future generations" don't really fly: for a lot of its residents, living in the state is a means to an end (and the end is making a lot of money). They don't really require as much government subsidy, because free markets are much better a providing services in a bustling metropolis than in your random hamlet 500 kilometres from anywhere (not that these places don't exist in Alberta, but they don't drive the politics to the same extent).

tbh this exercise is pretty difficult: the placement of the Atlantic provinces is especially hard. Outside of fact that Nova Scotia is probably a lot more "normal" a left-wing province than the others (containing both a prosperous bobo town in Halifax and a post-industrial region, Cape Breton); the only thing you can really say about them is they are very flexible with their voting, and tend to sour on governments very easily. Then there's Newfoundland, which has a weird split beween the rural areas and urban areas originating from confederation (i.e. the urban areas were conservative because they thought they could survive on their own, the rural areas wanted monies). N&L's Liberals (i.e. the people who won the confederation argument) fostered an extremely welfarist government, but without the labourism you might see elsewhere (if that makes sense). And of course, the only industry was famously killed off in the 90's, which creates more confusion. New Brunswick is probably the most conservatative of them (possibly due to language related politics). PEI ... has potatoes.

I also understand where people are coming from when they are labeling Quebec as the most left-wing province, but I also disagree.

[Former President tack50]

If Quebec is so left-wing, why does it keep electing right-wing provincial administrations?

I am pretty sure the current CAQ government is the first right wing provincial government of Quebec since like the 1970s or something like that?

Up until now provincial politics were fought between the separatists and the Liberals I believe, both of which are left of center (though of course economics was not really the big battle there but rather separatism)

[DC Al Fine]

If Quebec is so left-wing, why does it keep electing right-wing provincial administrations?

Al is right. Anti-Toryism =/= left wing. Heck some of CAQ and the Bloc's most recent platforms had promises that wouldn't be that out of place in a Front National campaign.

There's a superficial school of analysis that sees Francophone, nationalist Quebecers rejecting the historically Anglo-Protestant chauvinist Tories and takes that as proof that they are left wing, or God forbid, part of the Progressive Alliance^TM with the Trudeau family, despite the two being at each other's throats much of the time.

Instead we should dig a little deeper and recognize that while the language and cultural polarization of Quebec politics within Canada means that most Quebecers will reject the mostly Anglo Tories, there are still significant swathes of Quebec society that could be meaningfully called right wing.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

If Quebec is so left-wing, why does it keep electing right-wing provincial administrations?

I am pretty sure the current CAQ government is the first right wing provincial government of Quebec since like the 1970s or something like that?

Up until now provincial politics were fought between the separatists and the Liberals I believe, both of which are left of center (though of course economics was not really the big battle there but rather separatism)

But they weren't?

[Former President tack50]

If Quebec is so left-wing, why does it keep electing right-wing provincial administrations?

I am pretty sure the current CAQ government is the first right wing provincial government of Quebec since like the 1970s or something like that?

Up until now provincial politics were fought between the separatists and the Liberals I believe, both of which are left of center (though of course economics was not really the big battle there but rather separatism)

But they weren't?

I suppose maybe the Liberals were marginally right of center, but I am pretty sure the PQ is left of center?

Tbf like I said when secessionism is the big issue, the lines of right and left tend to disappear

[DC Al Fine]

* For some inexplicable reason I had to go to French Wikipedia to get these popular vote results by province - they are literally nowhere else _{wiki et médias anglaises de tabarnak}

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_2019_Canadian_federal_election

It's there under the Results Overview tab. For some reason the English wiki editors decided to shunt off basic information like provincial results on a seperate page

So annoying of them to do that.

[CumbrianLefty]

Quebec
Nova Scotia
Prince Edward Island
Newfoundland & Labrador
Northwest Territories (?)
British Columbia
Ontario
New Brunswick
Yukon (?)
Nunavut (?)
Manitoba
Alberta
Saskatchewan

Mostly unsure about the territories (hence the ?-marks), put them where I guess they seemed like they should be.

Don't all the territories have high "native" populations, could that make them more left-leaning?

[Alcibiades]

Quebec
Nova Scotia
Prince Edward Island
Newfoundland & Labrador
Northwest Territories (?)
British Columbia
Ontario
New Brunswick
Yukon (?)
Nunavut (?)
Manitoba
Alberta
Saskatchewan

Mostly unsure about the territories (hence the ?-marks), put them where I guess they seemed like they should be.

Don't all the territories have high "native" populations, could that make them more left-leaning?

Politics in the territories seem to be very personality-based and non-ideological, with fairly frequent and wild swings between all three major parties.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

If Quebec is so left-wing, why does it keep electing right-wing provincial administrations?

I am pretty sure the current CAQ government is the first right wing provincial government of Quebec since like the 1970s or something like that?

Up until now provincial politics were fought between the separatists and the Liberals I believe, both of which are left of center (though of course economics was not really the big battle there but rather separatism)

The Quebec Liberals haven't really been economically left of centre for some time. During the 1960s and 70s, the Quebec Liberals had some of the most aggressively left-wing governments in Canada. But by the 1990s, the Quebec Liberals had become a very neoliberal party, Jean Charest literally got elected under a "small government" platform.

[Del Tachi]

Quebec isn’t left or ringt-wing, it’s politics are ethnic.

[brucejoel99]

in what universe is saskatchewan more conservative than alberta? was there ever federal elections where sk voted more right-wing than ab? even with edmonton and calgary, alberta is far more conservative.

Admittedly, none yet (in recent history at least, I'm not going back to the days of UFA). In 2019, Conservatives got 69.2% (+2.2% for PPC) in AB and 64.3% (+1.8% for PPC) in SK*. In 2015, the numbers were 59.5% in AB and only 48.5% in SK. By the next election, Sask may well overtake Alberta, but IMO these numbers overlook the fact that a lot of that Alberta vote is coming from Edmonton and Calgary, places where a lot of people vote Tory because of regionalism and oil issues. That's not to say that Alberta is some amazingly liberal place, even compared to Sask - it's probably a very close fight between the two.

Think of SK as West Virginia (or, for a closer example, rural Minnesota) and of AB as Oklahoma.

* For some inexplicable reason I had to go to French Wikipedia to get these popular vote results by province - they are literally nowhere else _{wiki et médias anglaises de tabarnak}

Yeah, it greatly depends how "conservatism" is being discussed here. Alberta is probably the most capitalist, for example, but Saskatchewan probably has the most "fit in or f**k off" attitude.

[CumbrianLefty]

Jean Charest literally got elected under a "small government" platform.

Well there is his Tory past to consider there.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Usually when you think you can ask this question there are two possible answers:

1) Politics revolves around the redistribution of national resources between its various different regions and regional governments
2) The 'Left-Right' division is being shoehorned, often by political actors for their own purposes, into regional divisions that cannot fully be covered by #1 and disguises intra-regional politics to big up inter-regional politics.

Which of these is Canada? Well, hmmmmm....

[Hatman 🍁]

Here are the means from a recent survey we did by region (respondents were asked to rank how liberal or conservative they were one a scale from 1 to 7)

BC: 3.57   
AB: 4.41   
SK: 4.28   
MB: 3.82   
ON: 3.55   
QC: 3.52   
Atl: 3.52

Now, this is really only a determiner of how conservative each province is. It's clear from the partisan means that Liberals were selecting lower numbers than New Democrats. If it were a survey where I wrote the questions, I would have used the term 'progressive' rather than liberal.

[CumbrianLefty]

Quebec isn’t left or ringt-wing, it’s politics are ethnic.

Just a *slight* simplification, there.