Canada General Discussion (2019-)

[King of Kensington]

The easiest path for a Conservative majority would be Harper's. A major breakthrough in the GTA well into the City of Toronto, as well as Metro Vancouver, would be required. At least a dozen seats in the Maritimes would need to be won as well.

The suburbs of the GTA and Metro Van are increasingly out of reach for the Tories.

[King of Kensington]

Re: Toronto Centre, another problem facing Annamie Paul is that the NDP is a bit "bullish" on Toronto Centre, making any sort of unite the left of the Liberal vote difficult.  In both the most recent federal an  provincial elections and it was their best riding outside the "big three" (Danforth, Davenport, Parkdale-High Park).  It's arguably the most left of the three downtown seats.

[King of Kensington]

"governing"?

[King of Kensington]

The NDP vote will surely be cannibalized in Toronto Centre  next election. Best to focus efforts on Davenport and PHP.

And Danforth, no?

Just regaining the traditional strongholds will be a victory of sorts.  The challenge gets imminently harder than that in the next tier seats of University-Rosedale (esp with Chrystia Freeland there), Toronto Centre and Beaches-East York.

[King of Kensington]

Andrew Cash lost Davenport by around 1,400 votes in both 2015 and 2019.  In some ways Davenport looks like Trinity-Spadina ca. 1997.

Note also that Davenport was much less gentrified in the Alexa McDonough and early Layton days, and the first (and only) time they won it was when Cash won it in 2011.  

[King of Kensington]

Chretien was a fiscal conservative and not at all "woke."  Alexa McDonough's NDP had an appeal to culturally liberal urbanites, for which the old riding of Trinity-Spadina was the epicenter (now Spadina-Fort York and the western 2/3 of University-Rosedale).    

In the Chretien years, Trinity-Spadina and Danforth were represented by "Tammany Hall" style Catholic Liberal MPs who weren't exactly good fits for the Annex and Riverdale. 

[King of Kensington]

Should also add that unlike Vancouver, which has a stronger CCF-NDP history and less complex socioeconomic geography (east vs. west), Toronto lacks a such thing as a safe federal NDP seat.  Certainly nothing like Van East and Kingsway. 

[King of Kensington]

Toronto's NW quadrant (York South-Weston, Humber River-Black Creek, Etobicoke North) is the city's main Black concentration.  HRBC is about 75% visible minorities and Blacks are the largest VM group there.  Black Canadians are probably the most Liberal voting demographic in the country.  

[King of Kensington]

South Asians, the largest VM group in the GTA (and Canada), are also super-Liberal.

[King of Kensington]

African Nova Scotian communities (North Preston, Cherry Brook/East Preston) in the last federal election:

Liberals  55.1%
NDP  27.3%
Conservatives  9.3%
Greens  6.1%

https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=327662.msg7546766#msg7546766

[King of Kensington]

Scarborough-Guildwood is a fairly "typical" lower income outer Toronto riding, around 70% visible minorities, about 30% South Asian and 15% Black.  

In the last federal election it went:

Liberals  61%
Conservatives  22%
NDP 11%

However it defied the trend in the last provincial election, where Mitzie Hunter, a high profile Black Ontario Liberal MPP, hung on.

[King of Kensington]

I cannot think of any country in Western world where parties on right do well amongst Black community.  Pretty sure Tories despite doing poorly do better than GOP does and probably I suspect Black support for Tories in Canada is more in line with what it is in UK with Tories than for GOP in US.  In UK, Tories get about 20% Black support which is probably depending on election similar for Canada but obviously varies on how they do overall.  I suspect Doug Ford probably got in high 20s and NDP probably won Black vote in 2018 provincial election.

Yes, the Black vote likely went NDP in the provincial, which became more of  a "Labour vs. Tory" type scenario following the Liberal collapse (though interestingly 2 Black Liberal MPPs were among the 7 holdouts).  A sizeable number of Black MPPs were elected for the NDP.  

South Asians tend to be pretty Liberal although from exit polls I have seen, is somewhat a religious divide.  Don't know how Christians amongst them vote, but I know Sikhs and Muslims go mostly Liberal with NDP in second and Tories doing quite poorly whereas amongst Hindus, Tory support tends to be closer to whatever they have nationally/provincially.

Sikhs seem more NDP than non-Sikhs, but a distant second behind the Liberals (compare the NDP vote share in Brampton to other parts of the GTA).  Sri Lankan Tamils seem a bit swingy - very pro-Trudeau Liberals but also giving the NDP under Jack Layton a try in 2011 and Ford's PCs in 2018 provincial.  Indian Hindus are probably the most conservative, but don't seem to really concentrate anywhere.  South Asian Muslims are very anti-Conservative, with NDP in second.

Amongst Italians, most are now second generation so I don't think they vote as a block like they once did.  Still probably favour Liberals, but certainly can go Conservative, see Vaughan.  Maybe not like US where they've swung heavily to GOP, see Staten Island.

Or third generation at this point.  GTA Italians probably have a bit of a Liberal lean, but not dramatic.  The further out in the suburbs, the more conservative it seems.  King-Vaughan is about 1/3 Italian and was very close in the last federal election.  Liberals won it 45%-43% or around 1000 votes, not your typical GTA Liberal landslide.

Coalitions of 90s were much different than today.  Liberals back then generally had a strong lock on not just visible minorities, but also Catholics, Jewish, and linguistic minorities and that is much less case today.  Likewise NDP was strong amongst blue collar union members whereas today much of that has drifted over to Tories while in exchange NDP base is more your millennial, urban, unmarried, university educated types.

Yes South Asians have certainly replaced Italian Canadians as the most visible ethnic politicians in the Liberal Party.  Italians are also more on the "blue" side of the Liberal Party and probably don't care much for Trudeau's "wokeness."  I doubt Trudeau's campaign advisers give an ounce of thought to "the Italian vote" as it barely matters anymore.

As for NDP, I don't think Alexa McDonough really had much more of a unionized, blue collar base than Singh and also had a bit of an appeal to university-educated, culturally liberal urbanites.  Trinity-Spadina was the best Ontario riding for the NDP in 1997.   The Reform Party also had a lot of appeal to blue collar voters especially in BC but took a lot of votes in Ontario's "rust belt" too.

For Tories, they always did well in Alberta, but historically before rise of Reform Party, did much better with Bay Street types than they do today.  Like many countries, income used to play a much bigger role in voting patterns, whereas today it seems things like urban vs. rural; married with children vs. not; education level play a bigger role in determining vote than one's income.  Part could be back in 90s, top tax bracket kicked in at 60K vs. its present 215K so it hit a lot more people thus reducing taxes on top earners had a much wider appeal than it does today as number in top bracket is too small to really have any electoral impact whereas at 60K in 90s that was a large enough chunk of population it could swing several ridings.  

Also right moving from traditional fiscal conservatism to populism has alienated many upper middle income suburban types like you see in US, but allowed it to gain many working class voters it couldn't win historically.  Its why ridings like Oshawa, Essex, Niagara Centre, Brantford-Brant, Kootenay-Columbia are more likely to vote Tory than ridings like Burlington, Kanata-Carleton or North Vancouver.

And this is where O'Toole's strategy comes in.  

[King of Kensington]

20% is about what you'd expect the Tories to get in a good year, although their floor is significantly lower. There's also a distinction to be made between black Caribbean and black African ancestry voters - anecdotally, the Tories seem to have a much higher ceiling amongst the latter than the former, though it's difficult to be certain because they're both relatively small groups and there's very little in the way of detailed polling on this. There's also a significant difference between black voters in areas with a large black population (usually working class and very strong Labour) and black voters in 90%+ white areas (more likely to be middle class and more likely to vote like their neighbours.) Most black Tory MPs are good examples of this - they tend to be from a black African background (often second generation), they mostly grew up in overwhelmingly white areas and a significant proportion of them went to expensive private schools.

Black Canadians and Black Brits both represent 3-4% of the national population, both have a fairly even split between Caribbean and roots..  Interestingly though it's the Caribbean population that's more concentrated in Canada (Toronto/Montreal - mostly Jamaican in the former, Haitian in the latter) and the African population more dispersed, while in England the opposite is the case (London is more African, other cities more Caribbean).

Ancestry of Black Canadians:

Caribbean  547,785
African  592,010 (including unspecified Black/African), 410,835 (specific African responses)
Canadian   138,650

[King of Kensington]

As for voting patterns, I don't think the Conservatives get 20% of the Black vote in normal circumstances (though Ford's PCs almost certainly did), even in the middle income suburban ridings with a lot of Black Canadians (i.e. Scarb-Rouge Park, Ajax, Brampton West) the Tories got around 20-25% of the vote and I'm sure Black voters there are less Conservative than non-Black voters.

[King of Kensington]

400 polls (large apartment buildings) in NW Toronto (York South-Weston, Humber River-Black Creek, Etobicoke North):

Liberals   69%
Conservatives  14%
NDP  13%

[King of Kensington]

The NDP received 15% of the vote in just three outer Toronto ridings in the last federal election: York South-Weston, Humber River-Black Creek and Scarborough Southwest - incidentally three seats they won provincially.  They also topped 15% in all the Brampton seats (where the majority of GTA Sikhs live).  In Brampton East - the Singh family seat and most heavily Sikh part of Brampton they received 26% - higher than in the "second tier" City of Toronto targeted seats.  But even there they were more than 20 points behind the Liberals.

[King of Kensington]

In terms of the Indigenous vote, the poll-level results rarely reflect what we see in polling, which tells me that there is a stark difference between people who may identify as Indigenous due to having some Indigenous ancestry (but are mostly White, but will identify as Indigenous in a survey) and those living on reserve or in Indigenous communities/ghettos (for lack of a better term, but talking about urban Indigenous populations like in Winnipeg Centre) who are less likely to answer surveys, but we know vote NDP or Liberal from poll maps. 

Yes, and then there's been the rise of the so-called "Eastern Metis" who are neither Metis or Indigenous. 

There are now apparently more "Metis" in Nova Scotia than African Nova Scotians. 

[King of Kensington]

So pretty much every Visible Minority group votes plurality-Liberal, except for Chinese who are either a bit Conservative or evenly split.

[King of Kensington]

British Columbia: Liberals do better than amongst general population, but don't have near the lock or dominance as they do in Central Canada.  Likewise both NDP and Tories tend to do better amongst visible minorities in BC than they do in Ontario.  BC while still has racism, has highest rate of intermarriage of any province.

The composition of the VM is different from Ontario, with Chinese largest group and few Blacks, not only compared to Ontario but even the Prairie provinces.  So overall VM vote probably less Liberal.  However there does seem to be a GTA-ization in Lower Mainland voting patterns, both in affluent suburbs and with growth in South Asian population.

The NDP does better in BC than Ontario, hard to imagine a Burnaby South-type riding going NDP in the GTA except in very favorable circumstances.  The West Coast has a more left anti-establishment streak, hence higher NDP and Green vote.  

ETA:  More aptly may be described as an anti-Conservative trend than a Liberal trend, given that Liberals lost some votes to NDP and Greens in the last election, but vote remained quite efficient.

[King of Kensington]

There are 5 Black MPs:

Emmanuel Dubourg, Bourassa (Haitian)
Greg Fergus, Hull-Aylmer (Montserratian descent)
Matthew Green, Hamilton Centre (Black Canadian)
Ahmed Hussen, York South-Weston (Somali)
Marci Ien, Toronto Centre (Trinidadian parentage)

Four are Liberals, one is NDP.

Certainly they're super-Liberal.  NDP may be above average too, they seem to do well among Black Nova Scotians, and anecdotally a lot of young, educated Black Canadians seem to vote NDP as well. Conservative support is very low.

[King of Kensington]

Scott Duvall, NDP MP for Hamilton Mountain, will retire. A shame as he was for sure one of the better MPs in Parliament.

Very much from the "traditional" blue collar side of the party.  In spite of (some) promising polling numbers, I wouldn't be so confident it's safe for the NDP.

[King of Kensington]

Alberta (Leger):

NDP  40%
UCP  20%
Other  13%
Undecided  27%

https://twitter.com/CanadianPolling/status/1370489228887527432?s=20

[King of Kensington]

Saskatchewan will likely displace Alberta as the most conservative province. 

[King of Kensington]

Calgary is still the most small-"c" conservative city of the Prairies which keeps Alberta a bit to the right of Saskatchewan. 

[King of Kensington]

Yeah, Kenney seems to be following the "Kansas experiment" model - and Alberta is much less conservative than Kansas.