Irish American, Italian American and Polish American vote: how do they differ?

[King of Kensington]

Here in Canada, the Italians and Poles were big Liberals in federal elections until quite recently but Liberals tanked over the last decade and "white ethnic" Catholics went heavily Conservative in the last federal election.

The social-democratic NDP have never in their history gotten a plurality of the working class vote; hard to say how they did specifically with Italians and Poles.  In Ontario politics, the NDP did quite well among working class Italians and Poles in the 1970s when Toronto was a Conservative-NDP battle and the Liberals weren't much of a factor at the provincial level. 

Should add too that we don't really have big Polish proletarian communities like they do in the US - nothing like Buffalo, Scranton, Detroit, Milwaukee etc.  There are some in the manufacturing cities like Hamilton and Windsor but they are outnumbered by Italians in both.  Toronto has a large Polish community, but probably a majority of it is made up of post-1980 immigrants and their children. 

The Irish Catholics have been here so long and are so mixed it's pretty much impossible to isolate their voting patterns.  However in the Maritime provinces, the Catholic population is overwhelmingly Acadian or Irish, and there is - or at least was until quite recently - a Catholic-Protestant divide in voting with Catholics voting Liberal and Protestants Conservative.

 

[Citizen Hats]

I believe that a lot of the Canadian Italians were post-war immigrants ( such as my aunt's husband) while most Italian immigration to the United States was before 1925.  So they're going to be somewhat different populations

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

When I think of Polish-American politics, I think of Kanjorski, Trumpka and Kaptur.

When I think of Polish-American politics, I generally see there is more prominent Polish-American figures with the Democratic Party than the other way around. Though we can obviously name severeal prominent Polish-American Republicans, both historical (Ed Derwinski, a longtime Congressman from Illinois and the first Secretary of Veterans' Affairs) and current (T-Paw, Chuck Hagel, who's half-Polish).

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Funny, I would have guessed that they'd be the most conservative out of the three groups due toms historic anti-communism.

I feel personally offended by this laughable notion that anticommunism = conservatism.

[King of Kensington]

Yes, Italian Canadians immigrated later on average.  But socioeconomically the two communities are quite similar.  They've both gone from urban and blue collar to more affluent and suburban.

If anything the post-war, least assimilated Italian immigrants to the US are more conservative than Italian Americans as a whole, judging by voting patterns in enclaves where they make up a large share of the Italian American population (i.e. southern Brooklyn).  

[King of Kensington]

It's interesting in Canada that in the postwar period, Poles and Ukrainians voted quite differently, even though in Toronto they generally lived in the same areas of the city.

Ukrainians are one of Canada's largest ethnic groups, concentrated on the Prairies.  Rural Ukrainians started voting Conservative when John Diefenbaker (from Saskatchewan) "brought the West in."  They didn't embrace Pierre Trudeau's Multiculturalism project that much.  The city of Winnipeg is about one sixth Ukrainian origin and Ukrainians from the working class North End had a long history of voting for the Left (now they live mostly in the northern suburbs and vote NDP provincially, Conservative federally).

In Toronto, in the west end during the 70s Poles voted NDP provincially and Liberal federally.  Ukrainians in Toronto were often postwar Displaced Persons who saw Trudeau as a crypto-communist and voted federally for the Tories, generally the party of WASPs.

Whether on the left or the right, Ukrainians have generally not voted Liberal.

[King of Kensington]

According to the 2008 CNN exit polls, Obama won the white Catholic vote in Michigan and Wisconsin, two of the most Polish American states, and lost it in heavily Italian American New Jersey and Connecticut.

[Thunderbird is the word]

Funny, I would have guessed that they'd be the most conservative out of the three groups due toms historic anti-communism.

I feel personally offended by this laughable notion that anticommunism = conservatism.

Personally I agree that it isn't but a lot of people whose families came from communist countres (Cubans, Eastern Europeans) do have a tendency to move politically to the right in response.

[muon2]

Funny, I would have guessed that they'd be the most conservative out of the three groups due toms historic anti-communism.

I feel personally offended by this laughable notion that anticommunism = conservatism.

Single issue voters generally don't give much weight to the overall political views of the candidate or party. During the Cold War the Pubs were the more anti-communist party, so immigrants escaping communist countries were likely to vote Pub on that issue. Kalwejt is correct that this doesn't make them conservative, even though they vote for the conservative party. In any case the Cold War has been over for a generation so the linkage on that issue is much weaker now, except for older immigrant voters who developed party loyalty from the issue of anti-communism.

[King of Kensington]

And you can see the declining relevance of "anti-communism" as a major voting factor when you look at the Cuban American vote.  The younger generation that's born in the US is pretty evenly split, while older Cuban immigrants still vote Republican.

There's likely a similar pattern with Vietnamese Americans as well.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Good thread.

[Torie]

One distinction to bear in mind is when the immigrants came in. The Eastern Europeans fleeing the Iron Curtain after WWII tended to be middle class and much more conservative, than those who came in prior to 1924 and tended to be blue collar. Yet a third group, say the Czech immigrants who left after Dubczek (sp) went down in 1968 or whenever, tended to be more intellectual, and while middle class, far more liberal than the post WWII wave.

[King of Kensington]

Some old data, from Greeley, the American Catholic, p. 94.

Voted for Democratic president, 1952-1968:

Polish Catholics  76%
Irish Catholics  65%
Italian Catholics  60%

Voted for Humphrey, 1968:

Polish Catholics  80%
Irish Catholics  65%
Italian Catholics  59%

[King of Kensington]

According to Greeley, Irish Catholics were the most affluent white ethnic group after Jews, although both the Italians and Poles also had higher incomes than white Protestants.  The Irish took the most liberal views on the Vietnam War, civil rights and civil liberties (i.e. allowing a Communist to speak), but were the most anti-abortion as well.  The Poles were the most conservative on Vietnam, civil rights and civil liberties and abortion - basically "bread and butter" Democrats.  Italians were the most liberal on abortion and in the middle on the other questions. 

Italians and Poles also had higher incomes than their occupations would suggest.  I wonder if this remains true among say, New York area Italians - that may explain their Republican tendencies. 

[SingingAnalyst]

I suspect the Irish are the least like the other two, as 56% of Irish Americans are Protestant (as of a few decades ago) and we have had Irish American Presidents (Carter, Reagan); plus the Irish have been in America in large numbers, longer.

I suspect the Italian and Polish American vote is reasonably similar, though the 14 cities listed in Wikipedia as having significant Italian-American populations does not include Buffalo, Detroit, or Toledo, all of which have significant Polish American communities.

I suspect Italian Americans are more Republican than Polish Americans, particularly in 1976 in the aftermath of Ford's debate gaffe.

I suspect Irish Americans voted narrowly for Nixon in '68; Italian and Polish Americans were strongly for Humphrey. In 2016, all three groups voted fairly strongly for Trump, I suspect.

As for hard numbers, we have (Democratic percentages only)

Hamtramck, MI: (Polish) Carter 1980, 67%; Mondale 59%; Dukakis 65% (now largely South Asian and Muslim)

Detroit districts 4,5,6 (eastside) (Polish and Italian) Humphrey 55%; McGovern 43%; Carter '76 51%; Carter '80 57% (after which the area became predominantly Black; Gore won 93% here)

Warren, MI (Polish, German): McGovern 35%; Carter '76 50%; Carter '80 44%; Mondale 36%; Dukakis 43%; Clinton '92 42.5%; Clinton '96 54%; Gore 56%; Kerry 56%; Obama '08 59%; Obama '12 61%; Clinton 52%. (Warren's population now includes a significant number of Muslims and African-Americans).

Sterling Heights (Polish, Italian, German): McGovern 30%; Carter '76 44%' Carter '80 37%; Mondale 29%; Dukakis 35%; Clinton '92 34.5%; Clinton '96 47%; Gore 47.5%; Kerry 48%; Obama '08 53%; Obama '12 50%; Clinton 42%. (Sterling Heights' population now includes a significant number of Chaldean-Americans).

[King of Kensington]

Did Perot do well in Sterling Heights?  Clinton did no better than Dukakis there?