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

[Del Tachi]

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

Just a *slight* simplification, there.

Sometimes things really are that simple, lol

The whole founding mythology of Canada is that it is "two, equal nations," and French-Canadian identity is premised on it being a permanent linguistic, religious and ethnic minority (actual history of Quebec be damned).  Canadian law (i.e., official bilingualism) codifies this concept.  Quebecois politics is about seeking special accommodation not only for its domestic population, but also enshrining French Canadians as the "first among equals" in a contemporary, multi-ethnic society.  Laws requiring that all nine justices of the Canadian supreme court be bilingual speakers, for example, not only give special status to just one of Canada's many ethnic groups, but creates a permanent, bilingual political ruling class that is geographically tilted toward Quebec and upper-crust Ontarians.  How are Chinese immigrant communities in Vancouver, for instance, suppose to be fully assimilated into Canadian politics if state-mandated bilingualism creates higher barriers to their entry?

[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.

From the same survey, we did an openness index (my boss has a huge interest in this measurement), which basically measures authoritarian tendencies. The lower the number, the more authoritarian the respondent. Here are the provincial means:

BC 5.90
AB 5.39
SK 4.59
MB 5.26
ON 5.83
QC 5.63
Atl 6.09

Atlantic Canada lives up to its reputation as being a very friendly place. No surprise, Quebec doesn't fair well there.

[EastAnglianLefty]

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.

From the same survey, we did an openness index (my boss has a huge interest in this measurement), which basically measures authoritarian tendencies. The lower the number, the more authoritarian the respondent. Here are the provincial means:

BC 5.90
AB 5.39
SK 4.59
MB 5.26
ON 5.83
QC 5.63
Atl 6.09

Atlantic Canada lives up to its reputation as being a very friendly place. No surprise, Quebec doesn't fair well there.

Were the sample sizes large enough to see a division in provinces between supporters of one party and supporters of another? I know that in the US this can make a difference, with e. g. Oregon coming out fairly centrist overall, but with its Democrats tending to be very liberal and its Republicans to be very conservative, and I could see something similar occurring with BC.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

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

Well there is his Tory past to consider there.

Right, but the fact that the Quebec Liberals had a former Tory cabinet minister as their leader for over a decade says something.

To be fair, the politics of Quebec at the time was very polarized around the sovereignty issue, so the partisan coalitions were very weird from a left/right perspective. If you weren't a separatist, you were a Liberal. Charest was a Tory, but his cabinet included the likes of Tom Mulcair (although he seems to have been quite neoliberal when he was an MNA).

[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.

From the same survey, we did an openness index (my boss has a huge interest in this measurement), which basically measures authoritarian tendencies. The lower the number, the more authoritarian the respondent. Here are the provincial means:

BC 5.90
AB 5.39
SK 4.59
MB 5.26
ON 5.83
QC 5.63
Atl 6.09

Atlantic Canada lives up to its reputation as being a very friendly place. No surprise, Quebec doesn't fair well there.

Were the sample sizes large enough to see a division in provinces between supporters of one party and supporters of another? I know that in the US this can make a difference, with e. g. Oregon coming out fairly centrist overall, but with its Democrats tending to be very liberal and its Republicans to be very conservative, and I could see something similar occurring with BC.

Yes, BC is very polarized. The Liberals and NDP have been within 5 points of each other in every provincial election since 2005.

[Blue3]

Any more thoughts on how we’d rank them on the left-right spectrum?

There doesn’t seem to be a consensus.

[King of Kensington]

The Prairie provinces (Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, in that order) are the most conservative, but it gets tricky after that. 

[King of Kensington]

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.

New Brunswick in some ways resembles ME-02 and is the most conservative Atlantic province.  New England and Canada's Celtic fringe (Atlantic Canada) are rather different in their essence, but NB/ME have some similarities. 

The Saskatchewan / North Dakota comparison is also quite apt.  In his famous study of the CCF, Lipset called Sask. a "replica" of ND in its economic structure.

Alberta is sometimes referred to as Canada's Texas (oil, urbanized, conservative) but maybe it's more like Colorado a generation ago?

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

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.

From the same survey, we did an openness index (my boss has a huge interest in this measurement), which basically measures authoritarian tendencies. The lower the number, the more authoritarian the respondent. Here are the provincial means:

BC 5.90
AB 5.39
SK 4.59
MB 5.26
ON 5.83
QC 5.63
Atl 6.09

Atlantic Canada lives up to its reputation as being a very friendly place. No surprise, Quebec doesn't fair well there.

Were the sample sizes large enough to see a division in provinces between supporters of one party and supporters of another? I know that in the US this can make a difference, with e. g. Oregon coming out fairly centrist overall, but with its Democrats tending to be very liberal and its Republicans to be very conservative, and I could see something similar occurring with BC.

Yes, BC is very polarized. The Liberals and NDP have been within 5 points of each other in every provincial election since 2005.

BC combines some of the most left wing voters (downtown Victoria, east Vancouver) with some of the most right wing voters (Interior + Okanagan) in Canada. The province as a whole has swung left because the most left wing parts of the province have grown disproportionately ever since American tariffs and pine beetles decimated the logging industry. That lumberjacks were once the core of BC NDP support says a lot about how different the province was forty years ago.

[King of Kensington]

From the same survey, we did an openness index (my boss has a huge interest in this measurement), which basically measures authoritarian tendencies. The lower the number, the more authoritarian the respondent. Here are the provincial means:

BC 5.90
AB 5.39
SK 4.59
MB 5.26
ON 5.83
QC 5.63
Atl 6.09

Atlantic Canada lives up to its reputation as being a very friendly place. No surprise, Quebec doesn't fair well there.

And "Friendly Manitoba" not so much.

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

From an American perspective, BC seems very obviously to be the most left wing and Saskatchewan seems just right of Alberta.

Quebec is a wildcard but it's pretty damn illiberal and honestly I could see Ontario fitting in to it's left as the second most left wing province.

[King of Kensington]

BC is of part of probably the most "genuine" cross-cultural region: Cascadia.  While in other provinces, the American spillover seems more minimal: yes there's some rusty parts of southern Ontario, but it's very differente from Michigan or Upstate NY, Vermont borders francophone Quebec etc.

[King of Kensington]

And given how much "demographics as destiny" drives American politics, it is hard to see Alberta as "more conservative" than Saskatchewan from that vantage point.

[Blue3]

Excluding British Columbia and Quebec, which is the most leftwing province? Nova Scotia?

[CumbrianLefty]

And given how much "demographics as destiny" drives American politics, it is hard to see Alberta as "more conservative" than Saskatchewan from that vantage point.

Alberta has certainly historically been the more conservative, that may no longer be the case now.

[Estrella]

And given how much "demographics as destiny" drives American politics, it is hard to see Alberta as "more conservative" than Saskatchewan from that vantage point.

Alberta has certainly historically been the more conservative, that may no longer be the case now.

Alberta is pretty strange. It's the only province in Canada that could be described as having a consistent ideology in the sense of red/blue states in the US. Last time it voted for a non-right-of-centre party was in 1940 (Liberals narrowly won the popular vote; still, Socreds won more seats). Since then, it has voted for Social Credit in 1945-1957, Progressive Conservatives in 1958-1988, Reform/Alliance in 1993-2001 and Conservatives since 2004.

Same on provincial level: when Rachel Notley won in 2015, Alberta was four months shy of 80 years (!) of uninterrupted conservative rule*.

* Yes, some PC governments were rather moderate, but ultimately they were always centre-right at best. Some also say that Social Credit's right-wingedness in their early days is debatable, which is probably bullsh*t: they were most notable for syncretic economic policies, authoritarianism and anti-semitism, which may or may not make them fascist, but doesn't make them any less right-wing.

[King of Kensington]

Last year, Jason Kenney's UCP ran 15 points behind the federal Conservatives - which function federally as the "party of Alberta."

In Saskatchewan the Conservative vote more or less matched the vote of the Saskatchewan Party over the last provincial elections.

Kenney is a more polarizing figure than Scott Moe or Brad Wall though.

[King of Kensington]

Some data from the Provincial Comparative Elections project (2011-2013)

Market liberalism (1 = low, 4 = high)

NS  2.21
NB  2.24
ON  2.25
BC  2.25
NF  2.27
PE  2.34
QC  2.36
SK  2.39
AB  2.43
MB  2.43

Post-materialism (1 = high, 4 = low)

ON  2.51
BC  2.53
NB  2.57
QC  2.64
NS  2.65
PE  2.67
AB  2.71
MB  2.72
SK  2.74
NF  2.80

Post-materialism may too be jumbled together, it combines questions about environmental protection vs. economic growth, traditional family values, and racial and gender equality.

[King of Kensington]

Views on abortion, 62% are pro-choice, 70% hold generally liberal views on abortion. 

https://dartincom.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/PostMedia-Abortion-Feb-F-1-2020.pdf

Quebec and BC are the most "socially liberal" on this question, then Ontario, then the Prairies and Atlantic about the same.

[DabbingSanta]

Territories: Left
British Columbia: Left
Alberta: Right
Saskatchewan: Right
Manitoba: Lean right
Ontario: Lean left
Quebec: All over the place lol
Maritimes: Left

[DC Al Fine]

* Yes, some PC governments were rather moderate, but ultimately they were always centre-right at best. Some also say that Social Credit's right-wingedness in their early days is debatable, which is probably bullsh*t: they were most notable for syncretic economic policies, authoritarianism and anti-semitism, which may or may not make them fascist, but doesn't make them any less right-wing.

I chalk this up to our collective amnesia about any sort of conservatism that existed before the free market and free trade turn of the 1980's. See also, pundits' puzzled reaction to Erin O'Toole saying things that John Diefenbaker, or even R.B. Bennett wouldn't bat an eye at.