Historical Voting Trends - The West

Like Stephen Gordon I am constantly frustrated with the backwards fiscal policies peddled by political parties.  My frustration comes from a slightly different source - I believe they're unnecessary not just from an economic point of view, but also a political point of view .  I don't believe policy affects voting behaviour in a significant way (with 1988 being a possible exception) - rather voting behaviour is more determined by historical patterns, demographic trends, the state of the economy during the election, and the perceived competency of political leaders (which admittedly is related to policy).

I have had a pet theory for some time; well, maybe, 'theory' is too strong a word.   Let's call it a pet belief.  My pet belief is that in Canadian politics the 'split right' period from 1992-2004 was an aberration in all provinces except Québec (as discussed here and here).  That, despite all the changes that have occurred in Canada during my lifetime, voting patterns are not significantly different in other provinces today as they were in, say, 1972-1974.  The Tories have, for most of Canada's history, had a structural advantage outside of Québec and that advantage persists today.  Unless the Liberals can figure out how to go back to winning 50+ seats in Québec, we should expect to see the Conservatives hold government.

I decided to look at the data - specifically percentage vote share in each province.  Turns out the data does not support my hypothesis as well as I would have hoped.  However, in the interest of intellectual honesty I've decided to post it anyway.  We will start with the four western provinces.

A couple of notes:

• For elections prior to 1962, the NDP vote numbers reflect the voting results for the CCF.
• Depending on the year of the election, the bulk of the 'other' is made up of Social Credit (1950s to 1970s), Reform (1988) or the Green Party (2004-).

Here are the charts for the four western provinces, without comment:

Edited to Add: Thanks to Determinant for noticing that I had the Liberals and Conservatives swapped for the 1958 election.  Charts now fixed.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that these charts may be misleading.  In the early part of the sample you have a party 'Social Credit' largely pulling votes from the populist right.  In the 2004-2008 period, Social Credit is gone, but you have a party, the Greens, largely pulling votes from the centre-left (not exclusively - there are a number of former Progressive Conservatives in the Green Party).  To see how much vote share has changed, I decided to compare 8 elections from 1962-1988 (I left out '68 and '84 as outliers) and compare them to the past 2 elections (2006, 2008).  Turns out that if you assume that Social Credit votes migrated to the Conservatives and Green votes migrated from the Liberals and NDP, outside of Saskatchewan the numbers sync up alarmingly well.  Perhaps I was too hasty in abandoning my conjecture!

Comments

[Stephen Gordon]

Well, it's clear where you got your conjecture from. BC seems to be the only western province where 2006-8 isn't far from 1972-74.

[Stephen Gordon]

Hmm. I wonder what these look like if you graphed shares of *seats*.

[Mike Moffatt]

'Hmm. I wonder what these look like if you graphed shares of *seats*."

I'll try that next. Seats doesn't work as well because the number of seats changes. Though I suppose I could do % of seats.

The two things that jumped out at me the most were:

- The fall of the NDP in SASK
- In Manitoba both the NDP and Libs are under 30% - typically you see or the other.

[Brett]

"The Tories have, for most of Canada's history, had a structural advantage outside of Canada." Outside of where?

[Jim Rootham]

Seats is a bad idea. First past the post makes votes to seats grossly unstable.

[Determinant]

How exactly is the Liberal vote so high in 1958 in the Prairie Provinces when that was when Diefenbaker's Tories won the biggest majority in Canadian history up to that time?

[Mike Moffatt]

"The Tories have, for most of Canada's history, had a structural advantage outside of Canada." Outside of where?

Whoops... that should be outside of Quebec. Will fix.

"How exactly is the Liberal vote so high in 1958 in the Prairie Provinces when that was when Diefenbaker's Tories won the biggest majority in Canadian history up to that time?"

That does look really strange - perhaps a column got transposed. Will investigate.

[Alex Plante]

Partisan politics in Western Canada is quite complicated, as you have essentially 4 political "streams": the Conservatives, the Liberals, the CCF/NDP and various right-wing populist movements that historically have appeared as the Socreds or as the Reform Party. However, the geographical pattern of support for these various movements is surprisingly stable. The Liberals have pockets of support in the major cities and in the North, the NDP's support is concentrated in the forestry and mining regions of BC, in Saskatchewan and in the working-class parts of Winnipeg. Populist right-wing movements tend to find their greatest support in the BC interior and Southern Alberta. Conservatives only appear to "sweep" the region when they succeed in gaining the support of former Socred or Reform supporters. Before Diefenbaker, the Conservatives were quite weak in the West.

[Mike Moffatt]

Thank you everyone for your comments - I've updated the post based on your feedback.

Alex: That makes a lot of sense. As long as the populist right doesn't fracture off from the Tories (which it could), then I think the Tories are probably pretty safe.

[ffxiv gil]

outside of Saskatchewan the numbers sync up alarmingly well. Perhaps I was too hasty in abandoning my conjecture!