Federal and provincial Conservatives are winning over more visible minority voters in the GTA, a new study has found.
According to researchers at the University of Toronto’s School of Cities, visible minorities in the GTA, who make up more than half of the population, are increasingly backing Conservative candidates in federal and provincial elections. The study, out Wednesday, considers anyone, besides Indigenous people, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour as a visible minority, as defined by Statistics Canada.
The findings are based on federal and Ontario election results over the past two decades, including the two most recent national and provincial elections earlier this year.
“What used to be a weak spot for the right is now a growing base,” Prof. Emine Fidan Elcioglu and research assistant Aniket Kali wrote in the study, noting the Conservatives have historically been seen as the party of the white and wealthy, at least until recent years.
“The more diverse the riding, the stronger the Conservative numbers.”
The researchers point to the federal election in April as an example.
Ridings where visible minorities make up the majority shifted rightward by 10 to over 20 percentage points compared to the 2021 federal election — higher than the Conservatives national gain of 7.6 percentage points in the vote count. Most of these ridings are located in the 905 belt around Toronto, which the Star previously reported denied Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberals a majority government thanks to a blue wave.
While the researchers had a sense that some visible minorities have shifted to the right when it comes to voting, the findings still had some surprises.Â
“It was quite stark to see just how consistent the polls were over time,” Kali said in an interview.
There are multiple reasons for this shift in voting behaviour, according to the researchers.
First is a decades-long, concentrated attempt by the Conservative party to reach racialized communities through efforts such as multilingual ads and attending religious festivals. Conservatives have also recruited a lot of visible minority candidates — including more than the Liberals and NDP in the April federal election, according to a separate study.
All this, Elcioglu and Kali said, came as the Liberal party was increasingly being seen as “a party of broken promises” around affordability, housing and other issues.
“The Liberal party and the sort of disenchantment with (Justin) Trudeau is certainly part of the puzzle,” Elcioglu said, “but it doesn’t explain everything.”
Another reason for the shift to the right is changing attitudes among second-generation Canadians.
In interviews with 50 second-generation Canadians around the GTA — most of whom were either South Asian or Chinese — Elcioglu said she heard that people thought voting Conservative meant becoming more “Canadian.”
“It’s a way to say, ‘I made it. I belong. I’m not voting like my Liberal party immigrant parents,’” Elcioglu said of the responses she heard in the interviews.
Although the study shows growing support among visible minority voters for the Conservatives, the researchers stressed that this group of people is not a monolith.
“Immigrants and minorities are a serious political constituency in the GTA. They have serious issues and the party that organizes them on those issues and speaks to those issues is going to win some loyalty.”
Elcioglu said this understanding will be important for the Liberals and NDP if they want to win seats in future elections.
“Progressive parties shouldn’t assume that they have the support of racialized voters,” she said. “They need to do more listening and speak to the real issues.
“They need to go out into the suburbs.”
