You have a good point, in that including Alberta in the Prairie totals skews the overall prairie result to the right.
You’re also right that one of the reasons the Liberals have dominated is because the conservative vote fractured and self-destructive. This was the first election called after the Conservative party formed, and it was a ‘snap’ election intentionally called before the new party could get its act together. That suggests to me that the true nature of the Canadian people may be more conservative than the election result suggests. If the Conservative party had had two years to build up its get out the vote programs and advertise itself, how much better would it have done?
But you can play the ‘what if’ game all night long. The fact is, the prairies are conservative, the east and west coasts and major cities in Ontario are Liberal. This picture looks very similar to the U.S. - mainly because for all our talk of Canadian identity, Canadians and Americans really aren’t very different.
But the pattern just isn’t the same. The generalization ‘the prairies are conservative’ is at best misleading. Saskatchewan and Manitoba vote (roughly) like Minnesota and Wisconsin do, not the way that Kansas and Nebraska do. We just aren’t conservative in the sense that you’re pushing here. Heck, the reason the Tories did so well in Saskatchewan this time round wasn’t because they got so many votes, but because the NDP did. Marginalize the NDP into an insigificant 3rd party and the Liberals would have won 5-7 of the 14 seats in Saskatchewan, and that in the midst of the sponsorship scandal, and after years of drought and BSE with no effective response from the federal Ag Ministry. If there were better conditions for Tories getting elected in Saskatchewan, I don’t know what they might have been, and yet they would have been roughly tied in a hypothetical head to head battle with the Liberals. That’s just not distinctly more conservative than Ontario. The nature of the conservatism is different - SK/MB conservatives are more on average more socially conservative and less fiscally conservative than Ontario conservatives, but there really aren’t significantly more of them.
Sam and Gorsnak, when you speak of western Canadians as “socially conservative,” does that mean the same thing as it means in the U.S.? Here a “social conservative” is traditionally religious, is pro-life on abortion, is hostile to gay marriage, values gun-ownership rights, might be a creationist, and in some (by no means all) cases is a xenophobe and a white supremacist to boot.
Canadian conservatism is not the same thing as American conservitism though, with nothing approaching a “neo-con” movement here like in the States. Something like 75% of the country would have voted for Kerry if given the same choice as the US, and even Alberta managed only a slight majority in favour of the war in Iraq. Take away our national health care (even such as it is)? You’d have a revolt, even in Alberta. Yes, there’s a right-left split, but it’s not as severe (I think John Kerry’s closest comparison in Canadian politics is Joe Clark) and not as polarized as you make it out to be.
We do have the lovely “Alberta Alliance” now, who may win 1 or 2 seats (you have to love Canada, where our Nationalist parties are provincial), but it’s a tiny movement and a kneejerk response to the federal Liberal win. The reactions of the Conservative Party up here after the last federal election reminds me a lot of current Dem reactions to Bush’s win, by the by.
Gorsnak: I can agree with that. Specifically, I think you were exactly right when you said that Sask/Man voters are more socially conservative and less fiscally conservative than Ontario voters. That’s bang on.
Brainglutton: Well, I dunno. Alberta’s very conservative, and yet we have legalized gambling, XXX video stores all over the place, the bars are open until 2-3 in the morning, there are strip bars all over the place where the women take everything off and pose graphically, etc. Most of these were fought by conservatives, and most of them lost.
On the other hand, here in Edmonton we’re bringing in increasingly restrictive anti-smoking statutes, which I personally hate (and I don’t smoke).
When I was young it was a different story. In Lethbridge in the 1970’s, we had sunday shopping laws that forced stores to close. Back then, Alberta’s liquor stores were owned by the government and severely regulated (closed by 8, closed Sundays, etc). We still said the lord’s prayer in schools. So I imagine that looked pretty conservative. But all that’s gone now.
Traditionally religious, check.
Pro-life, check, but not to the same extent.
Anti-gay marriage, check, but again not to the same extent.
Gun rights, check, sort of.
Creationist, nope.
Xenophobic tendencies, generally not.
(Warning: broad brushstrokes ahead - these generalizations, like all others, will break down if examined closely)
A typical social conservative from the prairies is traditionally religious, but largely without the theocratic tendencies one finds in the Religious Right in the US. She’s pro-life, but probably isn’t determined to make abortion illegal. She merely disapproves of it, and may support church initiatives to encourage adoption, etc. She’s anti-gay marriage, but probably wouldn’t take any issue with a civil-union-type deal. She thinks the federal gun registry is a colossal waste of time and money, but doesn’t object to the old system requiring an FAC (Firearm Acquisition Certificate, requires passing safety course) to obtain guns. Moreover, the dynamic here is completely different. There’s no 2nd Amendment, very little sense that gun ownership is a “right”, just the sense that guns are necessary tools for rural life, and the govt needn’t stick its nose into possession of longarms. Very likely the government could outright ban handguns without riling up many of these people. She may be a creationist, but may not be, and doesn’t push for creationism being taught in public schools. If she doesn’t want her kids to learn about evolution (not very likely to begin with), she’ll send them to a private religious school instead. She’s unlikely to be much opposed to immigration, possibly because all the immigrants end up in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal. The closest we’re likely to get here is that she may well resent the tax exemptions that Treaty Indians get. Oh, and she probably resents the special treatment those Quebeckers get, too. What makes them so special?
The attitudes are somewhat similar to those of the Religious Right in the US, but play out differently. Quite possibly an element in this difference is that a much lower percentage of them are evangelical Protestants. Large chunks of the rural conservative population is eastern European, and hence Catholic or Orthodox, or “Russian Mennonite” which is Protestant, but not very evangelical, and has a strong tradition of SoCaS. (Practically invented the idea, in fact.) The biggest mainstream Protestant denomination is the United Church, which was formed by a merging of the Methodists, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians in 1925. It’s the most liberal denomination in the country, and is a very strong supporter of gay marriage, for example. There really aren’t many churches that would look much like the Southern Baptists or Pentecostals.
No. But if a person were the above, that person would orient toward the Conservative Party, which has caused no end of trouble for the party in Ontario.
After the westerners broke off from the Progressive-Conservative Party, it resulted in a lot of ridings in Ontario with centre-right Progressive-Conservative candidates splitting the right wing vote with some hard-right Reform/Alliance etc. candidates, of which a few were true fundamentalist nuts in the worst sense. The nuts scared a lot of people in Ontario, including myself, which kept their party from doing well in Ontario. Now that the Conservatives have merged back together again, they will have do go a long way to prove that they are centre-right, rather than directed by the extreme right, before they can defeat the Liberals in Ontario. Occasional racist, homophobic, anti-abortion or excessively fundamentalist statements (god and family values, etc.) occasionally made by members from the extreme right of the party make the press, and continue to drive people in Ontario away. As it stands, if a person is a right wing nut job, that is the party such a person associates with, regardless of the vast majority of Conservatives being decent, perfectly normal folks. Had the far right not split the party in the first place, and had it not given voice to the extreme few, I expect it could have taken Ontario in the last election.
Yeah? I give you Tom Wappel, MP and homophobic nutbar, and arguably the single most despicable human to hold office in recent Canadian history - Liberal Party.
Another big difference here is that we have publically-funded religious schools. We have a catholic school system, and when we fill out our tax forms we choose whether we want our school funding to go to the secular or catholic school system.
I think that probably takes a lot of pressure off the public school system by religious types.
Following up on Muffin’s point: while the Lt Gov’s duties are almost entirely ceremonial or exercised on the advice of the Premier, there are still the reserve powers: the power to choose the Premier being the most important, and more generally, to ensure that there is a government in office. Normally, of course, the choice of the Premier is dictated by the election results (when a majority is returned after an election), or failing that, by the political decisions of the Assembly (in a minority situation). But the reserve powers are there, and are the ultimate check on the Premier - they’re rarely used, but they’re there, as Prime Minister Whitlam found out in Australia several years ago. You can’t just hand those powers over to the Premier - how would he ever use them to his own detriment?