Conservative Party of Canada Leadership Race Megathread-May 27th 2017

[King of Kensington]

"Red Tories" seek to prevent Reform/Alliance wing from taking over party

Baird pondering a run for the leadership

[King of Kensington]

The term "Red Tory" is now meaningless (Kellie Leitch?)

[King of Kensington]

Actually. IIRC Van Loan comes from the PC rather than the Reform/Alliance camp.  Just saying.

He also has an anti-abortion voting record.

[King of Kensington]

Conservative MPs calling on party to hold leadership convention in spring 2017.

[King of Kensington]

The Tories need to move back to their Progressive Conservative roots and win back the immigrant vote if they want to win another majority.

The Tories did well among Chinese voters (winning Markham-Unionville which is more Chinese under the new riding configuration, increasing their vote share in Agincourt and holding on in Richmond while getting slaughtered in the GVRD).  Among South Asians however there was a big swing to the Liberals.

[King of Kensington]

In Markham-Unionville, the Conservatives received 6500 more votes than last time.

[King of Kensington]

I'm comparing transposed results.  In fact, the Tories would have won the current Markham-Unionville in 2011 as well (both the "Oak Ridges" part and the part McCallum represented).  It's hard to find too many ridings in Ontario where the Conservative vote share went up and where the raw vote increased by as much as it did in that riding.

I hate Harper too, but let's not let narratives we like contradict the facts.  I'm just not buying this hypothesis that Chinese voters didn't turn out because they found Harper intolerant or anti-immigrant.  

[King of Kensington]

Well that Insights West poll which said only 14% of BC "Asians" would vote Conservative turned out to be total garbage!  

In terms of Indo Canadians, yes, it's 2006 again for the Tories.  

(Is newly elected Bob Saroya - who beat a Chinese Liberal in Markham-Unionville - now the only Indo Canadian Tory in Parliament?)

[King of Kensington]

Second-tier candidate, like Clement. 

[King of Kensington]

I wish I had thought this through more in the campaign because it's so obvious in hindsight: It always bugged me when people talked about the Tories hurting themselves with "the immigrant vote" as if immigrants were all from one ethnic group or something. I kept thinking "why would a Chinese guy in Richmond care about the niqab?".

This was a bigger issue for Red Tories in Oakville than it was for Chinese voters in Agincourt or Richmond BC. 

My guess overall is that the Chinese vote share for the Conservatives is about the same as it was in 2011 (up in Agincourt and Markham-Unionville pickup on the one hand but they lost Vancouver South for example).

[King of Kensington]

I think Lisa Raitt could be a strong candidate as well.

If MacKay gets it, would he run in a by-election?  Some Ontario MP would step aside for him?

[King of Kensington]

The CPC fell back in too many BC ridings for me to think the Chinese vote didn't swing from the Conservatives. They gained in 2 Chinese heavy ridings in Ontario. But they fell back everywhere in BC. Even the Tory island of Richmond Centre saw a 14 point decrease for the CPC.

Yes, you always have to be careful not to use one riding as the be and all and end all for determining how an ethnic group votes.  For instance Thornhill does not = "the Jewish vote."

[King of Kensington]

I wonder what the most Conservative ethnic group in Canada is.  My guess is Dutch Canadians (but good luck measuring the "Dutch vote"). 

[King of Kensington]

OK, Volga Germans, given their huge concentration in the rural Prairies.

[King of Kensington]

Mennonites, maybe?

Yeah, they're kind of an "ethnic group" (even have several recognizable last names like Epp and Thiessen).  Probably go around 60% Conservative, I would guess (but it's a stab in the dark because I don't know).  I know in the Prairies they've historically been very anti-CCF/NDP.

If we're talking about ethno-religious subgroups - I think Orthodox Jews is the obvious answer.

[King of Kensington]

With the long form census coming back we should be able to have data for Cardston AB available in a few years.

Most Mormons are of English ancestry - Utah has the highest % English ancestry of any US state. English ancestry in the US is most concentrated in rural New England and Utah (white southerners now report "100% American" in the census). 

In Canada, English ancestry incidentally is highest in rural Newfoundland and Vancouver Island (even though they're obviously found everywhere in good numbers except francophone Quebec and Nunavut).  But obviously WASP Canadians aren't a weak group for the Conservatives.

[King of Kensington]

But apparently the ultra orthodox Jewish community in Outremont votes massively for Tom Mulcair!

I don't know if they did this time (or ever).  He could have won in spite of them.  What percentage of the riding is Hasidic?

[King of Kensington]

There was talk about the "Ukrainian vote" in this election but obviously there was little evidence of it having an impact.  The rural heavily Ukrainian settled areas of the Prairies are now Conservative strongholds (but the NDP had some strength in the 1970s and 80s in Ukrainian areas such as Yorkton-Melville and Manitoba's Interlake district, so they're not as historically conservative as Volga German and Mennnonite areas).  But Canada's "Ukrainian" city, Winnipeg, swung big to the Liberals.  Also, Toronto Liberal MPs Chrystia Freeland and Borys Wrzesnewskyj are very "hawkish" when it comes to Ukraine, so it's unlikely voters thought there was a big difference between the Tories and the Liberals. 

[King of Kensington]

Also, most Ukrainian DPs went to Toronto rather than the Prairies and thus made a large share of Toronto's Ukrainian community.  They were very right-wing and many thought Pierre Trudeau was a crypto-Communist!  Although Lubor Zink was Czech his appeal was mostly in the Ukrainian community.

For whatever reason, Poles in Toronto just voted for the Liberals for as long as they were the "Catholic party."

Fast forward to today, it's hard to know how Poles and Ukrainians vote today in the GTA, and whether there's any ethnic divide in the "Boris vs. Ted" battles.  

[King of Kensington]

I put an end to this thread drift (that I started!) by starting this new thread:

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=223004.0

So we can keep this more about news updates.

[King of Kensington]

There really aren't any "protectionist" capitalists in Canada, they all became continentalists and free traders in the 80s, basically.

[King of Kensington]

Chong is about as red as a Tory gets these days.

[King of Kensington]

Like Mulcair, Kellie Leitch regrets "failure to communicate"

http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/politics/kellie-leitch-rcmp-tip-line-1.3547430

[King of Kensington]

Brad Trost, a "real Conservative from the conservative wing of the party," plans to announce in September.

http://thestarphoenix.com/opinion/editorials/god-put-conservatives-on-earth-to-stop-taxes-everywhere-forever-brad-trost

[King of Kensington]

Kellie Leitch is the Ben Carson of Canadian politics.