Gary McKenna is a journalist covering municipal politics for The Tri-City News and is a student at Simon Fraser University’s Masters in Urban Studies program.
.
Canada’s political parties are already maneuvering ahead of next year’s federal election, but where a voter lives may have more influence over how they’ll cast their ballot than any campaign gimmick or political advertisement.
It is no secret that urban populations tend to vote for more progressive candidates, while conservative politicians fare better in rural and suburban areas.
Analysis I conducted on the results of the 2011 federal election found a statistically significant correlation between a riding’s density and the likelihood its voters selected a progressive candidate. The higher the density, the more chance that a Liberal, a New Democrat or a Green candidate represented the constituency.
Oddly, the same statistically significant correlation could not be found linking rural ridings with more conservative voting patterns. One possible reason explaining this could be that the Conservative Party tends to do well in suburban areas. These mid-density ridings could muddy the numbers and make a statistically significant correlation difficult to determine.
The propensity for more progressive voters to live in higher-density areas is also prominent in the United States.
A map created by Princeton University professor Robert Vanderbei based on the results of the 2012 federal election clearly differentiates between the sprawling Republican red and the more densely populated Democratic blue.
Clearly, the rural-urban divide is prominent in Canadian politics, however there is little academic research into why this difference in voting behaviour exists.
What makes progressively-minded people more likely to concentrate in urban centers? Do larger urban cores make people more liberal?
University of Toronto professor Alan Walks has looked into the issue and believes the answer may lie in home ownership. Owning property, which is less prominent in urban areas, can lead to a restructuring of “one’s political priorities towards balanced budgets, low taxes and protection of one’s property values,” he stated in the Canadian Journal of Political Science.
Patrick Dunleavy, a U.K. professor, suggests that people who are dependent on government services tend to concentrate in urban areas were these services are more widely available. Those who live in high-density ridings favour higher taxes for things like improved transit expansion, social housing and public health initiatives, while in the rural and suburban areas where these programs are not as readily available, the focus is on reducing taxes.
The two authors make some strong points, however their analysis adheres to a notion that urban environments are more hospitable to poorer, property-less people reliant on government services.
As many people in Vancouver know, the truth is more complex. In the Lower Mainland, for example, our urban core has become an increasingly expensive place to live, forcing many families to locate on the outskirts of the region where it is cheaper to live.
People in the urban core may not own the condo they are living in, but the rising rental rates prominent in the city would indicate that they are far from poor.
If Walks and Dunleavy’s assertions are correct, it would seem that the working-class suburbanites would be more likely to favour policies that supported improved public transit and social services, while the wealthier downtown residents would favour lower taxes.
Could this mean there is a shift coming in the political geography of the Lower Mainland?
Perhaps, but so far this does not appear to be the case. Higher-density environments still seem to attract more progressive-minded voters, regardless of income and financial means.
More analysis is required to determine why these political divisions exist, but the 2011 election results indicate that the rural-urban divide does not appear to be in danger of going away anytime soon.
It seems like there’s not enough evidence yet to determine which way the causality goes. Does living in urban areas make you more progressive, or do progressives move to urban areas? My guess is that there is a little of both.
Agree with Andrew. Generally, most people in the city are the people who left the rural areas, seems plausible that the ones who stay behind are more conservative by nature.
Trying to break it down based on people choosing policies to benefit them personally is unlikely to be successful since as far as I know, research shows that people don’t vote based on self-interest so much as based on who/what they identify with. The default assumption in your post that people are expected to vote their financial self-interest may be worth examining.
What I wonder is if living in the suburbs (and commuting by car in particular) is so stressful that it makes people angry, and this translates into Rob Ford / Mike Harris type victories. In these cases, I’m not sure the driving force is conservative ideology so much as a desire to lash out at whoever is seen as responsible for the stressful nature of daily life.
People in the poorest parts of the American south absolutely do NOT vote based on economic self interest. If income or self image was what mattered the downtrodden masses living on food stamps and struggling to find $6/hour part time jobs would be so far to the left that an American version of the NDP would be possible, but instead they defend the Republican party at every opportunity.
My interpretation of the divide in mind sets is “what’s good for me is good for everybody” versus “what’s good for everybody is good for me” where “everybody” means “most of the people on my radar” so the influence of where you live comes from how homogenous or diverse a society you experience.
I think we shouldn’t underestimate the role of populism in our political parties. In North America, populism is generally associated with right-wing parties and politicians (Rob Ford, Preston Manning, Stephen Harper – at least until a couple of years ago), but in some places in the world populism is associated with left-wing politics (Hugo Chavez, Juan Perón, Evo Morales). I wonder if that can help explain why some dense populations in the world vote left, and some vote right.