Visible minorities in the GTA increasingly supporting Conservatives: U of T study

2025/06/12 Leave a comment

Interesting and relevant study. Think the shift largely reflects economic concerns and affordability, particularly among younger voters, whether visible minorities or not, and the effectiveness of Conservative outreach and engagement:

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. 

“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 arty 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.”

Source: Visible minorities in the GTA increasingly supporting Conservatives: U of T study

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More visible minority candidates ran — and won — in Canada’s federal election. The Conservatives boosted the numbers

2025/06/06 2 Comments

Coverage of our study:

More visible minorities ran and were elected in the spring federal election compared to the previous election, an increase that a new report found was driven by representation in parties on the right.

There were 315 visible minorities representing the six major parties, according to the report published by the Institute for Research on Public Policy. The candidates accounted for 20.1 per cent of the 1,568 candidates in the April 28 election. This was an increase from 18.2 per cent in 2021, 16.8 per cent in 2019 and 13.4 per cent in 2015.

While the Liberals, New Democrats and Greens all reported a drop in their visible minority representation from the 2021 race — by 0.9, 3.2 and 1.3 percentage points respectively — Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives and Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada saw their numbers up by 5.9 percentage points and seven points, with the Bloc Québécois up 1.3 points. (The People’s Party failed to win a seat.)

The report refers to “visible minorities” as persons, other than Indigenous people, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour, as defined by Statistics Canada. 

“The Liberals almost seemed to have dropped the ball in terms of candidate recruitment compared to the Conservatives, who obviously were making a fairly concerted effort to recruit a larger number of visible minority candidates,” said Andrew Griffith, who co-authored the report with retired McGill University political science professor Jerome Black.

“They were still building off the Jason Kenney legacy that visible minorities are our natural conservatives,” added Griffith, referring to the former Conservative immigration minister tasked with building bridges with minority communities under the Harper government.

And the deliberate recruitment efforts seemed to yield results, with the proportion of elected visible minority MPs up by 2.4 percentage points, accounting for 17.8 per cent or 61 of the 343 MPs in the new Parliament.

While the number of Liberal MPs who are visible minorities fell by 2.2 percentage points, the Conservatives boosted their visible minority MPs in the House of Commons by 7.5 percentage points. 

The MP breakdown, by ethnicity, was South Asian, 29 seats, Black, 11 seats; Chinese and Arab/West Asian, both seven; Latin American, two; Filipino and Southeast Asian, each with one; and three listed under “other/multiple” backgrounds.

University of Toronto professor Emine Fidan Elcioglu said she was not surprised by the shift as the Conservatives rebranded the party under prime minister Stephen Harper to cultivate support from ethnic communities.

“They wanted to seem like the new party of diversity, so they were very intentional in their ethnic outreach,” said the sociologist, who studies migration politics.

“They were (previously) pushing forward policies that alienated immigrant visible minority communities. They were also reframing themselves as pro-good immigrant, anti-bad immigrant.”

Over the years, she said, visible minority groups have also started to embrace that thinking as shown in recent public debates about the impacts of immigration on the housing and affordability crisis.

Poilievre is “very much looking at these groups as a potential part of his base,” Elcioglu noted. “But I think we need to be really careful to not assume that just because there is more visible minority candidates in the party, that is necessarily going to be fundamental in voter motivation.”

Having more racialized candidates doesn’t necessarily translate to more inclusion, she said, and it could just be a cover for more stringent immigration policies, more austerity measures and more gutting of the social security safety net that affect the society’s most marginalized and vulnerable.

“So, great, you recruit people who are not white men, but what are you doing with that?” asked Elcioglu. 

The report also found the number of women running in the April election down from the 2021 election by 2.4 per cent to 553, and Indigenous candidates by 0.9 per cent to 48. In total, 104 women and 12 Indigenous people were elected.

“It seems like there’s almost a glass ceiling of about 30 per cent for women,” said Griffith. “For Indigenous MPs, it’s a bit different just because of how the population is distributed across the country, but that also has stalled.” 

Candidate profiles and assessments in the analysis are based upon candidate photos, names and biographies, general web searches, and ethnic and other media that focused on particular groups.

Source: More visible minority candidates ran — and won — in Canada’s federal election. The Conservatives boosted the numbers

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Elcioglu: Why are so many second-generation South Asian and Chinese Canadians planning to vote Conservative?

2025/04/12 1 Comment

Striking that this analysis does not compare outreach efforts of the Harper government, that the same immigrant and visible minority ridings switch between parties in both federal and provincial elections, nor acknowledge that in general, ethnic communities tend to follow the overall electoral changes and demographics. The general trend in this election until recently showed younger voters whatever their group, increasingly conservative given housing and other basic concerns. Would also have been nice to see some gender analysis as the overall shift is more with men than women.

Hard economic realities more influential IMO:

…In Canada, ideas about who belongs are often shaped by race, class and respectability. Racialized people must not only prove they are hardworking and law-abiding, but also demonstrate that they’ve “fit in.” For some, voting Conservative becomes a way to show they’ve done just that — a way of saying: “I’m not like them. I’m one of you.”

But this strategy comes at a cost. In reinforcing the very structures that marginalize them, racialized voters may gain individual recognition while deepening collective exclusion. And in rejecting equity-based platforms, they may forgo the policies that could build a more just society.

This dynamic isn’t limited to the second generation. A recent CBC survey found that four in five newcomers believe Canada has accepted too many immigrants and international students without proper planning. 

Some immigrants are increasingly expressing exclusionary views, often toward those who arrived more recently. This, too, is a form of aspirational politics. And it shows just how deeply race, precarity and belonging are entangled in Canada today.

None of this means that racialized Conservative voters are naïve. Their decisions often reflect a clear-eyed understanding of how power works. 

But if we want a fairer political future, we must reckon with the ways race, class and nationalism shape belonging — not just at the ballot box, but in the stories we tell about who gets to be “Canadian.”

As sociologist Ruha Benjamin reminds us, inclusion shouldn’t be treated as an act of generosity. It’s not about “helping” the marginalized — it’s about understanding that we’re all connected. When fear shapes policy and public goods are stripped away, everyone suffers.

Source: Why are so many second-generation South Asian and Chinese Canadians planning to vote Conservative?

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