"I do believe, and this gets more subtle, that there is a higher incidence of people who are less tolerant to homosexuals and more wary of other races, within the Conservative Party. I can demonstrate that empirically." G&M
I commented earlier in the week that unless we see the questions and responses that Graves used in his opinion polling there's literally no way to assess his claim of having empirical data. However, I've done some online research on this subject and found an Environics poll from 2006 in which the survey asked respondents questions on, among other topics, immigration and voter intention.
One question in particular was whether respondents agreed or disagreed with the statement that non-whites should NOT be allowed to immigrate to Canada? Clearly, if there were a xenophobic bias among Conservative supporters it would show up in this type of question.
Yet the data, at least by my reading, does not support this assertion as approximately 91% of all respondents disagreed and there was virtually no difference regardless of whether the respondent intended to vote Liberal, Conservative, NDP or Bloc.. A simplified table of the results is below (the numbers do not add to 100% as I've excluded those respondents that answered "don't know" or did not answer the question).
| Agree | Disagree | |
| Liberal Party | 6.3% | 91.5% |
| Conservative Party | 6.6% | 92% |
| New Democratic Party | 6.3% | 91.6% |
| Bloc Québécois | 4.5% | 95% |
| Green Party | 6.1% | 92.4% |
Another key question focused on immigration. The survey asked if respondents agreed or disagreed with the statement, "overall there is too much immigration in (sic) Canada." While a clear majority of respondents disagreed with the statement, regardless of which party they intended to vote for, more Conservatives agreed with the statement (45%) than Liberals (33%).
| Agree | Disagree | |
| Liberal Party | 67% | 33% |
| Conservative Party | 55% | 45% |
| New Democratic Party | 68% | 32% |
| Bloc Québécois | 62% | 38% |
| Green Party | 68% | 32% |
A third question involved refugees, specifically whether respondents agreed or disagreed with the statement, many people claiming to be refugees are not refugees. Like the question on immigration, more Conservatives agreed with this statement than Liberals. However, as the table below shows, a majority of Liberals, Bloc and Green party supporters also agreed with the statement. Clearly, being Liberal does not preclude one from having strong opinions on the validity of refugee claims.
| Agree | Disagree | |
| Liberal Party | 54.6% | 31.4% |
| Conservative Party | 67.5% | 21.7% |
| New Democratic Party | 46% | 38.3% |
| Bloc Quebecois | 51.5% | 31% |
| Green Party | 50.6% | 37.5% |
Three different survey questions lead to three different results. But do any of the questions actually measure xenophobia, an intense or irrational dislike or fear of people from other countries? Just because an individual has issues with immigration or refugee policy doesn't mean he's xenophobic. While there certainly may be overlap between xenophobes and those who dislike current immigration policy, there's no way to tell one from the other on this or the previous question. If either the immigration or refugee question is a measure of xenophobia, than we can say that ALL parties enjoy a significant number of xenophobes among their members, which would be disturbing in its own right if it were true. Moreover, a lot of Liberals would be casualties of friendly fire if the party chose to heed Graves' advice to attack allegedly xenophobic Conservative over issues like immigration.
Again, it's impossible to know what Graves meant by xenophobia or homophobia or how he measured it. Opinion polling and statistical science is heavily nuanced and meanings often get distorted, as Graves himself admitted. So, until we see his numbers, calling Tories are more xenophobic than Liberal is a very relative claim.
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