More on Graves and Xenophobic Tories

I reviewed data from the 2008 Canada Election Survey to substantiate Frank Graves' assertion that the Conservative Party of Canada attracts xenophobes and homophobes. Or to be more accurate, that xenophobes and homophobes are attracted to the CPC.

Using two variables - the first measuring respondent attitudes on various political parties and the second their attitudes toward racial minorities - I constructed the following tables for the CPC, LPC, NDP and Bloc as well as a final table showing general attitudes toward political parties. I also variables involving self-identification with political parties and attitudes toward gays and lesbians.*

According to data, 3% of the respondents that indicated they liked the Conservative Party of Canada also stated a dislike of racial minorities. This is a clear sign, a proverbial smoking gun, that the CPC harbours devout racists and xenophobes within their ranks!

But wait, there's more. Using the same variables and scale, 5% of those respondents who said they liked the Liberal Party also said they disliked racial minorities. Ditto for the NDP (see tables 1A to 1E below). The differences between the three main political parties is negligible and certainly within the statistical error rate for the survey. (The statistical correlation between these variables is 0.08).

Where there is a significant difference is among respondents who gave a preference for the Bloc Quebecois: 10% of respondents who like the party also disliked racial minorities.

The results are similar when the question is changed from asking respondents to rate political parties to which party they identify with.. In table 2.0 below, 12% of respondents who self-identified as Conservatives dislike minorities while 9% of who said they were Liberals dislike minorities. Respondents who self-identified as NDP had the lowest score at 6% while 15% of those identifying as Bloc stated they disliked minorities.

The results are more varied when the question is changed from how do you feel about racial minorities to gays and lesbians. As Table 3 shows, approximately 25% of those respondents identifying as Conservatives also stated a dislike of gays and lesbians while 14% of respondents self-identifying as Liberals said the same thing. The scores for the NDP and Bloc were 14% and 10.9% respectively. Clearly all parties have significant numbers of supporters that dislike gays and lesbians; the Tories simply have more of them. (The statistical correlation between party self-identification and attitudes towards gays and lesbians is 0.001).

Are the results surprising?

No, because, generally speaking, the institutions and conventions of federal politics force all political parties to excise or silence their wing nuts and wackos as they compete for votes at the national level. The vast majority of Canadian voters cluster around the center of the political spectrum and have moderate attitude toward most issues. This forces political parties to jettison extreme views in order to brighten their appeal. This is why a former Reform Party die hard like Stephen Harper can woo Quebec with money and distinct society motions and run huge deficit after he earlier vehemently claimed he would never do such things.

It's also not surprising that a higher percentage of respondents that like the Bloc Quebecois disliked racial minorities. The Bloc is not a national political party and only has to tailor it's message and platform to suit the separatist vote in Quebec and separatist voters in Quebec have historically had a low opinion of immigrants and refugees. Jacques Parizeau's condemnation of immigrants and minorities as being the proximate cause of the failure of the 1995 referendum is a testament to separatist thinking on racial minorities.

So what can be said about Graves' Xenophobic & Homophobic Tories? Pretty much the exact same thing as Xenophobic & Homophobic  Liberals and Dippers. All parties have their wingnuts and wackos.What matters is how parties neutralize the influence of such extreme views.

Source 2008 Canada Election Survey.
The tables are based on attitude assessments using a range of 0-100. I have excluded responses that fell along the median of 50 as neutral positions. Therefore, 0-49 are considered a response of "dislike" and 51-100 are considered "like".

Tables 1A-5A

		Racial Minorities
		Dislike	Like
CPC	Dislike	3%	27%	30%
	Like	4%	37%	41%
		7%	64%	71%
		Racial Minorities
		Dislike	Like
LPC	Dislike	18%	5%	22%
	Like	5%	73%	78%
		22%	78%	100%
		Racial Minorities
		Dislike	Like
NDP	Dislike	11%	43%	54%
	Like	3%	43%	46%
		14%	86%	100%
		Racial Minorities
		Dislike	Like
Bloc	Dislike	13%	42%	55%
	Like	10%	35%	45%
		23%	77%	100%
		Racial Minorities
		Dislike	Like
All	Dislike	7%	21%	27%
	Like	5%	68%	73%
		11%	89%	100%

Table 2.0
In federal politics, do you think of yourself as Liberal, Conservative, ect vs. How do you feel about racial minorities?

	Strongly Dislike	Dislike	Neutral	Like	Strongly Like
Other	0%	8%	8%	15%	69%
LPC	5%	4%	9%	27%	55%
CPC	7%	5%	13%	33%	42%
NDP	4%	2%	11%	24%	60%
Bloc	7%	8%	15%	36%	35%
Green	3%	2%	3%	26%	65%

Source: 2008 Canada Election Survey (http://www.queensu.ca/cora/ces.html)


Table 3.0 Party self-identification and attitudes towards gays and lesbians.

	Strongly Dislike			Dislike			Neutral			Like			Strongly Like
Other		3.2%			3.2%			9.7%			22.6%			51.6%
LPC		10.1%			4.3%			10%			21.5%			47.7%
CPC		18.5%			6.8%			12.6%			23.9%			31.3%
NDP		9.8%			3.1%			9.3%			16.7%			56.1%
Bloc		7.2%			3.7%			14.7%			26%			43.1%
Green		2%			3%			12%			15%			61%

Source: 2008 Canada Election Survey (http://www.queensu.ca/cora/ces.html)

The Coming Culture War?

 Ekos pollster Frank Graves told a Liberal gathering that it ought to impose a culture war on the Conservatives. According to Lawrence Martin of the Globe&Mail, Graves

..... has told the Grits that the wedge politics of the Conservatives provide them with an opportunity to stake out a stark alternative. Stop worrying about the West, he’s told them. No need to fear polarizing the debate. It’s what worked for Mr. Chrétien against Preston Manning and Stockwell Day.

In his advice, Mr. Graves could hardly have been more blunt. “I told them that they should invoke a culture war. Cosmopolitanism versus parochialism, secularism versus moralism, Obama versus Palin, tolerance versus racism and homophobia, democracy versus autocracy. If the cranky old men in Alberta don’t like it, too bad. Go south and vote for Palin.”

Graves, who is the CBC's go to guy for opinion polling, later apologized and tried to explain what he meant. Well sort of. According to another G&M article, Graves said, 'polling data shows the Conservative Party “does seem to provide a haven” for people with xenophobic or homophobic views.'

This, of course, dove tails nicely with people's ideological views of the Conservatives and previous scare tactics used by the Liberals. But Graves'assertions raise some important questions that Grave ought to answer.

First, xenophobia and homophobia are traits that defy political ideology. The Bloc and the Parti Quebec, for examples, are hardly sources for immigration friendly policies. And liberalized and secularized Quebec's tolerance and accommodation commission was little more than a podium for French-Canadian racist attitudes. The current Quebec Liberal governments pandering to anti-Islamic attitudes over the niqab is just a new incarnation of the same old attitudes.

Second, what does Graves mean precisely by homophobes and xenophobes? How is he measuring these attitudes and what is the statistical significance of his measure? Is Graves declaring people "homophobic" if they oppose teaching about homosexuality in grade 3 or does he mean something else. If you have legitimate concerns about immigration and refugee policy, are counted as xenophobic?

Second, what does Graves mean by "more" and by "empirically accurate"? Give us the numbers.

Third, where exactly do the Liberals, Bloc and NDP sit on Grave's scale of xenophobia and homophobia. What's the comparison?

Without numbers and data it's impossible to understand what Graves actually means. It would be possible to say, accurately and fairly, that the Conservatives attract more wackos than the Liberals or NDP even if it were only 1% more in comparative terms (although we all seriously doubt it's 1%).

Unless we have the hard numbers to review, it's impossible to know what Graves means and to evaluate its importance.

The accusation of xenophobia and homophobia originates in the Reform family values platforms of the 1990s. Preston Manning and the Reform Party used the social conservative trend as a wedge issue, working to divide support for the Progressive Conservatives, and expand beyond Alberta into rural Ontario. A political party will always vacuum up wing-nuts and extremists when it mines discontent and disenfranchisement for electoral gain.

Although Stephen Harper has successfully killed off or quarantined much of the wing of the party, so-cons still exert some influence and are therefore the soft underbelly of the Conservative Party. Conservative opponents love to poke the aging so-con lions through bars of their cage because the resulting roar makes excellent headlines.

ps: Chris Shelly of the National Post reports that G&M reporter Lawrence Martin stands by his claim that Frank Graves said that he told the Liberal Party about his strategy directly, which contradicts Graves' line that it was really "unsolicited advice" given to a newspaper reporter.