Inkless Wells

Paul Wells on all the latest out of Ottawa—along with the occasional post about jazz. Follow Paul on Twitter: @InklessPW
He also offers his thoughtful perspective of Stephen Harper’s last 10 years in his recent eBook, The Harper Decade.

Categories: Blog Central, Capital Read, Inkless Wells

Also also from the magazine: Here's something for Liberals to deny and ignore

by Paul Wells on Monday, November 24, 2008 11:47am - 36 Comments

A national note from Kate Lunau about the Catholic vote. I wouldn’t hang my hat off every stat in this piece, but this nut graf seems both (a) significant and (b) consistent with other evidence.

This year’s results confirm the trend: outside Quebec, 49 per cent of Catholics who attend church weekly voted Conservative, compared to just 38 per cent in 2004.

In my book, which I won’t flog again (oh, all right; Merry Christmas), Harper Conservatives talked about moving the Roman Catholic vote as a central strategic goal of each of their models for the 2006 campaign: Nixon ’68, Thatcher ’79, Gingrich/Congressional Republicans ’94, John Howard ’97. Catholics are, among other things, a proxy for working-class families with higher-than-average numbers of children. Sometimes you make an essentially overt appeal, often by polarizing on the abortion question. Harper having eschewed that path, the other way is through economic policy: child tax credits, toolbelt tax credits and so on.

An odd thing: I made a concerted attempt to find out how the Conservatives measured the Catholic vote, how specifically they had sought to appeal to Catholics, and how much they thought they had managed to move it from 2004 to 2006. And, although the Conservatives were very cooperative in other ways for my book, they wouldn’t respond to these requests. I got the impression I was asking too much about a trade secret.

Anyway, they appear to be still at it. After the latest election I asked Alice over at Pundit’s Guide to do a special analysis, tracking vote share in the ridings outside Quebec that report the highest Catholic populations in census data. She sent me an Excel file with this result: of the 15 ridings outside Quebec with the highest proportion of Catholic voters, the Conservative share of the vote increased, between 2006 and 2008, in 11 of those ridings.

UPDATE: See how the headline talks, a bit obliquely, about Liberal denial? It’s like I know these guys. Ahem. Stéphane Dion: “You see, the Catholics can be relied on to vote Liberal, always…” (h/t)

Tags: Catholic voters, conservatives

More by Paul Wells

Mike T.

But how much is the church-going aspect of Catholicism declining? is this the right wagon to hitch a demographic star to?
Paul Wells

Near-instant update: Alice at Pundits’ Guide has posted her work cross-referencing StatsCan data with election returns. Lookie:

http://www.punditsguide.ca/2008/11/results-in-catholic-ridings.php
Ti-Guy

Lot of bad science here.
Sisyphus

Glad I’m of the non-practicing variety.
catherine

Paul, do you know if Angus Reid is polling people who actually attend church once a week or people who say they attend church once a week? Studies have found a huge difference between these two.

Notice the Ontario NDP insisted on “saving the Lords Prayer” in Parliament. Every one, but the Liberals it would seem, is courting the religious vote these days whether it is with cash in hand or token symbolism.
Mike514

Paul,

On a quasi-related note, any thoughts on the links between immigrants and religion? Every once in a while, I read or hear about immigrants arriving in a country and reviving a certain religion. One example was in the UK, where eastern European immigrants (mostly Catholic and Orthodox) caused a resurgence in those faiths, while the Anglican churches are struggling with declining attendance.

Most recently, yesterday CBC Radio discussed how an influx of Catholic immigrants from the Philippines into Qatar has forced that largely Muslim country to adjust.

This not only forces such communities to accommodate the new/resurgent religious groups, but might also affect political attitudes, as these new immigrants become new voters. Perhaps Tory success with the immigrant vote is also linked with their success with the religious vote?
Chris B

This is interesting because through the 60′s, 70′s and 80′s, the Catholic/Prot split was the single greatest determinor of vote in Canada, even excluding Quebec. It cut across every other line you could think of (income, union membership etc.) – Catholics tended to vote Liberal and Protestants tended to vote conservative. And that was that.

The only exception was BC where there always seemed to be NDP-Conservative races, so union membership was more important.

If this has broken down that is a) significant and b) about bloody time
Davey Boy

Hi Chris,

Except in PEI, and eastern Ontario, and southern Nova Scotia, etc…
DR

Yawn
polpundit

Canadians have experienced the politics of language, nation, and ethnicity these past four decades.
Why would we not now experience the politics of religion. It is a perfect cleavage for Harper to exploit.
Why would or should we be surprised that PM Harper is also practicing the politics of religion!
This is not rocket science!! Paul Wells was correct in questioning CP strategists about the role of Catholicism in their attempts to grow the base of Harper’s new Conservative Party. They were also smart not to answer him.
The majority of practicing Catholics in Canada are very conservative Catholics and they have much in common with Protestant fundamentalist Christians. Catholics of a liberal persuasion have gone the way of the dodo bird.
Furthermore, there is also a close link between Catholicism and ethnicity – as there once was for French-Canadian and Acadian Catholics – that the Harper strategists are counting on and successfully exploiting to the max.
Many of the African and Asian immigrants are Catholic, many of them refugees from anti-Catholic regimes. It is probably easier to recruit these immigrants into the CP fold via their religious affiliations and concerns rather than simply on the basis of ethnicity.
Harper is a practicing Protestant Christian and his ‘moral’ take on social issues, as well as on the reasons for the global economic collapse, are very appealing to those Canadians for whom morality and faith dominate their lives.
Catholics, who had always preferred the Liberals, ended the long rule of Ontario Bill Davis’ ‘governing’ party in 1985 when their rapidly growing numbers gave them the upper hand in many constituencies.
Premier Davis, out of desperation, tried to recruit Catholic voters by extending full public funding for Catholic separate schools but the decision came too late to save the government and was strongly opposed and challenged by old line Tories all the way to the Supreme Court.
Chris B

Davey,
I am not saying EVERY catholic voted liberal. Just if you were looking for the number one predictor in Canada, it was religion. Except BC. This was the consistent finding for 25 years of the National Election Study.
Darrell

The article in question shifts focus from ‘Catholics’ as making up almost half the population to ‘Catholics who attend church on a weekly basis’ who shifted away from the Liberals by a few percentage points. That’s already pretty dubious.

We might be mistaking correlation for causation here…

The overall point that the Liberals shouldn’t be taking ANY group of voters for granted stands, though.
Terry

I think Terry Mattingly from the blog GetReligion.org, which comments on shoddy religious coverage is helpful here. He is American, but I think this all holds true north of the border as well.

* Ex-Catholics. Solid for the Democrats. GOP has no chance.

* Cultural Catholics who may go to church a few times a year. This may be an undecided voter — check out that classic Atlantic Monthly tribes of American religion piece — depending on what is happening with the economy, foreign policy, etc. Leans to Democrats.

* Sunday-morning American Catholics. This voter is a regular in the pew and may even play some leadership role in the parish. This is the Catholic voter that is really up for grabs, the true swing voter that the candidates are after.

* The “sweats the details” Roman Catholic who goes to confession. Is active in the full sacramental life of the parish and almost always backs the Vatican, when it comes to matters of faith and practice. This is where the GOP has made its big gains in recent decades, but it is a very small slice of the American Catholic pie.
Mike T.

I bet the catholic/protestant split became a far less decisive factor when the NHL expanded and the Leafs/Habs rivalry became less of a national focus.
Happy Happy Conservative

All together now:

THANK YOU WARREN KINSELLA!

Thank you for delivering hundreds of thousands of votes to the Conservative Party of Canada with your Barney stunt.

Catholics as bulwark against Marxism, who would have thunk?

If you love freedom, hug a Catholic today. They are the only thing standing between you and a $15 billion dollar carbon tax.

“But how much is the church-going aspect of Catholicism declining?”

Had you stepped into a Catholic church recently you’d notice a dramatic difference in the demographic makeup compared to, say, 25 years ago. We’re importing Christians, hard core Christians, faster than Catholics stop going to church, and a lot of the clergy are visible minorities. Bonus: hating Catholics is now anti-immigrant!

The antipathy of today’s Liberal Party and its supporters towards Catholics and Christians in general is so over the top that it was inevitable this would happen. I doubt that the Muslim, Sikh, or Jewish communities are impressed with this hate either, since they know they could be next on the Liberal hate list.

What stupidity to spit in the face of an enormous demographic block that has supported the Liberal Party for decades.
BlackMage

Pedant’s note:

John Howard ’96, not ’97. But I think the similarities to John Howard are worthy of note: the Labor Party (much like the Canadian Liberals) had evolved into an increasingly disparate coalition of interest groups bound together by self-interest, not ideology. Howard could hence poach supporters by pledging support rather than ideological amenity.
Paul Wells

actually I believe ’96 was the year John Howard beat Louis St. Laurent, BlackMage.
David

And Newfoundland where the Catholics vote Tory and the Godless Protestants vote Liberal.
DJ

So, Happy Happy Conservative….when can we expect the government to bring in bills ending abortion and same-sex marriage? This would be what the legions of “hard core Christians” would be seeking from their government, would it not?
de

The ignominy of chasing the Catholic vote.
http://www.leehamilton.blogspot.com/ Lee Hamilton

The “Catholic” label here (read: Roman Catholic) is being employed as a synecdoche for something else. There are two major caveats to the label, which Paul makes note of: (1) *outside* Quebec and (2) those attending church once a week. Right there you’ve eliminated a number of rather large swathes of Canadian Roman Catholicism. What remains is an Anglo-Canadian rendition of the typology which Terry outlines briefly in the the last two bullets of his comment above. This breaks down further (i.e. neo-con Catholic, traditionalist Catholic, charismatic Catholic, etc.)

Btw, to H.H.C.: although I wasn’t a fan of Kinsella’s gratuitously obnoxious Barney stunt, there’s no particular reason Roman Catholics would have been offended by that on exegetical grounds. Kinsella was making a jab at literalist (protestant) evangelicals (more specifically: at Stockwell Day, who definitely isn’t Roman Catholic). Roman Catholics are not biblical literalists in this sense; a good example is Saint Augustine’s rejection of cover-to-cover biblical literalism in the Fourth Century A.D. St. Augustine specifically discussed Genesis as a creation narrative that must be appreciated symbolically and metaphorically.
Bridget from Durham

As a weekly church going Catholic I can only say “Noooooooooooooooooooooooo”! It is funny – Chretien, Martin and Dion – all Catholics. I don’t know – I would think that most Liberal policy items would appeal to most Catholics – social justice, strong social safety net etc. (hot button issues aside of course)
Sophie

I have to concur with Bridget.
http://www.leehamilton.blogspot.com/ Lee Hamilton

But it’s precisely those “hot button issues” that are mobilizing the core. That’s why (I think) the putative “Catholic vote” is reflecting the shift Lunau discusses.

I should have phrased my statement about “the remainder” a little better, so as not be exclusive of other groups attending mass regularly. My downtown church is predominantly migrant and non-white on weekday mornings, and I can’t begin to guess at the political leanings there. Yet the composition of the congregation changes on Sundays, when goes 100% “anglo white bread”. And I mean totally. Go figure. So generalizations are risky, and I’m sure there’s a lot of unexamined dynamics at work in mass attendance patterns today.

The dilemma of Dorothy Day ‘social gospel’ Roman Catholics is that the political left has effectively disowned them. It’s not just reflected at the political level, but in media as well. There’s certainly no reaching out, and even the (left-wing) alt media is not infrequently visceral in its anti-Catholicism (when it goes there at all). The votes of the Catholic Left are not being turned down per se, but they’re not being courted either. And the faithful are expected to check their Catholicism at the door if they don’t want to be treated to regular harangues about the Inquisition and Galileo and any other historical grievances. So the political left in Canada is not exactly embracing those who self-identify as practicing Roman Catholics, in my opinion.
A reader

“The dilemma of Dorothy Day ’social gospel’ Roman Catholics is that the political left has effectively disowned them. It’s not just reflected at the political level, but in media as well. There’s certainly no reaching out, and even the (left-wing) alt media is not infrequently visceral in its anti-Catholicism (when it goes there at all). The votes of the Catholic Left are not being turned down per se, but they’re not being courted either. And the faithful are expected to check their Catholicism at the door if they don’t want to be treated to regular harangues about the Inquisition and Galileo and any other historical grievances. So the political left in Canada is not exactly embracing those who self-identify as practicing Roman Catholics, in my opinion.”

Lee Hamilton, don’t be so sure … www-dot-ndp-faith-justice-foi-npd-dot-ca