Election: The myth of the urban/rural divide

The media, especially in their headlines, have been touting a supposed great urban/rural divide revealed in this election, with the Liberals dominating urban Canada and the Conservatives controlling the rural part of the country.

Even Conservative Adam Daifallah thinks the same (although he gets a big thing right--see below).

...Monday's victory reinforced the notion that the Conservatives are a rural party...

...This is a strong signal that urbanites are still not ready to take a chance on the Tories. It is also a sign that many New Canadians are still not ready to break ranks with the Liberals...

It is true that the Conservatives predominate in rural areas. However it is a myth that the Liberals represent urban Canada. Elections Canada posts the election results for eleven major urban centres on its website: Calgary, Edmonton, Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, Quebec City, Regina, St. John's, Toronto, Vancover and Winnipeg. In these cities the Liberals won 42 seats and the Conservatives 36 (NDP 10, BQ 9).

This slim Liberal lead is hardly an indicator of urban dominance. Even more striking is the popular vote count in these cities: Liberals 1,620,00, Conservatives 1,580,000. Almost the same.

What does stand out is that the Liberals won 35 seats in the three largest cities--which I would call metropolises-- Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. The Conservatives won none of these "metro" seats.

Clearly there is no urban/rural divide in Canada. There is, on the other hand, a clear metro/Canada divide; the three metropolises are severely out of step with the rest of the country, urban and rural.

Why might this be? I suspect a clue may lie in the fact that that some three-quarters of immigrants settle in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.

The populations of Toronto and Vancouver are especially distinctive in comparison with other Canadian cities. The foreign-born percentage of the population in these two metropolises is 43.7 and 37.5 respectively according to the 2001 census (and will be even higher now). No other large Canadian city had a foreign-born percentage above 24.

The atypical composition of the population of these two cities may go some way to explaining the inordinate electoral success of the Liberals there.

H/t to Robert in Calgary who brought the seat figures to my attention in a comment at SDA, "A Series Of After Election Observations", Jan. 24.

Posted by markc at January 25, 2006 10:33 AM | TrackBack