Elections and urban mythbusting

It's a complete myth that there is some great urban/rural split in Canada with the Liberals ruling the cities and the Conservatives the countryside. I pointed that out right after the January 2006 election (though I missed the Tory successes in the Vancouver metro area) and called the real split "metro/Canada"--i.e. Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver vs. the country as a whole. But the myth will not die amongst the great majority of our chattering classes and media (Andrew Coyne did pick up my point at the time).

Now Tom Flanagan demolishes oh-so-cool pollster and author Michael Adams, who continues to spin the great urban/rural split (full text of both Globe and Mail pieces subscribers only):

Environics president Michael Adams is a justly renowned interpreter of Canadian social trends, but even celebrity pollsters sometimes make mistakes. Mr. Adams's contention in a recent column that an urban-rural split is replacing regionalism as the main cleavage in Canadian politics is one of those mistakes.

To start with, Mr. Adams's facts are shaky. He claims the Conservatives were shut out of Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver in the last election. That may be true for the first two cities, but it applies only to the legally defined city of Vancouver, which makes up less than 30 per cent of the greater Vancouver area. In fact, the Tories won seven of 20 seats there, compared to eight for the Liberals and five for the NDP.

Moreover, the Conservatives won every seat in Calgary and Edmonton, seven of eight in Regina and Saskatoon, half of the seats in Winnipeg and Ottawa, all but two in Quebec City, and both seats in St. John's. These are important Canadian cities, not rural villages. [The St. John's ridings include some suburban and even rural areas, though - DP]

[...]

...The Liberals were dominant in Toronto, English-speaking Montreal, and downtown Vancouver - not because these are urban areas, but because they are heavily populated by ethnic groups who are Liberal core supporters. If the Liberals were truly the party of urban Canada, they would also sweep Calgary, Edmonton, Quebec City, etc. - but they aren't, and they don't.

[...]

Urbanites, in Mr. Adams's portrayal, are younger, see themselves as global citizens and feel connected to other countries, experience "greater comfort with change and complexity," love "seizing on new technologies," and are big on diversity. Needless to say, he depicts rural people as deficient in all these wonderful characteristics.

Mr. Adams's not-so-subtle subtext is that Conservatives aren't cool because they're not urban...

The Globe's inimitable John Ibbitson is a card-carrying propagator of the same supercilious line.

Mark C.

Posted by markc at March 28, 2008 09:45 PM