The New Conservative Coalition

I read with interest this article, from the Toronto Star (of all places!), on the conservative base that propelled Stephen Harper to his majority government.  Normally, I don’t place much stock in the Toronto Star, but Susan Delacourt ocassionally has some ok things to say.

I would love to get my hands on the raw data behind the Ipsos-Reid mega poll that took place on Election Day (rumour has it that it was a poll of 36,000 people with a margin of error of sub 1%), but in his remarks to the Canadian Political Science Association at Wilfred Laurier University.  Probably the most interesting comment was Darrell Bricker (of Ipsos-Reid) was when he said :

“Brian Mulroney’s Tory coalition was never united on values, . . . never got along,” Bricker said. “It was an impossible coalition to hold together .  But Harper now has a coalition that is possible to hold together because they’re united by values, not just by geography or just by hatred of the Liberal party.”

I have to say that this statement is profound to say the least.   In many regards, the Harper Conservatives are more ideologically narrow than the Mulrouney Conservatives, and yet I always wonder why in the polling consistency, they have never gone below 28% in the last five+ years.   The conservative base has largely held strong and firm (even in spite of appointing senators, deficit spending, etc), because it is a coalition of taxpayers that share similar values.   In the past, conservatives were largely defined by their alienation from the Liberals and Ottawa (Quebec Nationalists and the blowback from NEP are prime examples of this); however the stability of this coalition was always tested.

Now…with a coalition of values that stretches from coast to coast to coast has become the new base, and while that base may not have the potential of the 1984 Mulrouney sweep (51% of the popular vote), it is definitely more stable.  How else do you explain the commonality between aboriginals who want further economic development, new immigrants in the GTA that have an entrepreneurial spirit, and rural Canadians that tend to want government to be not so much in their faces?

There are some issues with this conservative coalition to consider.   If the pandering to Quebec Nationalists is no more, there may also be a reality that a conservative government may in the future, may drift away from a reliance on “Western alienation.”  If the coalition of taxpayer values is a true and stable phenomenon, then there may be, in the future, less regional reliance on old grievances.    Of course, Western Canada tends to be more entrepenurial and less government reliance oriented (at least when you consider the government debt per capita ratios) so it may naturally conservative for some time.