If you are a Protestant, you more than likely cast your vote for a Conservative party candidate in the May 2 federal election.
Roman Catholic voters were all over the electoral map.
And if you have no religious affiliation, you more than likely voted NDP.
These were the surprising results of a May 2 exit poll of voters conducted by the polling company Ipsos Reid. Interviews of 36,000 voters probed their vote and religious affiliation.
The report on the survey did not indicate whether voters made a connection between religious beliefs and voting patterns. However, the results of the survey offer fascinating insights into party support patterns.
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As voters did generally throughout the population, most religiously affiliated voters abandoned the Liberals in the past election.
The party was once considered the natural home of Roman Catholics and immigrants.
On May 2, Liberals received just 16 percent of the Catholic vote, according to the survey, compared to 39 percent for the NDP and 30 percent for the Conservatives. The NDP figure likely is skewed by the fact that heavily Catholic Quebec swung massively to the party in a rejection of the Bloc Québécois, Conservatives and Liberals with religion not a visible factor.
The Liberal party once counted Canada’s politically influential Jewish community among its most loyal constituents but May 2, Conservatives pulled in 52 percent of the Jewish vote compared to 24 for the Liberals.
It was the reverse among Muslim voters who favoured the Liberals 46 percent to the Conservative 12 percent.
One of the more interesting results was the difference in voting patterns between churchers and nonchurchers.
Former Saskatchewan New Democrat MP and journalist Dennis Gruending, who also worked for the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, describes it is a “growing political polarization between voters who identify as religious and those who say they have no religion.”
He analyzed the Ipsos Reid results on his award-winning blog Pulpit and Politics.
The Conservatives received the support of 50 percent of voters who said they went to a church or temple at least once a week. The NDP was the choice of 42 percent of voters with no religious affiliation.
The party founded by prairie Baptist preachers and supported by people who embraced the Social Gospel message has become the party of choice for atheists. When did this happen and why?
Despite the fact that Canada seems to be a very secular country, religion and voting patterns often have been closely aligned in Canada.
Wilfrid Laurier’s meteoric political career arguably began when as a young first-term MP in 1877, he tackled the then pervasive connection between the Quebec Roman Catholic hierarchy and the Conservative party. Priests would openly preach against the Liberals from the pulpit.
Laurier famously argued to the Quebec City Canadian Club that a voter could be a devout Catholic and a Liberal at the same time.
Within years, the church declared its neutrality and by 1891, the Liberals were the party of choice for Quebeckers, giving it a predictable base that made the party the most successful Canadian political machine for the next 90 years.
Perhaps prime minister Stephen Harper’s wooing of the immigrant, Jewish and religious vote will someday be seen as his Québec City moment.
