With MPs back in Parliament, could they please tone down all the polarization?
Appealing to the centre. Reaching beyond the traditional base. What a novel, revolutionary idea.
North of the border, don’t hold your breath for the same, even if it’s what voters in Canada say they are gasping for.
Nearly 40 per cent of us self-describe as “somewhere in the middle” when it comes to our personal beliefs. About the same number describe themselves as “more right wing” (19 per cent) or “more left wing” (23 per cent), leaving much smaller minorities to assess themselves as either “very right wing” or “very left wing.” Ontarians more or less follow these trends.
The fact is that significant segments of self-describing centrists find homes in parties across the political spectrum. About 40 per cent back the Conservative Party. A slightly smaller number support the Liberals. One-fifth intend to vote for the NDP. And nearly half of centrist voters in Quebec are aligned with the Bloc Québécois. Clearly, they don’t see themselves as extremists for backing these parties.
They do, however, bemoan what they perceive to be a sense that the parties — including the ones they support — are pulling too far to the margins. Fully one-third (36 per cent) of Canadians say they feel like “political orphans” because “all the parties’ views are too extreme.” These aren’t undecided or unengaged voters. They’re simply holding their noses and voting anyway for parties that clearly don’t represent a perfect or even a good fit but do perhaps seem better compared to the other options they have.
Little wonder then, that nearly half of voters say “there needs to be a mainstream centrist federal political party.” We used to have two parties that were something like this — back when Conservatives were “Progressive” Conservatives and Liberals had fiscal hawks and social conservatives on their front benches.
Shachi Kurl is President of the Angus Reid Institute, a national, not-for-profit, non-partisan public opinion research foundation.