By: James Sherk

October 2004 Social Conservatives in Canadian Elections: An example of why the Republicans cannot abandon Christian social conservatives

Many pundits and commentators in the media believe that the Republican Party would dominate America's political landscape if it abandoned its socially conservative policies. They argue that the GOP's opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage turn off suburban moderates and fiscally conservative, socially liberal swing voters, who would naturally turn to the Republicans if they adopted more "moderate" positions. Rudy Giuliani and Arnold Schwarzenegger's successful speeches at the Republican National Convention in New York seemed to bolster this belief, as these socially liberal speakers wowed both the crowd and the media. However, the view that Republicans can gain votes by embracing legal abortion and same-sex marriage is a mirage. Without a large base of social conservative support, the Republican Party would be reduced to a minority party incapable of winning national office. The recent Canadian elections demonstrate why if they want to win elections Republicans should not be so quick to write off conservative Christian voters.

On June 28th Canadian voters headed to the polls to elect a new government, and the Liberal Party of Canada, in power since the autumn of 1993, entered the election campaign severely weakened. Having held office for eleven years the Liberal Party appeared both tired and arrogant, and many Canadians felt that it was time for a change. Polls in late May indicated that only 28% of Canadians believed the Liberals under Prime Minister Paul Martin had done a good job and deserved a fourth consecutive term, while 52% felt it was time for a change (1).

Voter anger at the Liberals was intensified by the Auditor General's report on what became known as the sponsorship scandal, revealing that the Liberals had paid $100 million (Canadian) to various advertising firms in Quebec with strong ties to the Liberal party to promote national unity. The government paid the firms despite their having done little to no advertising, and the Auditor General further discovered that the firms then gave large amounts of money to the Liberal party coffers. The Prime Minister also had to deal with a public backlash against the Liberal Party in Ontario, Canada's most populous province, where the newly elected provincial Liberal government raised taxes by approximately $900 a family despite campaign promises not to.

Finally, for the first time since the 1988 election, the Liberals could not count on center-right Canadians splitting their votes between two parties. The fusion of the old Progressive Conservative and Canadian Alliance parties into the new Conservative Party, also known as the Tories, ended the divided opposition that had allowed the Liberals to breeze to three straight majority governments. By the middle of the campaign the Conservatives had opened up a five-point lead over the Liberals and analysts believed these factors would put the Liberals at a distinct disadvantage on Election Day (2).

However, as the election results poured in on the night of June 28th, it became apparent that, while weakened, the Liberals had not lost power. The final results gave the Liberals 37% of the vote and 135 seats in the 308 seat House of Commons, while the Tories won 30% of the vote and 99 seats. Two smaller parties also earned seats, with the avowedly socialist New Democratic Party (NDP) earning 16% of the vote and 19 seats and the Bloc Quebecois (BQ), a party which advocates Quebec independence, winning 12% nationally, all concentrated in Quebec, for 54 seats. An independent from British Colombia won the remaining seat (3).

Although the Liberals no longer held a majority in Parliament, they placed well ahead of the Conservatives and could form a working majority on any given issue with the support of the economically socialist NDP and BQ parties. Significantly, the far left BQ and NDP earned a combined 28% of the vote, just two points behind the mainstream Conservative Party total. Despite public weariness with Liberal arrogance, tax hikes, and scandal, and despite the unification of the center-right vote, Canadians overwhelmingly rejected the Conservative Party.

Both Christians and Republicans in America should pay close attention to the factors that lead to the Conservative defeat. They are a warning about what could happen to the political climate in the United States if the Republican Party decided to abandon its support for socially conservative policies like protecting the right to life and the sanctity of marriage. Demographically unable to attract the support of large numbers of religious conservatives, the Tories could not attract enough voters to win the election.

Social Conservatives a Minority in Canada but not the United States

During the election campaign the Liberals and the NDP attacked the Tories as extremists for having pro-life and pro-marriage views. The Conservative leader, Stephen Harper, promptly responded by declaring that if it won the election his party would not pass any legislation that would restrict abortion. He further emphasized that the Tories had no official position either supporting or opposing same-sex marriage, but left that issue to the consciences of individual candidates. The Conservatives did everything they could to avoid social issues during the race and instead campaigned on a platform of government accountability, tax relief, a stronger military, and better health care - a platform indistinguishable from that of many socially liberal Republicans in the United States.

The Conservatives ran on these issues because the Liberal attacks that depicted social conservatives as being out Canada's mainstream contained a large element of truth. Recent polling indicates that 56% of Canadians support redefining marriage to include same-sex couples, with only 42% opposed (4). 66% of Canadians believe that abortion should stay legal under all circumstances, while just 26% would restrict abortion to cases of rape, incest, or protecting the life of the mother (5). Only small minorities of Canadians support socially conservative policies like defending the sanctity of life and marriage, the policies that have the greatest moral implications for Christians. Canadian politicians who openly campaign for, or who are viewed as supporting, these policies have little chance of being elected to high office.

Nothing could be farther from the case in the United States. Polls show Americans evenly divided on the question of abortion (6). Americans oppose same-sex marriage by even larger margins than Canadians support it. Recent polls showed that 62% of Americans oppose same-sex marriage while only 30% support it (7). In America the President and a majority of the House of Representatives, as well as the Governors of two of the four largest states are pro-life and want to protect the sanctity of marriage. Liberal Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic nominee for President, has been forced to oppose same-sex marriage in order to remain a viable candidate for President. Social conservatives do not have a commanding majority in America, but their policies are well within the political mainstream.

Unlike the US, Canada is Predominantly Secular

Why the striking difference? Canada and America share common origins, a common language, similar cultures, a similar democratic system of government, and are economically intertwined. Why is a pro-life or pro-marriage position political suicide in Canada and not in the United States? Because Canada is a largely secular nation and America is not.

Even if committed Christians are not a majority of the US population, they are a substantial minority. 42% of American voters in the 2000 election said they attend church once or more times a week (8). 33% percent of Americans are Evangelical Protestants (9). 59% of Americans say that religion is a major influence in their lives (10). Both Republican and Democratic Presidents routinely invoke God in their public speeches. Certainly many Americans are at best nominally religious, and Christians still have a lot of work to do to spread the gospel in the United States. However, religion in general, and belief in Christ in particular, remain major influences in American society.

In this the United States and Canada could not be more different. Canada is a secular nation, and few Canadians publicly profess faith in Christ. Only 20% of Canadians attend church on a weekly basis (11). Canadian politicians never discuss God in public; if they did they would be seen as pandering to religious extremists. Only 30% of Canadians tell pollsters that religion is a significant influence in their lives, half the number in America (12). Just 12% of Canadians are Evangelical Protestants, almost a third the number found in the United States. Further, secularism so pervades Canada that 74% of Evangelical Protestants and even 48% of non-Evangelical Canadians agree there exists "A general bias in Canadian society against the viewpoints that are held by deeply committed Christians" (13). While Canada is not yet as monolithically secular as Europe has become, it is still a largely post-Christian society.

There are convincing secular arguments for the pro-life and pro-marriage positions. However, they are far less persuasive to the non-believer than the scriptural facts that God has ordained marriage between one man and one woman and values life from the moment of conception are to servants of Christ. Inevitably, socially conservative policies will have little support in a predominantly secular nation like Canada, and socially conservative politicians will lose decisively. Consequently the Conservative Party campaigned on a fiscally conservative but socially liberal platform.

Without Religious Voters Conservative Parties Cannot Win

American conservatives need to seriously consider the lessons the Canadian political scene holds for the United States. Many socially liberal Republicans, such as Andrew Sullivan, resent the influence of social and especially religious conservatives in the GOP and believe that the Republican Party would become unbeatable at the polls if it rejected social and religious conservatism and ran on the same type of platform that the Tories now embrace. The Canadian political scene demonstrates how far this is from the truth.

Since there are almost no social conservatives in Canada, the Tories made little to no effort to win their support, and ran as economic conservatives who would not attempt to limit abortion and didn't care one way or the other about same-sex marriage. Yet when Canadians voted on June 28th they relegated the Conservatives to the opposition benches in Parliament - where they normally sit. The Liberals have held power in Canada for all but nine and a half of the past forty-one years. In predominantly secular Canada, with no base of social or religious conservatives to draw support from, the Conservatives have been consistently unable to form a stable governing coalition. Their message of slightly limited government is not enough to win a majority of seats in the Parliament.

Until 1980 the Republican Party was also accustomed to its seemingly permanent status as America's minority party. But that year the Republicans did what the Tories in Canada could not do - attract the support of significant numbers of social conservatives. Ronald Reagan transformed the GOP, campaigning on a pro-life platform and bringing religious conservatives under the Republican banner. Subsequently the Republicans have won four of the past six presidential elections, have held a majority of the Senate for fourteen and a half of the past twenty-four years, and for the past decade have controlled a majority of both governorships and the House of Representatives.

These Republican victories have only been possible because of the large numbers of Christians in America, and because Republicans stand for the socially conservative values that many of these voters believe in. In the 2000 Presidential election voters who attend church more than once a week favored George Bush by a 27-point margin, while voters who attend church weekly voted for Bush over Gore by 57% - 40%. Combined, these voters accounted for 42% of the American electorate. The 40% of voters who believe that abortion should be mostly or always illegal gave Bush over 70% of their votes (14). Without the strong support of these voters Bush could never have come close to winning the election. In Canada, a nation with very few Christian voters, no center-right party has come close to winning a national election for sixteen years.

Religious conservatives are an integral part of the governing coalition the Republicans have assembled. Without their support Republicans cannot win and, regardless of the desires of Andrew Sullivan and other media commentators, a Republican decision to abandon these voters would amount to political suicide. Instead Republicans should pay careful attention to the lesson of Canada. Culturally and economically similar to the United States, Canada has no substantial base of religious conservatives. The Conservative Party has learned from defeat after defeat that without their support it cannot win.

(1) SES Research Group Poll, May 25th 2004. http://www.sesresearch.com/election/SES%20CPAC%20May%2026E.pdf

(2) SES Research Group Poll, June 9th 2004. http://www.sesresearch.com/election/SES%20CPAC%20June%2010E.pdf

(3) See the election results from the Globe and Mail, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/elections/fed2004/

(4) Environics Research Group, 10/21/2003. http://erg.environics.net/news/default.asp?aID=535

(5) Compas Inc. Poll, November 2000. http://www.compas.ca/data/001124-NPostHotButtonFederalElection-EP.pdf

(6) See Gallup Poll, Newsweek/Princeton Survey Research Associates Poll, both taken in May of 2003. http://www.nrlc.org/news/2003/NRL07/more_signs_of_a_pro.htm

(7) CBS News poll, Feb. 2004. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/02/24/national/main601828.shtml

(8) CNN Exit Poll, 2000 general election. http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2000/epolls/US/P000.html

(9) Canadian Religious Beliefs and Practices, an article analyzing an Oct. - Nov. 2003 Ipsos-Reid public opinion poll.
http://www.christianity.ca/news/commentary/2003/12.003.html

(10) Pew Global Attitudes Project, 2002: http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=167

(11) Ipsos-Reid, April 2000. http://www.ipsos-na.com/news/pressrelease.cfm?id=1020&content=full

(12) Pew Global Attitudes Project, 2002: http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=167

(13) Canadian Religious Beliefs and Practices, an article analyzing an Oct. - Nov. 2003 Ipsos-Reid public opinion poll.
http://www.christianity.ca/news/commentary/2003/12.003.html