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Left or Centre? The Canadian Jewish Electorate, 1953–1983*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

J. A. Laponce
J. A. Laponce
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia
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Abstract

The partisan preferences of Canadian Jews are compared with those of Catholics and Protestants using a sample of 218,738 electors obtained by merging 235 Gallup surveys from the period 1953–1983. The hypothesis guiding the analysis, that Jews are more likely to support left and centre parties (specifically the NDP and the Liberals), is derived from theories that seek to explain Jewish political inclinations. Controlling for the influence of education, province of residence (Quebec or not) and family union membership, this hypothesis is confirmed. Moreover, it is found that in Quebec Jews concentrate their votes to a greater degree than Protestants or Catholics and that the Liberals are the beneficiaries of that concentration; outside Quebec, Catholics and Jews have similar preferences that are markedly distinct from those of Protestants. The Jewish vote is best explained by combining left/right and centre/periphery models.

Résumé

Les préférences partisanes fédérates des juifs canadiens sont comparées à celles des catholiques et des protestants à l’aide d’un échantillon de 218 738 électeurs obtenu par l’addition des données de 235 sondages couvrant les années 1953–1983. L’hypothèse de départ veut que les juifs soient plus enclins que les catholiques et les protestants à préférer le NPD et le Parti libéral. Cette hypothèse–déduite des théories qui cherchent à expliquer le comportement électoral de l’électorat juif est vérifiée lorsque le modèle de prédiction contrôle l’influence des facteurs suivants: le niveau d’instruction, la province de résidence (Québec ou non) et l’affiliation d’un membre de la famille à un syndicat.

Cependant, l’observation la plus intéressante est ailleurs. Elle réside dans le fait que les juifs du Québec sont, dans leurs préférences partisanes, plus homogènes que les catholiques et que les protestants, et que cette plus grande homogénéité est à l’avantage des Libéraux. En dehors du Québec, les juifs se différencient peu des catholiques cependant que juifs et catholiques se distinguent nettement des protestants. II semble done que l’ on puisse expliquer le vote juif–comme le vote catholique–en termes de statut minoritaire. Pour ce faire il est avantageux d’ utiliser à la fois les notions de droite et de gauche et celles de centre et de périphérie.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , December 1988 , pp. 691 - 714
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1988

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References

1 For a summary of the impact of the denominational factor as well as a guide to the literature on the Catholic and Protestant vote in Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, Britain, Canada and the United States, see the relevant chapters in Rose, Richard (ed.), Electoral Behavior (Cambridge: Free Press, 1974).Google Scholar For Switzerland, see Steiner, Jürg, Amicable Agreement versus Majority Rule: Conflict Resolution in Switzerland (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1974).Google Scholar

2 See footnote 5 for specific references.

3 The term, used by Lipset and Raab to describe American Jews, has validity beyond the United States. See Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, “The American Jews, the 1984 Elections, and Beyond,” Tocqueville Review 6 (1984), 411.

4 The left-right dimension is ordered in this discussion as follows: NDP/CCF, Liberal, Conservative, Social Credit/Créditiste. On the applicability of the left-right dimension to the comparison of European and North American party systems see, among others, Barnes, Samuel and Kaase, Max (eds.), Political Action: Mass Participation in Western Democracies (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1979);Google ScholarInglehart, Ronald, The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles Among Western Publics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977);Google ScholarInglehart, Ronald and Klingemann, Hans, “Party Identification, Ideological Preference, and the Left-Right Dimension among Western Mass Publics,” in Ivor Crewe, Ian Budge and Farlie, Dennis (eds.), Party Identification and Beyond (London: Wiley, 1978), 243–73;Google Scholar and Laponce, J. A., Left and Right: A Topology of Political Perceptions (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981).Google Scholar

For the applicability of that dimension to Canada see also Lambert, Ronald D., “Question Design, Response Set and the Measurement of Left-Right Thinking in Survey Research,” this JOURNAL 16 (1983), 135–44;Google ScholarElkins, David, “The Perceived Structure of the Canadian Party System,” this JOURNAL 10 (1974), 503–24;Google Scholar and Lambert, Ronald D., Curtis, James E., Brown, Steven D. and Kay, Barry J., “In Search of Left/Right Beliefs in the Canadian Electorate,” this JOURNAL 19 (1986), 541–63.Google Scholar For qualifiers and criticisms see Zipp, John F., “Left-Right Dimensions of Canadian Federal Party Identification: A Discriminant Analysis,” this JOURNAL 11 (1978), 251–77;Google Scholar and Ogmundson, R. L., “A Note on the Ambiguous Meaning of Survey Research Measures Which Use the Words Left and Right,” this JOURNAL 12 (1979), 799–806.Google Scholar

5 A survey of the Jewish vote in Romania, Poland, Hungary, Austria, South Africa, Latin America, the United States, Britain, Australia, France and Czechoslovakia is presented in Medding, Peter, “Toward a General Theory of Jewish Political Interests and Behaviour,” Jewish Journal of Sociology 19 (1977), 115–44.Google Scholar For the United States, see Lenski, Gerhard, The Religions Factor (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1963);Google ScholarFuchs, Lawrence, The Political Behavior of American Jews (Glencoe: Free Press, 1956);Google ScholarFuchs, Lawrence, “American Jews and the Presidential Vote,” American Political Science Review 49 (1955), 385–401;Google ScholarCohn, Werner, “The Politics of American Jews,” in Sklare, Marshall (ed.), The Jews: Social Patterns of an American Group (Glencoe: Free Press, 1959), 614–26;Google ScholarLevy, Mark R. and Kramer, Michael S., The Ethnic Factor: How America's Minorities Decide Elections (Cambridge: Simon and Schuster, 1972);Google ScholarLiebman, Arthur, “The Ties that Bind: The Jewish Support for the Left in the United States,” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 66 (1976–77), 285–321;Google ScholarIsaacs, Stephen D., Jews and American Politics (Garden City: Doubleday, 1974);Google ScholarLiebman, Arthur, Jews and the Left (Cambridge: Wiley, 1979);Google Scholar Lipset and Raab, “The American Jews, the 1984 Elections, and Beyond,” 401–19.

For Britain, see Alderman, Geoffrey, “Not Quite British: The Political Attitudes of Anglo-Jewry,” in Crewe, Ivor (ed.), British Political Sociology Yearbook, vol. 2 (London: Croom Helm, 1975), 141–49;Google Scholar and Alderman, Geoffrey, The Jewish Community in British Politics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983).Google Scholar

For France, see Ysmal, C., “Stabilité des électorats et attitudes politiques,” in Capdevielle, Jacques et al., France de gauche, vote à droite (Paris: Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 1983);Google ScholarSchnapper, Dominique and Trudel, Solange, “Le vote juif en France,” Revue franÇaise de science polilique 33 (1983), 933–61;Google ScholarAkoka, Jacky, “Vote juif ou vote des Juifs? Structure et comportement électoral des Juifs en France,” Pardès (1985), 114–37.Google Scholar

For Australia, see Medding, Peter, “The Persistence of Ethnic Political Preferences: Factors Affecting the Voting Behaviour of Jews in Australia,” Jewish Journal of Sociology 13 (1971), 17–39;Google ScholarMedding, Peter (ed.), Jews in Australian Society (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1973);Google ScholarLogan, William Stewart, “Australian Government Middle East Policy and the Domestic Jewish Vote: An Exercise in Electoral Geography,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 28 (1982), 201–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

For Canada, see Jed Wab, “Uniting Uptowners and Downtowners: The Jewish Electorate and Quebec Provincial Politics, 1927–39,” Canadian Ethnic Studies 18 (1986), 7–19; and Schwartz, Mildred, “Canadian Voting Behavior,” in Rose, (ed.), Electoral Behavior, 543–618.Google Scholar

6 The best overviews of the various theoretical explanations of the Jewish vote are in Medding, “Toward a General Theory of Jewish Political Interests and Behaviour,” and Liebman, Jews and the Left.

7 Fuchs, The Political Behavior of American Jews; Liebman, Jews and the Left. Lipset and Raab (“The American Jews”) agree that the tradition of charity and the obligation of the community to help the individual lead Jews to support liberal causes.

8 See Berdyaev, Nicolas, The Russian Revolution (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961);Google ScholarRischin, Moses, The Promised City: New York's Jews, 1870–1914 (Cambridge: Harper, 1970);Google Scholar and Liebman, Jews and the Left, chap. 1.

9 Lipset, Seymour Martin, Political Man (Cambridge: Anchor, 1963), 256;Google Scholar and Lenski, The Religious Factor. See also Michels, Robert, Political Parties (Glencoe: Free Press, 1915), 275–76.Google Scholar

10 , Liebman, Jews and the Left.Google Scholar

11 Rabi, Wladimir, “Le vote juif en question,” L’Arche (1973), 32–38.Google Scholar

12 Lipset, , Political Man; Akoka, “Vote juif ou vote des Juifs?”; Rabi, “Le vote juif en question”; Schnapper and Trudel, “Le vote juif en France.”Google Scholar

13 See works cited above in footnotes 1 and 5.

14 Cohn, “The Politics of American Jews.”

15 See Medding, “Toward a General Theory of Jewish Political Interests and Behaviour”; Liebman, Jews and the Left; and Lipset, Political Man.

16 Horowitz, Donald L., Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985);Google Scholar and Laponce, Left and Right.

17 The promise was made on April 25, 1979, during the federal election that led to a short-lived Conservative government. Gallup polls record the following distribution of Jewish support for the Conservatives in the months preceding and following that promise: February, 17 per cent (N = 53); May, 17 per cent (N = 42); and June, 22 per cent (N = 44). For Catholics, the distribution was February, 17 percent; May, 14 per cent; and June 21 per cent. Because of the small N, these statistics are given merely as tentative evidence of the lack of impact of the promise

The October 1956 Suez crisis produced a major disagreement between the CCF and the Liberals, on the one hand, and the Conservatives on the other. The latter criticized the government for not having supported the British intervention. The debate appears, however, not to have produced any shift in the Jewish electorate. Gallup polls record the following levels of party preference in July 1956, September 1956, October 1956 and May 1957: support for the Liberals by Jews was 73 per cent, 62 per cent, 68 per cent, 75 per cent; and by Protestants was 39 per cent, 40 per cent, 38 per cent, 33 per cent. Support for the Conservatives by Jews was 18 per cent, 12 per cent, 14 per cent, 17 per cent; and by Protestants was 36 per cent, 35 percent, 41 per cent, 45 per cent. These percentages, like those given above, should be read with caution since the number of Jewish respondents was very small, 22, 34, 22 and 24, respectively. The Canadian debate over Suez was centred on the British rather than the Israeli action. See Eayrs, James George, “Canadian Policy and Opinion during Suez,” International Journal 12 (1987), 98–108;Google Scholar and Aitchison, James H., ”Canadian Foreign Policy in the House and on the Hustings,” International Journal 12 (1987), 273–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 On Black-Jewish relations in the United States, see Medding, “Toward a General Theory of Jewish Political Interests and Behaviour”; Harris, Louis and Swanson, Bert, Black-Jewish Relations in New York City (Cambridge: Praeger, 1970);Google Scholar and Schneider, William, Berman, Michael D. and Schultz, Mark, “Bloc Voting Reconsidered: Is There a Jewish Vote?” Ethnicity 1 (1974), 345–92.Google Scholar

19 Laponce, J. A., “Ethnicity, Religion and Politics in Canada,” in Dogan, Mattei and Rokkan, Stein (eds.), Quantitative Ecological Analysis in the Social Sciences (Boston: MIT Press, 1969), 187–216.Google Scholar

20 The exact N cannot be determined from Schwartz's tables but must be closer to 50 than to 60.

21 “Over” and “under” support were measured in relation to the overall distribution of party preferences in the whole sample. See Gagne, Wallace and Regenstreif, Peter, “Some Aspects of New Democratic Party Support in 1965,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 33 (1967), 529–50;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Schwartz, “Canadian Voting Behavior.” Courtney and Smith's study of federal-provincial split voting in Saskatoon indicates less split voting for the Liberals than the NDP (only nine Jewish respondents). See Courtney, John and Smith, David, “Voting in a Provincial General Election and a Federal By-election: A Constituency Study of Saskatoon City,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 33 (1966), 339–53.Google Scholar

22 In the state of New York, Jews represent 10.6 per cent and in the city of New York 24 per cent of the total population. Outside the United States, the major concentrations of Jewish populations, measured in percentage of the total population, are as follows:

Israel, 83.7; Venezuela, 1.4; Canada, 1.3; France, 1.1; Argentina, 0.9; Hungary, 0.9; USSR, 0.7; United Kingdom, 0.6; Australia, 0.5; South Africa, 0.4; Belgium, 0.3; Switzerland, 0.3.

23 Benayoun, Chantal, Les Juifs et la politique: l’élection de 1978 à Toulouse (Paris: CNRS, 1983).Google Scholar

24 Corbeil, Yvan and Delude, Camille, Etudes des communautés francophones hors Québec (Montréal: CROP, 1982).Google Scholar One can also, as do Medding and Waller and Weinfeld, rely on Jewish directories although this technique poses difficult control-group problems. See Waller, Harold and Weinfeld, Morton, “A Viewpoint Survey of Canadian Jewish Leadership Opinion,” Viewpoints, October 8, 1987;Google Scholar and Medding, “The Persistence of Ethnic Political Preferences.”

25 Jews are not a majority in any electoral district, although they approach it in Quebec's Mount Royal (48%). Two other ridings in Ontario have more than 20 per cent Jewish voters: St. Paul (23%) and Willowdale (29%); three more have at least 15 per cent (Outremont in Quebec, 18%; Don Valley East, 18%, and Eglinton, 16%, in Toronto). These districts account for only 30 per cent of Canada's total Jewish population.

26 The question reads, “What is your religious preference?” The itemization of the code of these answers was changed in 1978 to (1) Protestant, (2) Jewish, (3) Roman Catholic, (4) other, (5) no religious preference/not stated, from (1) Protestant, (2) Jewish, (3) Roman Catholic, (4) other and no religious preference/not stated. The change of code does not affect the comparison of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews but it does prevent the comparison of the religious to the “no religion” vote.

The Gallup surveys do not include questions on ethnic identification other than those regarding language and religion. Ideally, one would like to have a measure of both religious and cultural Jewish self-identification. The 1981 Canadian census indicates a high correlation between the answers “Jewish” to the question on religion and to that on “ethnic origin”: 94.2 per cent of those who said their ethnic origin was “Jewish” gave “Jewish” as their religion; 3.6 per cent said they had “no religion”; and 2.2 per cent indicated a Christian denomination.

27 The total number of respondents per half-decade was as follows: 11,842; 14,979; 18,308; 15,473; 16,472; 38,732; 31,134. For each of these half-decades, the number of Jewish respondents mentioning a party preference was as follows: 235, 179, 270, 333, 273, 565, 457. The variations in political preferences across time periods were not such as to justify weighting by decades or by party in office. All the statistics and N's reported in the analysis are based on the unweighted sample.

28 Unless otherwise indicated, the statistics presented in this article are based on those respondents who indicated Catholic, Jewish, or Protestant as their denominational preference and who mentioned a preference for either the CCF/NDP, Liberals, Conservatives, or Social Credit/Créditistes. Undecided responses were as follows: Jews, 19.6 per cent; Protestants, 21.0 per cent; and Catholics 25.6 per cent.

29 Data from half-decades for each of the partisan categories can be obtained from the author. The widest variation occurs in the relative support given to the Liberal party by Catholics and Jews. The rise of the Créditiste movement was a historical test to which Jews and Catholics responded differently. It shifted the Catholic vote to the right but had little effect on the Jewish vote.

30 It would be interesting to study the party preferences of Jews during the period of very low Liberal support in the polls in 1986–1987, a period that is not part of our data set and not available for secondary analysis at the time of writing.

31 Distinguishing four situations, (a) Liberals in power (b) Conservatives in power (c) Liberals ahead in the polls and (d) Conservatives ahead in the polls, shows the following variations in the percentage of Jews preferring the NDP (a) 17.5 (b) 15.5 (c) 17.0 (d) 16.8; for the Liberals (a) 63.0 (b) 64.4 (c) 65.5 (d) 49.5; and for the Conservatives (a) 18.6 (b) 19.6 (c) 15.3 (d) 32.5. Translating these percentages into indices of oversupport or undersupport, where 100 signifies a Jewish percentage identical to the sample percentage, indicates a systematic but slight oversupport for the NDP (112, 127, 110, 106), a major oversupport for the Liberals (138, 151, 138, 145), and a systematic undersupport for the Conservatives (54, 52, 49, 69).

32 Five of the six categories cover the entire period while the one concerning profession covers only part of the period.

33 The classification of the Liberals as left of centre is debatable. The electorate views the Liberals as clearly to the left of the Conservatives, but gave them in 1979 an average location of 4.30 on a 7-point left-right scale (while locating the NDP and the Conservatives at 3.16 and 4.77, respectively). However, the same electorate classifies the Liberals to the left of centre of their “ideal” party: 4.30 compared to 4.37 in 1979, 4.37 compared to 4.56 in 1968, and 4.42 compared to 4.64 in 1965. See Lambert, “Question Design, Response Set and the Measurement of Left-Right Thinking in Survey Research”; and Elkins, “The Perceived Structure of the Canadian Party System.” Alford, who had originally merged the CCF and Liberals into a single left category, decided subsequently to separate them in his analysis. The degree to which the Liberals are to the left is less important to our analysis than their being located between the NDP and the Conservatives on the spatial dimension. See Alford, Robert R., Party and Society: The Anglo-American Democracies (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1963);Google Scholar and Alford, Robert, “Class Voting in the Anglo-American Political Systems,” in Lipset, Seymour Martin and Rokkan, Stein (eds.), Party Systems and Voter Alignments (Cambridge: Free Press, 1967), 67–93.Google Scholar

34 In a free split the AID programme selects the variable that maximizes the difference between the two groups to be formed by the split. The only restriction on the splitting was that no group be less than 40 cases.

35 The greater proximity to Catholics appears in American surveys as well. On the tendency of the vote of American Jews to shift somewhat to the right in the 1970s and 1980s while remaining closer to Catholics than Protestants, see among others Fisher, Alan M., “Realignment of the Jewish Vote,” Political Science Quarterly 94 (1979), 97–116;Google ScholarHimmelfarb, Milton, “Are the Jews Becoming Republican?” Commentary 72 (1981), 27–31;Google Scholar and Cohen, Steven M., American Modernity and Jewish Identity (Cambridge: Tavistock, 1983).Google Scholar

36 Alain Greilsammer attributes the left inclination of French Protestants to three factors: minority status, support for the secular state established by the Revolution of 1789, and the opposition between Catholics and Protestants in their choice of candidates for election. See Greilsammer, Alain, “Sociologie électorate du Protestantisme français,” Archives des sciences societies des religions 49 (1980), 119–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar A survey by Le Point indicated that in 1977 the voting preferences for the left were as follows: Catholics 23 per cent, Protestants 45 per cent and Jews 56 per cent. The survey was restricted to respondents practising their religion.

37 See Weinfeld, Morton, ”La question juive au Québec,” Midstream (1977), 20–31;Google ScholarWeinfeld, Morton, Shaffir, William, and Cotler, Irwin (eds.), The Canadian Jewish Mosaic (Toronto: Wiley, 1981);Google ScholarWeinfeld, Morton, “Le milieu juif contemporain au Québec,” in Juifs et réalités juives au Québec (Québec: Institut québécois de recherche sur la culture, 1984), 53–81;Google ScholarRome, David, “Jews in Anglophone Quebec,” in Caldwell, G. and Waddell, E. (eds.), The English of Quebec: From Majority to Minority Status (Quebec: Institut québécois de recherche sur la culture, 1984), 159–75;Google Scholar and Borgne, Louis Le, “Les Juifs de Montréal: entre l’Europe et l’ Amérique,” Conjoncture (1983), 119–30.Google Scholar

38 See Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict; Laponce, J. A., The Protection of Minorities (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960);Google Scholar and Laponce, J. A., “Assessing the Neighbour Effect on the Vote of Francophone Minorities in Canada,” Political Geography Quarterly 6 (1987), 77–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39 Here I speculate beyond the data because I lack psychological measures of insecurity. This interpretation, however, is supported by the fact that Quebec Protestants increased their support for the Liberals in the second half of the 1960s (see Figure 1).

40 Interpreting the Jewish vote in terms of minority status coincides with interpretations of the Catholic vote. See Meisel, John, “Religious Affiliation and Electoral Behaviour: A Case Study,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 22 (1956), 481–96;CrossRefGoogle ScholarMcDonald, Lynn, “Religion and Voting: The 1968 Federal Election in Ontario,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 6 (1969), 129–44;Google Scholar and Johnston, Richard, “sThe Reproduction of the Religious Cleavage in Canadian Elections,” this JOURNAL 18 (1985), 99–113.Google Scholar