Since 2008, Project Democracy has been working to encourage political and electoral reform on the Canadian landscape. A central focus has been to encourage the leaders, members, and supporters of the New Democratic, Liberal, and Green parties to recognize the many commonalities of their policies, beliefs, and aspirations. That a cooperative win-win approach would yield much more than a zero-sum, purely partisan approach. This was the thrust of our informed strategic voting initiatives of the 2008 and 2011 federal elections (see: Project Democracy: 2011 Electoral Analysis) and in articles such as Progressive Canadian politics: Co-operation or cannibalism?, Canadian politics in the death zone, Canadian political calculus: Zero-sum or win-win?, The case for NDP, Liberal, Green Cooperation?, and Do Canadians want political cooperation?
This does, of course, skate over what are legitimate and important political differences between these parties. Indeed, it is vital to emphasize that it is not in the interests of Canadian political health to gloss over these, nor would merging NDP, Liberal, and Green parties — in any sort of constellation — be a step forward. Each party has articulated a distinct political vision that deserves to stand or fall on its own merits.
The political health of a country is importantly determined by there being vehicles to express a wide range of political beliefs and positions. Not everyone fits into a limited range of political boxes and pounding square ideological pegs into round political holes is an exercise in frustration for all involved. The proliferation of political parties that capture this diversity is a feature of democracy throughout the developed word in the 21st century — and an important reason why many nations are using proportional systems of representation rather than the archaic and dysfunction First-Past-The Post electoral approach.
Is there, therefor, any meaningful political basis for encouraging political cooperation between NDP, Liberal, and Green parties? Or, is this an attempt at a shotgun wedding of convenience, doomed to an acrimonious divorce? Is there any basis for treating these parties under a collective “progressive” umbrella?
What is a Progressive?
What is a Progressive? Here are some definitions: advocating social reform; promoting or favoring progress toward better conditions or new policies, ideas, or methods; favoring or advocating progress, change, improvement, or reform, as opposed to wishing to maintain things as they are; making progress toward better conditions; employing or advocating more enlightened or liberal ideas, and new or experimental methods; engaging in or constituting forward motion.
In a Canadian historical context, a “progressive” was a member or supporter of a chiefly agrarian reform movement in the early 1920s advocating the nationalization of railways, low tariffs, an end to party politics, and similar measures.
The general drift is clear, however, these definitions are not, in and of themselves, sufficient to answer the question of what political commonalities there may be between NDP, Liberal, and Green parties. In particular, some leftist activists dispute whether the Liberal party can be considered “progressive”. Although this difference of opinion is in part terminological, and in part personal (depending on how one construes the concept of “progressive”), there are two empirical approaches that provide clear insights to this question.
Vote Compass
Pioneered by the CBC, Vote Compass is a brilliant approach to cutting through the rhetoric to get to the political bones of a party. It has now been deployed in seven provincial and federal elections (Canadian, US, and Australian federal elections; Ontario, Alberta, Quebec, and British Columbia provincial elections). Below is an illustration from the 2011 federal election. Individual results vary depending on the emphasis that an individual places on 30 different social and economic issues, the intention being to illustrate through an ordination where people’s political position falls in relation to the policies of political parties. An ordination is a mathematical technique to take a point in this 30-dimensional mathematical space (derived from the responses to the thirty questions) and project that point down on two dimensional graph illustrating “social conservatism” to “social liberalism” on the vertical axis, and economic “right” to “left” perspectives on the horizontal axis.
What is evident in his process is that there is only one Canadian political party that falls in the lower-right quadrant of social conservativism and right-wing economics — the Conservative Party. Diametrically opposite, in the quadrant of social liberalism and left-wing economics, fall all the other Canadian political parties. The Liberal position lies slightly beyond the relatively tight clustering of NDP, Green, and BQ positions and closer to a “centrist” location at the intersection of the axes [N.B.: it is worth underscoring that the results of the 2011 Canadian federal vote compass are based on responses by an astonishing 1,266,995 Canadians — a sample size at least three orders of magnitude greater than is typically represented in any polling effort].
Thus, based on this emperical analysis, the politics of the Liberal Party certain fall within the realm of small “l” social and economic “liberalism”. Does this merit applying the word “progressive” to the Liberal party? This depends on your perspective; one can adopt a more restricted view and regard the Liberal party as “centrist.”
[Note: Despite the many “progressive” social and economic policies of the Bloc Québécois, there is, of course, a reason to regard it separately; its advocacy for Québec sovereignty creates a political Grand Canyon between it and Liberal, NDP, and Green party positions.]
Second-choice preferences
There is yet another way of viewing this issue, namely through the lens of second choice voting preferences, a topic extensively explored by Ekos Research (see: Liberals Widen Lead on Eve of Throne Speech: Confidence in National Direction Nears All-time Low).
Since 49 per cent of Liberal voters would be happy supporting the NDP as a second choice, and 45 per cent of NDP supporters are prepared to support the Liberal party as a second choice, this indicates a significant degree of political overlap between these parties as perceived by their supporters.
An even more detailed look at this was provided by second-choice polling by Ekos during the 2011 election.
These pie charts illustrate second choice preferences for the NDP, Liberal, and Green parties. They illustrate a very wide overlap in terms of electoral support between these parties: 13.5 per cent of NDP supporters would cast their ballot for the Conservative party if no NDP candidate was available; 37.7 per cent would support the Liberals, 19 per cent the Green party, and 17.4 per cent have no second choice (i.e., they would not vote for any other party). For Liberal supporters, 12.6 per cent would vote for the Conservatives, 54.1 per cent the NDP, 12.0 percent the Green party, and 17.1 per cent have no second choice. Finally, 11 per cent of Green supporters would support the Conservatives, 40.3 per cent the NDP, 17.4 per cent the Liberals, and 27.4 per cent have no second choice.”
Summed together, 65 per cent of NDP supporters would vote Liberal or Green; 69 per cent of Liberal supporters would vote NDP or Green; and 60 per cent of Green supporters would vote NDP of Liberal. Irrespective of party ideology, the perceptions of political activists, or how we construe the definition of “progressive” it is clear that the electorate perceive that there are significant commonalities between these parties.
Therefore, based on emperical criteria such as a mathematical ordination of policy positions, and the way in which voters perceive and support these political parties, grouping of Liberals, NDP, and Greens as “progressive” (or perhaps a more neutral formulation like “centre-left”) is unquestionably germane to the Canadian political context. There are both commonalities in the positions of the parties, and they are perceived by voters as having significant commonalities. In this regard, the electorate is never wrong.
Terminology or ideology?
There is a point to this discussion beyond the purely terminological. As I pointed out in Progressive Canadian politics: Co-operation or cannibalism?:
1) Study after study indicates that the Liberals and NDP in cooperation could trounce the Harper Conservatives;
2) Poll after poll shows that a large proportion of Canadian voters view themselves as centre-left and would support either the NDP of Liberals;
3) Half of the supporters of both parties would vote for candidates of the other party as their second choice;
4) A one-time electoral agreement would allow the country to get to a place where electoral reform could be implemented (and both the NDP and the Green parties support proportional representation); and
5) Every reasonable measure indicates that the 73.9 per cent of Canadians who currently oppose the Harper Conservatives would be better served by an NDP minority government, a Liberal minority government, or a coalition government of any progressive composition.
Thus, recognizing that there are substantive commonalities between “progressive” or “centre-left” political parties, based on both their policies and the conviction of their supporters, has tangible political consequences. We can continue to split ideological hairs and split the vote, cleaving tightly to our particular politics, thereby allowing the “regressive” Harper Conservatives to rise up the middle … or not. The choice is ours.
P.S. Many thanks to Christine Saulnier of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives – Nova Scotia for a timely query that sparked this article.
[This is part two of a two-part series. Part one is Progressive Canadian politics: Co-operation or cannibalism?]
Christopher Majka is an ecologist, environmentalist, policy analyst, and writer. He is the director of Natural History Resources and Democracy: Vox Populi.
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