The Political Geography of Immigration: Party Competition for Immigrants’ Votes in Canada, 1997–2019

Abstract

ABSTRACT Why has the Conservative Party of Canada largely supported high immigration rates and multiculturalism, and put considerable effort into recruiting New Canadians into its electoral coalition? More generally, why is Canada perhaps the only Western democracy without a major, consistently anti-immigrant or nativist party? I argue that none of Canada’s major national parties have adopted an anti-immigration or nativist platform because of incentives established by the interaction of the concentrated metropolitan geography of immigrant settlement, the geography of representation under the single-member plurality electoral system, and the regionalization of parties’ support bases. I demonstrate that Canada’s national parties have a strong incentive to reduce the cost of assembling electoral coalitions by appealing to densely institutionalized cultural communities, principally in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area.