I haven’t seen any good numbers or analysis yet on the coveted “very ethnic” ridings, but I still have a few thoughts. First, west end GTA Sikhs are a force to be reckoned with. They are ferocious. It’s less interesting to me that most went Conservative this time – that was the general trend across the country, so it’s hardly attributable to ethnicity. What I’m interested in is that so many west end ridings had three or four Sikh candidates going head-to-head, many splitting a decent vote among them. If you ask me, once established as a political force “New Canadians” (or “cultural communities,” as Jason Kenney so irritatingly dubbed it) don’t skew left, right, or centre. They decide, as individuals, who to vote for. And their power is evident. That doesn’t mean that non-white voters aren’t more conservative. It seems, perhaps, that they are – David Frum said last night on Twitter that over 50 per cent of Chinese-speaking voters went Conservative (though he didn’t provide a link when I asked for it). The Conservative “vote your values” platform did seem to resonate in the 905, where immigrant communities are generally financially better off than in the 416 (excepting certain parts of Mississauga). It will be interesting to see what plays out in those ridings – whether Sikh and Chinese and other voters turn out to be as socially conservative as the CPC has assumed. There has been much talk of a Conservative majority instigating a culture war around subjects like abortion, or same-sex marriage. If even relatively urban areas are skewing socially conservative, I think this is a legitimate possibility. On the other hand, these are people that probably have personal reasons for wanting immigration family reunification policies to soften, and we’ll see how much pressure they put on the government, and how effective it is. It’s always a tricky thing to disentangle race/ethnicity and income. In my parents’ riding, Scarborough-Rouge River, the Liberal incumbent retired (after 20 years), and the seat was very hotly contested. Cynically, every single party ran a brown candidate, none of whom actually lived in the riding. The winner was NDP candidate Rathika Sitsabaiesan. She is Tamil, as are many politically active people in the riding, but she’s also running for the most socially progressive party in an area with many poor and low-income families. It’s impossible to attribute her win (or the other candidates’ losses) to just one identity factor. The one solid truth about the ethnic vote is that the final nail has been driven into the coffin of the Trudeau era of immigrant politics. The Liberals got smoked because they took the New Canadian vote for granted. New Canadians aren’t so new anymore, and they’re done feeling grateful for being let into this country. They’re now showing, very obviously, that it’s theirs.
