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How Canadian Evangelicals Voted, 1996–2008
The past decade has experienced a shift of Evangelical support away from the Liberal party. Should this trend be interpreted as the growth of a Canadian "religious right"?
by Don Hutchinson and Rick Hiemstra

How do evangelical Christians vote? Is there a voting bloc? Was there ever? With yet another election possibly just around the corner, will religious votes make a difference? If so, how?

Don Hutchinson and Rick Hiemstra

As recently as 1996, Canadian Evangelical voting intentions, despite being slightly more politically conservative, nevertheless closely matched those of their Canadian neighbours. Between 1996 and 2008, evangelical support for all parties – other than the Liberal Party of Canada – grew, tracking with trends in the general population. Changes in evangelical voting preferences, that have seen increased Conservative support, have often been interpreted as the growth of a Canadian “religious right.” While evangelicals appreciated the Conservatives’ promise to revisit the redefinition of marriage, their open votes for MPs and their promise to address corruption in government, the Conservatives’ draw is only part of the story. The larger piece is how the Liberal Party alienated its evangelical base over a decade sending former supporters in search of new political homes.

Though the Liberal Party adopted policy positions that were at odds with evangelical moral stances, the decline in support cannot be explained principally by policy change. If this were the case then we would expect to see a decline in support for the NDP, which had similar policy positions. But Evangelicals leaving the Liberals went to both the Conservative Party and the NDP.

No, the relationship between Evangelicals and the Liberal Party began to sour as a result of the cumulative effect of Liberal attempts to marginalize Evangelicals and stifle dissent for political gain. Here are four brief examples of what happened over the past decade.

When the Canadian Alliance was formed in 2000, it elected Stockwell Day, an evangelical Christian, as its leader. During the 2000 general election campaign, Liberal Party representative Warren Kinsella appeared on Canada AM with a Barney the Dinosaur doll. Kinsella mocked Day’s creationist beliefs, saying, “I just want to remind Mr. Day that The Flintstones was not a documentary.” Kinsella would go on to boast, “Of all the things I have done in politics, over many, many years, probably nothing has had the impact of those few seconds on Canada AM.” While Evangelicals hold various views on Creation, most understood this as an attempt to denigrate their faith.

Before the 2004 election, the Liberal Party commissioned a poll that asked Ontarians, “Would you be more or less likely to vote for the Conservatives if you knew they had been taken over by evangelical Christians.” Evangelicals were understandably upset by a question that cast them in a sinister light.

Then, early in 2005 in the heat of the redefinition of marriage debate, Liberal Cabinet Minister Pierre Pettigrew mused to the media, “I find that the separation of church and state is one of the most beautiful inventions of modern times,” making the not-so-subtle point that churches opposed to redefining marriage to include same-sex relationships should stay out of the public debate. A Compas poll conducted shortly after Pettigrew made these comments found that 63 percent of Canadians perceived “Pettigrew-type comments about religious organizations” as either definitely or probably a threat to free speech. Many Evangelicals saw it as a threat to religious freedoms as well.

Most recently, the Liberals had a chance to renew their relationship with Canadian Evangelicals with the election of Stéphane Dion as leader, which promised a new direction. His attempts to reach out to religious voters were clumsy and came across as insincere. For example, in a pre-campaign interview on The Michael Coren Show, Dion made frequent mention of God. When asked by Coren why he was peppering his conversation with references to God, Dion replied, “I have been told that this is important to the people who watch this show.”

The Liberal Party demonstrated again and again that for electoral gain it was willing to marginalize religious groups generally and Evangelicals specifically. The cumulative effect of these attacks, along with the sponsorship scandal and events that influenced other Canadians, was to leave Evangelicals wary of the Liberal Party.

Each time Canadians went to the federal polls in 2004, 2006, and 2008, the Liberals only managed to hold on to roughly half of the evangelical voters they had had at the previous election. The Liberals alienated their previously strong evangelical base. All other major political parties - not just the Conservatives – picked up the pieces.

For the complete report, go to Canadian Evangelical Voting Trends by Region, 1996–2008 in the August 2009 issue of Centre for Research on Canadian Evangelicalism’s (CRCE) online journal Church & Faith Trends.

Don Hutchinson is Vice-President and General Legal Counsel, The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada and Director, Centre for Faith and Public Life; and Rick Hiemstra is Director, Centre for Research on Canadian Evangelicalism.

The above article may be republished with permission in print publications. For more information contact Gail Reid: reidg@efc-canada.com.

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