The (non)-religious voter in Canadian elections

Abstract

Religious and regional cleavages have been key for understanding Canadian elections, and particularly the domination of the Liberal Party of Canada. While the conventional wisdom has been that these two cleavages are the most important sociodemographic factors in explaining citizens' vote choice, scholars have not paid a lot of attention to religious voting in recent elections. In this research note, we provide the first systematic post-2011 analysis of religious voting in Canada. We do so by leveraging recent Canadian Election Studies. We examine the relationship between voters’ religious affiliation and level of religiosity and vote choice. We show that both facets of religious voting matter, but that their impacts vary across parties and regions. The findings inform scholarship on Canadian politics as well as comparative analyses of sociodemographic cleavages in electoral democracies.