Affective Polarization in the Canadian Party System, 1988–2021

Abstract

Abstract This article brings three decades of broadly consistent survey data on survey respondents’ feelings about the parties as evidence of affective polarization. It also presents evidence about policy differences among the parties and makes an explicit link between elite and mass data with multilevel modelling. The article shows that affective polarization is real and also demonstrates its connection to the ideological landscape. But it also shows that conceptual categories originating in the United States must be adapted to Canada's multiparty system and to the continuing contrasts between Quebec and the rest of Canada. It suggests that accounts of Canada's twentieth-century party system may not apply to the twenty-first century.