In Canada, Immigrant and Visible Minority Communities Increasingly Vote Conservative

Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre and his wife Anaida wave to the crowd at an election campaign event, in Brampton, Ont., on April 9, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Arlyn McAdorey

"The immigrant community of Canada just blocked the Liberals from forming a majority."

"These new Canadians share our conservative values of hard work and the Canadian dream."

Angelo Isidorou, executive director, B.C. Conservative party 

 

"Immigrant-heavy ridings across the Greater Toronto Area [GTA] have swung from being decisively against to decisively for the provincial Conservatives over these last 30 years. It's part of the trend we're seeing across North America where immigrants and minorities are swinging to the political right; and it's also a story of how one of the GTA's largest constituencies is much more dynamic than we often realize."

"Since the late twentieth century, researchers have noted the changing demographics in Canada's suburbs, particularly in terms of ethnicity and immigrant status."

"In the Greater Toronto Area, the share of immigrants in the inner suburbs [Etobicoke, North York, Scarborough] has grown since the 1970s, and in the outer suburbs [Halton, Peel, York, and Durham] since the 1990s, while declining in the inner city region [City of Toronto] at the same time. Additionally, since immigration reform in 1967 – which abolished race and nationality quotas in favour of a point-based system – immigrants have increasingly been visible minorities."

University of Toronto, School of Cities

"Minority governments will take political sophistication to navigate. It’s about seeing the whole chessboard listening and taking counsel from many people. This will give us a glimpse into whether Carney has the intangible skills that make somebody a durable political leader and able to survive in this environment. Because there’s a question mark over whether he has any interest or is capable of doing this. And not everybody who voted for Carney quite knows what they got."

"Carney could be in a Keir Starmer situation where he’s elected, but it’s a loveless victory and he has a very short window in which to deliver what voters think they should be getting from him."

"If you don’t deliver soon and people began peeling away, it can be really difficult to recover from that. And so in many ways, I think his honeymoon ended the minute he stepped off the stage after giving his victory speech."

Jordan Leichnitz, former senior strategist, New Democratic party

Mark Carney during an election night event at TD Place in Ottawa, Ontario  Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

The immigrant vote played a significant role back in 2006 when the Conservatives under then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper became the government. Jason Kenney, Mr. Harper's then Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, was well recognized for his role in welcoming that demographic into the Conservative fold. That immigrant vote is now recognized as an important factor in Canadian elections, and in this election of April 28, 2025, the immigrant vote that tipped heavily in favour of the Conservatives may very well have denied Mark Carney and his Liberals the majority government they craved.

 

Pre-election polls identified the immigrant vote as favouring the Conservatives, and that tendency has increased as well, since 2021. The Economist published an analysis finding that among the 31 Toronto-area ridings with a population averaging 40 percent immigrants, experienced for the most part a significant shift to the Conservatives, over their preference in the 2021 federal election. Whereas in ridings with fewer new Canadians, the tendency was for the Liberals to pick up support.

 

The Economist analysis pointed out that under the surface Canada had undergone an electoral realignment reflective of the United States. "Just as in the United States, working-class and immigrant voters swung right", concluded the publication. In the October British Columbia election, non-white voters; Black, East Asian, Latino, Middle Eastern or South Asian tended to prefer the B.C. Conservatives.

 

A Reddit map of 2025 Liberal-Conservative vote patterns making the rounds indicated that the more immigrant and non-white a riding, the harder their shift to the Conservatives.  A survey by Innovative Research Group noted that Chinese-Canadians in British Columbia emerged far more Conservative than average; this support almost entirely concentrated among first-generation immigrants. Where new immigrants fell below the national average, a Liberal vote emerged.

 

A Nanos poll post-election found as well that 41 percent of Canadians under age 34 tended to vote Conservative; while 32 percent voted Liberal. In the over-55 cohort, Liberals dominated at 52 percent as opposed to 34 percent for the Conservatives.  For the first time in Canadian voting history, the average 25-year-old Canadian was likelier to vote Conservative than the average 65-year-old. The average immigrant was likelier to vote Conservative than the average native-born Canadian.

 

Liberal social policies, including harm reduction, repeat bail for chronic offenders and lax integration of other immigrants has seen new Canadians emerge as opponents of these policies. Conservatives "maintained their base and grew it", pointed out Abacus Data's David Coletto. "South Asian and Chinese-Canadians in the grater Toronto area voted for the cultural conservatism" the Conservative Party represented. "They value family, faith, entrepreneurship and community order. For many, the Liberals' progressive stances on gender, parental rights, and criminal justice reform felt out of touch."

"Traditionally, immigrant and visible minority communities have supported the centrist Liberal Party. In the Greater Toronto Area [GTA], where over half of all residents identify as “visible minority” [the category used by StatCan], Chinese and South Asian Canadians have long formed a key part of the Liberal base."

"Yet recent polling tells a different story. An October 2024 survey found that 45 per cent of immigrants had changed their political allegiances since arriving in Canada, with many now leaning Conservative."

"Meanwhile, another national survey from January 2025 found that a majority of East Asian [55 per cent] and South Asian [56 per cent] respondents expressed support for the Conservative Party, far outpacing support for the Liberals or the NDP."

The Conversation 

Photograph: Getty Images