Right-wing populism in a metropolis: Personal financial stress, conservative attitudes, and Rob Ford’s Toronto

ABSTRACT

Elections such as the UK “Brexit” referendum, Donald Trump’s ascendancy to the presidency, and the growth of the Alternative for Germany party in Germany have led to concerns about the viability of liberal democratic institutions. Voters appear increasingly drawn to populists. However, before Brexit, and before Trump, there was Toronto Mayor Rob Ford. Known equally for bizarre personal antics and outsider status, Ford is a classic case of a right-wing populist politician. We examine this relatively early manifestation of a populist by taking into account various factors. One dominant theoretical explanation is based on economic anxieties amidst increasing inequality and polarizing labor markets. A second, and perhaps more dominant theory, emphasizes working class xenophobia and racism. Results from an analysis of a 2014 survey suggest support can be explained by many factors, such as ideology, partisanship, social conservatism, education, financial stress, suburban residency, among others. Sometimes, factors show a direct link to support for Ford. In other cases, particularly as it relates to financial stress, the relationship is more complex. Also, analysis shows that visible minorities were more likely than non-visible minorities to support Ford, contrary to the general anti-immigrant and sometimes racist appeals of populists elsewhere.

Acknowledgments

We thank the editors and reviewers for their helpful comments and feedback. We are also grateful to Ipsos and its data donation to the Laurier Institute for the Study of Public Opinion and Policy.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In addition to the Toronto Election Study, further work is being done through the Canadian Municipal Election Study. For more information see www.cmes-eemc.ca.

2. A team at Western University (McGregor, Moore, & Stephenson, 2014) conducted an individual-level survey during the campaign, covering the months of September and October, but after Rob Ford’s withdrawal.

3. While the province of Ontario and the City of Toronto have elected politicians that some might refer to as right-wing populists (e.g. Premier Mitch Hepburn in the 1930s; Mayor Alan Lamport, 1950s; Mayor Mel Lastman, 1990s), the province’s politics have been dominated by moderate conservatism, even puritanism. The province’s motto on its coat of arms, “loyal she began and loyal she remains,” speaks to its identity of loyalty to the British Empire. Moreover, the province’s longest-serving premier, Bill Davis, famously noted that, in Ontario, “bland works.”

4. The City of Toronto is the result of a 1998 amalgamation of Metropolitan Toronto. The City of Toronto Act consolidated the upper-tier Metro level of government with the lower-tier municipalities of East York, Etobicoke, North York, Scarborough, Toronto and York (see Spicer, 2014).

5. This is, of course, not to say that such parties are homogenous. Local context can exist. For instance, Netherlands’ Partij Voor de Vrijheid is often pointed to as a very typical populist party, built on an anti-immigration base. However, it also has traditionally supported very liberal social policies, such as support for same-sex marriage.

6. The sample was drawn from the Ipsos’s online panel, which ranks among Canada’s largest, comprising over 200,000 households. Respondents are recruited with a mix of probability and non-probability methods. To remain in the panel, respondents must participate reliably and regularly. Responses are subject to quality control to check for straight-lining and satisficing (Baumgartner & Steenkamp, 2001). Respondents from the panel are drawn with quota sampling to ensure demographic representation.

7. Efforts are made to ensure the online sample reflects the overall population. However, as when compared against data from the 2016 Canada Census, some notable biases are apparent. In particular, respondents in the 2014 survey are older, more likely to be female, and wealthier than the overall population of Toronto. Weights can adjust the sample to render it more reflective of population parameters, but corrective weights had no effect on results. For this reason, analysis is based on unweighted data.

8. We thank Dr. Peter Graefe from McMaster University for suggesting this type of question.

9. Interesting to note that when Rob Ford’s brother, Doug, ran for the leadership of the Ontario PC party in 2018, he stated that as premier he might reconsider the policy of not requiring teenage girls to seek parental permission to obtain an abortion (Ferguson, 2018), interpreted as a pro-life stance.

10. While the survey was administered to all respondents throughout Ontario, analysis here focuses only on respondents who reside in the City of Toronto.

11. The multi-step model continues to include evaluations of parties with the final stage being the actual vote choice. We do not construct the complete model as our analysis is limited to evaluations of Ford and not actual vote choice for Toronto mayor.

12. It should be noted that results in the Roy et al. (2015) do not suggest ideology confounds the effect of suburban residency, but that suburban residency, independently, has a positive association to voting conservative. But that study used a subjective measure of suburban residency as the dataset comprised of respondents from all over Canada, imposing challenges on using any objective geographical definitions of an urban-suburban boundary. Here, the focus is on Toronto where urban and suburban neighborhoods are more clearly defined.

13. When estimating probabilities, all variables are assigned a score of .5, with the following exceptions: for religion, Protestant is set to 1, all other religion dummies are set to 0; working class and suburban residency were both set to 0,.

Additional information

Funding

This project was supported with funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council through Insight Development Grant # 430-2013-000904. 

Notes on contributors

Simon J. Kiss

Simon J. Kiss is an Associate Professor in the Digital Media and Journalism and Leadership programs at Wilfrid Laurier University.

Andrea M. L. Perrella

Andrea M. L. Perrella is an Associate Professor in Political Science at Wilfrid Laurier University.

Zachary Spicer

Zachary Spicer is a Lecturer in The University of Western Ontario’s Local Government program and an Associate at the University of Toronto’s Innovation Policy Lab.