After months of political decline, the Liberal Party of Canada is showing signs of recovery, buoyed, some suggest, by a surge of national pride in the face of Donald Trump’s tariff war and threats to Canadian sovereignty.
But this apparent rebound obscures a more surprising political shift: the growing appeal of the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) among immigrants and their children.
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.
Nationally, racialized citizens now make up over 26 per cent of Canada’s population, with South Asians and Chinese Canadians the two largest groups.
While detailed racial breakdowns remain rare in Canadian polling, the few available data points suggest a meaningful shift. This pattern also reflects a broader trend: South Asian and Chinese Canadians in the GTA are increasingly politically active, with rising turnout and growing partisan diversification.
Author:
- Emine Fidan Elcioglu | Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Toronto
Nationally, racialized citizens now make up over 26 per cent of Canada’s population, with South Asians and Chinese Canadians the two largest groups.
What does “racialized” mean?
The Wikipedia article was jargon-y
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/racialized-minorities
Propaganda works.
Indeed. It’s important to remember that people are not evil for voting against their own interests.
Do not attribute to malice what can more easily be attributed to
stupiditylack of knowledge, i.e. propaganda.
I can’t believe how so many of them want to still vote for the very same people who have been scapegoating them for the coronavirus.
The strategy of divide and conquer has unfortunately been quite successful throughout history.
Vulnerable groups find comfort in not being the group currently being targeted, and irrationally think their support will prevent them from being targeted in the future.
The burden is on us to keep underlining the point again and again, for all time, to all vulnerable groups: they will turn on you next.
it’s the same thing as how many venezuelans voted for trump. they mistake the problems with authoritarian communism as being with the communist part, not with the authoritarian part
One’s a subcategory of the other. It’s like how all dogs are mammals but not all mammals are dogs.
One’s a subcategory of the other.
100% incorrect.
Conservatives aren’t known for being smart or rational. It’s a worldview of emotions and immediacy.
I mean, as a group, both Asian groups I have experience with (Japanese and Chinese) are extremely racist (especially against other Asians) on average.
They also tend to be wealthier, and would benefit more from the tax breaks that Conservatives tend to be spouting.
Anecdotally, same with the South Asian community. The general sentiment seems to be “I got mine, F you for trying to get yours”.
We’ve been we wealth-gating immigration for decades. That strategy was practically designed to increase the conservative-voting population
I’ve definitely heard of irrational hatred towards the Libs from South Asians, but not so much from those of Chinese descent, but tbf my real life circle isn’t that big and we don’t really talk about politics. As an immigrant myself from a similar demographic (am Southeast Asian), I have to say that I don’t understand this rightward shift in voting sentiments. Is it cause they’ve never been under Harper, or never heard of what things were like under him? (I’ve only been here since Trudeau) The Cons never came across as being friendly to non-Whites, and that should already be a warning sign.
But afaik, a good number of the Chinese that I know of are generally supportive of being tough on crime and see Canada as being unsafe, especially the older generation. They praise China for having strong police presence and for its seemingly lower crime rate, and then says things like, “It’ll never be like that in Canada. And to think that we came here because it used to be bad there and was much safer here.” One that I’ve talked to said that he supports the CPC for being tough on crime (allegedly I would say, but nonetheless), and support scaling back immigration even further to hopefully bring back how Canadians used to be much more friendlier (he sees the large increase in new immigrants as a reason why Canadians have become less friendly overall). Perhaps to these people, they would rather trade being possibly oppressed for a chance of having lower crime rate? Idk how that’s more assuring from a safety standpoint but it makes sense to them.
I have doubts about a pursuit of whiteness and model minority stereotyping. No matter what immigrants or their children do, they’ll always be hyphenated-Canadians at best, facing discrimination, suspicion, and hatred from “real” Canadians, conservative or not.
Instead the factors are much more tangible-the current government has overseen the relationships with both countries degrade severely, with severe impact to these groups. When you’re trying to care for a sick grandparent abroad or whatever else, the last thing you want is a two-faced political approach that risks having you stranded away from home.
And then what role did the government have in building up the current levels of hate towards immigrants with their policies? For decades academia has been allowed to turn international students into cash cows with zero regard for their quality of life. Businesses whining about wages getting too high after the pandemic meant that immigrants were brought in with no place to live and no livable income. And then scapegoated for cost of living increases spawned by decades of bad policy, by the governments who brought them in.
Immigrants are expected to put in to a system that’ll have them work twice as hard to get half as much, if that, and hate them for it. It’s not “I got mine, fuck you”, it’s “you’ll never give me mine, I’m just an exploitable tax base to you, we’re not going to pretend anymore”.
That’s a really good point and well explained.
But at this point is there one party that would make the situation better for them?
Why would the conservative be so popular?
I don’t think either major party will offer much better really. The Conservatives get to ride on being the opposition and the viable supposed alternative to what’s been happening recently.
The ladder calls for them
Because the last 10 years have been a whole lot of nothing good. Time to send the liberals packing.
Could you define what has been “nothing good”.
