Data Collection and Measures

By searching websites of political science and government departments across Canadian universities, we compiled a list of 99 academicsFootnote ³ with an interest in Canadian politics, party politics and elections. These experts received an email invitation to the survey about Canadian parties, offered in English and French.Footnote ⁴ At the end of the survey, the experts were asked if they had expertise in Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario or Quebec politics and would like to fill out a shorter version of the questionnaire focused on provincial parties. A total of 44 experts participated in the main survey. We also received a sufficient number of responses from experts in Ontario (10) and Quebec (14) to release expert estimates of parties’ positions in these provinces.Footnote ⁵ The data were collected between 5 December 2022 and 20 January 2023, with the survey asking experts to indicate parties’ “current” positions.

The survey largely followed the structure of 2019 CHES-Europe, including questions about the positions of parties on economic issues, postmaterialism, overall ideology (left-right) and a host of specific issues, among others immigration, taxes and rural/urban interests (see Appendix A for the full list of items included). In addition to a measure about parties’ positions on enforcing public health measures (taken from a CHES-Europe COVID survey), we added two issues to the survey that we thought were particularly salient in the Canadian context: decentralization to provinces and reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. For all the dimensions and issues, experts were asked to rate parties on a 0–10 scale.

For the main ideological dimensions (economic issues and postmaterialism), as well as a select number of issues, experts were also asked to indicate to what extent they thought each party blurs its positions on the dimension, how divided it is on the dimension, and how salient the dimension is for a party. Finally, the survey asked about a number of party characteristics (see Appendix A for details).

The provincial surveys were substantially shorter, and only included questions about the main ideological dimensions. Appendix A lists all the questions that were included in the survey and details the answer options.

After processing and cleaning the data, we aggregated experts’ responses to obtain a party-level dataset with averaged estimates of parties’ positions on the different ideological and issue dimensions, as well as their characteristics. For the main ideological dimensions, the dataset also includes the standard deviation of experts’ placements of a party.Footnote ^6, Footnote ⁷

The Canadian Political Space

Using the CHES Canada dataset, we can describe the structure of party competition in Canadian politics. Here, we focus on parties’ positions on the two main ideological dimensions: economic left-right and positions on postmaterialist issues. In line with earlier work, we refer to the latter as the GAL-TAN dimension (Hooghe et al., Reference Hooghe, Marks and Wilson2002; Jolly et al., Reference Jolly, Bakker, Hooghe, Marks, Polk, Rovny, Steenbergen and Vachudova2022).Footnote ⁸ Figure 1 illustrates where experts position the parties in this two-dimensional space, with federal parties shown as circles.Footnote ⁹ The experts distinguish between two main blocs of parties. A first bloc of parties includes the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) and the People's Party of Canada (PPC). These parties are positioned economically to the right and take more traditional positions on the GAL-TAN dimension. All other federal parties are positioned economically to the left while taking more liberal positions on the GAL-TAN dimension—with the Bloc Québécois (BQ) being slightly more centrist. Within each bloc, economic left-right is the main dimension distinguishing between parties. In particular, the New Democratic Party (NDP), the Green Party (GPC) and the Liberal Party (LPC) all take similar positions on the GAL-TAN dimension but differ in terms of their economic positions. It is noteworthy that, as is common in many European party systems as well (e.g., Lefkofridi et al., Reference Lefkofridi, Wagner and Willmann2014), the parties are aligned along a diagonal structure, leaving the left-TAN and right-GAL quadrants empty.

Figure 1.

Positions of Federal and Provincial Parties on the Economic Left-Right and GAL-TAN Dimensions.

Figure 1 also shows the positions of parties in Ontario (diamonds) and Quebec (triangles) in this two-dimensional space. A comparison of party positions in both settings clarifies that the party system structure differs substantially between provinces. The Ontarian party system resembles the offer at the federal level most strongly, a finding that is consistent with the fact that there are strong organizational connections between the federal parties and the provincial parties in Ontario (Pruysers, Reference Pruysers2014). Figure 1 shows that party competition differs in Quebec, notably because the space includes parties that combine economically right-wing with culturally progressive positions. Furthermore, Figure 1 shows that parties in Quebec have more distinct profiles than Ontarian or federal parties, given the absence of clear ideological blocs.

Applications

The previous section illustrates how the CHES Canada data can be used to describe the structure of party competition at the federal and provincial level. Figure 1 did so with a focus on the two main ideological dimensions, but this analysis can be extended to a large number of included issue dimensions. Below, we present two initial applications, one using individual-level and one using comparative party-level data.

First, the data can be combined with individual-level survey data from the Canadian Election Study or provincial election studies. By doing so, scholars can, for example, assess whether the positions of parties on specific issue dimensions broadly match the preferences of their electorates on these issues. By matching individual-level survey data and CHES estimates, researchers can get a sense of how ideologically sorted voters are. To illustrate this approach, we use data from the 2021 Canadian Election Study (CES; Stephenson et al., Reference Stephenson, Harell, Rubenson and Loewen2022) to obtain estimates of the policy preferences of voters of the main parties on income redistribution. The CES asked respondents “How much do you think should be done to reduce the income gap between the rich and the poor?”, with answers ranging from much more (= 1) to much less (= 5). This measure of voters’ positions on income redistribution can be matched with the CHES estimates of parties’ positions on redistribution (coded so 0 = strongly favours redistribution, 10 = strongly opposes redistribution). Combining both types of data, we find that voters’ average preferences on the need to reduce the income gap maps well onto parties’ positions on the issue of redistribution (Pearson correlation of 0.99). This implies that Canadian voters are effectively sorted into parties based on their opinion on this issue (for more details, see Appendix B).

Second, given that the CHES Canada questionnaire is similar to earlier CHES surveys, the data can easily be merged with CHES data from other countries and regions of the world. For example, scholars can evaluate how polarized or multidimensional the Canadian party system is compared to other countries. To illustrate the potential of combining data from different CHES modules, we merge the CHES Canada data with those from the most recent CHES-Europe wave (2019).

The top panel of Figure 2 plots each country by its level of party polarization on the economic left-right (x-axis) and the GAL-TAN dimension (y-axis).Footnote ¹⁰ A few observations stand out. First, from a comparative perspective, the Canadian party system is not particularly polarized. On both dimensions, but especially with regard to GAL-TAN issues, it mirrors the least polarized democracies in Western Europe. Second, the Canadian party system falls on the diagonal line, which represents a context in which the two ideological dimensions are equally polarized. This may suggest that the two dimensions are strongly correlated, with the same party oppositions playing out on both sets of issues.

Figure 2.

Canadian Party Polarization and Dimensionality in Comparative Perspective.

Indeed, as already suggested by Figure 1, the bottom panel of Figure 2 confirms the relatively one-dimensional structure of Canadian party conflict. Using the effective dimensionality (ED), a measure that captures the relationship between the different dimensions of a political space, we observe that economic left-right and GAL-TAN virtually collapse into a single ideological conflict with an ED close to 1 (for the exact operationalization, see Koedam et al. Reference Koedam, Binding and Steenbergen2024). This structure is similar to that of the United Kingdom, but in stark contrast to the more complex and two-dimensional party systems of, among others, Sweden, Belgium and the Netherlands. This may hint at the role of political institutions, such as the electoral system. Future research can unpack this further.