FIRST READING: Immigrants denied Carney his majority
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The immigrant vote, long considered a reliable vote store for the Liberal Party, is quickly emerging as an important factor in having denied Prime Minister Mark Carney his expected majority.
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Not only did immigrants break for the Tories in any number of pre-election polls, but immigrant-heavy ridings were the most likely to see their share of the Conservative vote increase as compared to 2021.
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An analysis published Thursday by The Economist found that among the 31 Toronto-area ridings whose population was at least 40 per cent immigrants, almost all of them experienced a shift to the Conservatives as compared to the 2021 federal election.
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The reverse was true in ridings where the Liberals picked up support. The fewer new Canadians in a riding, the more likely they were to flip red.
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The Economist concluded that while Canada's 2025 election yielded effectively the same result as in 2021, underneath the surface the country had undergone an electoral realignment similar to what's occurred in the United States. 'Just as in the United States, working-class and immigrant voters swung right,' wrote the publication.
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'The immigrant community of Canada just blocked the Liberals from forming a majority,' declared Angelo Isidorou, executive director of the B.C. Conservative Party, in a post-election assessment.
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The B.C. Conservatives experienced a similar phenomenon in their own election in October. Although they lost to the B.C. NDP, the party saw its most dramatic gains in the immigrant-heavy suburbs of Metro Vancouver.
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Mainstreet Research polls leading up to the Oct. 19 vote also found that the B.C. Conservatives were conspicuously preferred by non-white voters, be they Black, East Asian, Latino, Middle Eastern or South Asian.
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This trend wasn't as noticeable in Monday's federal election, as the Liberals were able to capitalize on a wholesale collapse in NDP support and head off Conservative gains.
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But the trend was there: A comprehensive map of 2025 Liberal-Conservative vote shifts making the rounds on reddit on Thursday showed that the more immigrant and non-white a Vancouver riding, the harder their shift to the Conservatives.
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