Why did the Conservative Party get a third of the vote in Canada?

66% of Canadians voted against them and their policies, but what’s up with the 34%

There are a few reasons for the remarkable reality that the Conservatives are the preferred choice of about a third of Canadian voters. They really shouldn’t be, but they are.

You have to take apart the different reasons people vote in order to understand this, and you have to look at the long term trends. Let’s start there.

Forty to sixty years or so ago, the Progressive Conservatives were a big tent, center-right party and the Liberals were a big tent, center-left party. They overlapped a lot. It was very reasonable to be one or the other based on convenience. Liberals tended to have a Quebec power base, Progressive Conservatives tended to have an Ontario base.

A bunch of stuff has changed over those 60 years.

• Points-based immigration was brought in in 1967, switching the influx from white Europeans to the best of the world…