Tories losing ground amid urbanization

Cities such as Surrey and Langley see new voting patterns emerge as demographics change

Growing up in Surrey in the 1970s, Greg Lyle used to ride along the side of the road on horseback. That's not as common there these days. The Surrey of today, Lyle says, is “not the Surrey I grew up in.”

While people certainly still ride horses in some areas south of the Fraser River, there are also other ways to get around there these days. A few years from now, those ways will include the Surrey-to-Langley SkyTrain, for which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced $1.3 billion in funding the month before calling a snap election.

Surrey and other outer parts of Metro Vancouver have also changed in many ways beyond modes of transportation — including population, density and political culture.

“Where I lived ... we had 10 acres with one house and a pool. Now there's 20 half-acre executive homes,” said Lyle, a former political worker and now president of Innovative Research Group. “It's completely different.”

In Monday's election results, many observers commented on the Liberals' success at fending off Conservative challenges in some Metro suburbs — including Surrey, Delta, and Coquitlam — while flipping others away from the Tories — such as two Richmond ridings and Cloverdale-Langley City. On election night, former longtime federal Liberal strategist Mark Marissen commented that Vancouver's high cost of living meant more young, often educated families moving to outer suburbs, which were experiencing huge development and “urbanization.” And whether they're coming from Vancouver, elsewhere in Canada, or overseas, those young families buying new townhouses in Surrey or Langley are changing the political landscape there over time.

Andy Yan, director of Simon Fraser University's City Program, compared Monday's preliminary election results with 2016 census data and found that, on average, B.C. ridings that went Conservative had a density of roughly 138 residents per square kilometre. B.C. ridings that voted Liberal were, on average, more than 18 times more dense, with 2,571 residents per square kilometre. (NDP ridings were an average of 1,815 residents per square kilometre).

Of course, the built environment of a neighbourhood doesn't necessarily dictate a resident's voting habits. If a staunch Conservative moves from the country to an urban area, they're probably not going to change their vote overnight.

But the general trend holds true that urbanites in Canada and B.C. are more likely to vote Liberal than Conservative, and Canada's population is urbanizing as more people move to cities and development intensifies in outlying suburban areas, making them more urban.

Still, Lyle, who worked for the federal Conservatives and the B.C. Liberals in the 1980s and '90s, doesn't believe those trends necessarily bode poorly for the Conservatives' electoral prospects. He pointed to Stephen Harper's success in those suburban Vancouver and Toronto ridings. Instead, Lyle says, the party just needs to find a way to meet those suburban swing voters where they are and speak to their needs, without scaring them away by appearing to be a party of old-school, hard right social and cultural conservatism.

Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole tried to portray himself and the party as a more centrist, progressive version of the Tories, and parts of their platform seemed designed to reach out to younger, urban voters.

“But it's not just about the leader,” said Lyle. “It's not the leader that's been pushing private member's bills on abortion rights or things like that. There are a series of bills that have come out of that caucus that have left people concerned there's a hidden social conservative agenda.”

And that prospect of a “hidden social conservative agenda” is more likely to be a problem for more voters in increasingly cosmopolitan places like Surrey or Langley.

“There's some sensibilities in these suburban seats you won't see in more rural, small-town areas,” Lyle said.

Cloverdale-Langley City was one of those suburban ridings that appears to have switched from Conservative to Liberal. Although mail-in ballots hadn't been counted, the TV networks called it for Liberal John Aldag, unseating Conservative incumbent Tamara Jansen.

“We have this young, beautiful, rich and diverse community ... So there was a motivation there for my supporters for a more progressive voice in Ottawa,” Aldag said.