For the first time in a federal election, three of Canada's five main political parties are using a sophisticated new micro-targeting voter-profile tool, which outlines people's ethnicity, social values and income level, cross-referenced with their political support.
The tool, developed by Environics, allows political strategists to fine-tune their message for voters at the neighbourhood level, helping candidates win key battleground ridings in Ontario and British Columbia, many of which have large ethnic communities.
“This tool not only gives you the big picture, but goes to a riding level and tells you which percentage of voter groups live in the riding and whether ethnicity is an issue,” said Jan Kestle, president of Environics Analytics.
She said client confidentiality prevented her identifying which three political parties are using her services.
There is a sudden demand for multicultural research tools such as this one, as Canada's ethnic communities grow in size and political importance. Now that immigrants no longer vote exclusively for the Liberals, all parties are reaching out to them.
A thousand more votes for the Conservatives in Newton-North Delta, where 60 per cent of residents are visible minorities, could help the party win one of the extra 28 seats it needs to form a majority government. In 2006, Liberal MP Sukh Dhaliwal won the suburban Vancouver riding with 34.3 per cent of the vote, compared with 30.6 for the Tory candidate, and 32 per cent for the NDP.
“It's a numbers game. The election can turn on a dime. Ethnics play a key role in this and happen to be living in the ridings that are close,” said David Crapper, president of Genesis Public Opinion Research Inc., the Conservatives' official pollster in the 2006 election.
The Conservative Party would not say whether it was using Environics' new tool. But the party is targeting certain ethnic groups, and has assembled a detailed database of voters in battleground ridings, and given fictional names to demographic segments in the electorate.
The Environics program breaks down voters into 18 groups, including suburban upscale ethnic and urban downscale ethnic, and provides a map of where they live in each of the 308 constituencies. Residents are assigned to a group based on their income level, age, job type, family type, ethnicity, and social values. The program then analyzes the 2006 election results through this lens to understand how much support each party received from each voter group, how large each group is, and where each one lives.
For example, in Newton-North Delta, suburban upscale ethnic voters comprised 64 per cent of eligible voters in the 2006 election. However they were 68 per cent of the Liberal vote and only 54 per cent of the Conservative vote in the riding.
Suburban upscale ethnics are described as recent immigrants from China, India, Pakistan and the Philippines, with white-collar and service-sector jobs. They tend to have children who play outdoor sports, own lots of computer electronics and enjoy rock concerts and amusement parks. They aren't interested in ecology or status recognition, but are global in outlook, tend to be savers, and enjoy trying new products and services.
“This information helps candidates with messaging, how to talk to these people and what their core belief systems are,” said Ms. Kestle. For example, a candidate could emphasize crime, but not environmental issues, when talking to a suburban upscale ethnic audience.
Campaigns already have a good sense about the demographics of their supporters, through their own data bases and polls. But this tool allows them to go deeper, on a street by street level.
In Don Valley West, a highly diverse riding in northeast Toronto, a quarter of the riding's voters were urban downscale ethnic in the 2006 election. Half of them supported the Liberals, while 21 per cent voted for both the Conservatives and the NDP.
