There has be increasing concern among commentators and scholars about a possible polarization of the Canadian public that resembles what we have seen in the United States. There are, however, multiple competing conceptual definitions and perspectives on polarization, and we do not yet have a full and complete picture on which dimensions Canadians have or have not polarized, nor on the magnitudes of any patterns. This paper uses the 1993-2019 cumulative file of the Canadian Election Study (CES) to measure trends in ideological divergence, ideological consistency, and partisan sorting in the Canadian mass public. It finds little evidence that Canadians are becoming more ideologically polarized. They are, however, becoming modestly more ideologically consistent and much more sorted – that is, partisanship, ideological identification, and policy beliefs are increasingly interconnected, particularly among those with high levels of political interest. This paper also provides some evidence as to the mechanism undergirding partisan sorting using the 2004-2008 CES panel. Partisan sorting appears to be driven by people switching their partisanship into closer alignment with their beliefs rather than vice versa. These findings call for additional research on the causes and consequences of partisan sorting in Canada and further efforts to situate these results in a comparative context.
Democratic linkage in the United States and Canada: the relationship between mass public opinion and public policy.