Saskatchewan and Alberta united on many election issues, according to CBC's Vote Compass
CBC's Poll tracker shows strong support for Conservative Party on Prairies
The premiers of Saskatchewan and Alberta have been campaigning against the carbon tax and for increased support for the oil and gas sector.
Recent data from Vote Compass — an online CBC questionnaire that looks at how your views align with the major parties — shows the two provinces are aligned on those and many other issues.
Vote Compass was developed by Vox Pop Labs, an independent, non-partisan group of social researchers and data scientists, and commissioned by the CBC.
More than 1.3 million Canadians have taken the survey.
Vox Pop Labs research director Charles Breton said there's a clear pattern when the answers are separated by province: Saskatchewan and Alberta are on one side of the spectrum with Quebec on the other.
"What's really striking is that on some of the questions where there are differences, it's always the same pattern. You have Quebec on one side of it and you have Saskatchewan and Alberta on the other side and the rest of Canada is somewhere in the middle," Breton said.
"Saskatchewan, we could call Alberta-lite. Maybe not as extreme as Alberta but on the same side of the scale as Alberta."
On the question of equalization — "How much money should the federal government redistribute from provinces that have more to those that have less?" — Albertans were an outlier, landing halfway between "somewhat less" and "about the same as now." Saskatchewan was the closest, while Quebecers were more aligned with other eastern provinces, landing halfway to "somewhat more."
In response to the question, "How much help should the oil and gas industry get from the Canadian government?" the majority of people in Saskatchewan and Alberta answered "somewhat more," the majority of Quebecers answered "somewhat less," with other regions responding closer to the middle, on the side of "somewhat less."
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Questions related to Quebec sovereignty, oil and gas, or even handgun bans saw the two western provinces in opposition to Quebec.
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There were some commonalities.
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Respondents in both Saskatchewan and Quebec aligned on their beliefs that less should be done to accommodate religious minorities in Canada and that unions should have somewhat less influence.
"It's also important to note the questions on which there seems to be a consensus," Breton said. "Pretty much everyone feels like getting access to employment insurance should be easier than it is now … also the place of the private sector in health care, a lot of people feel, all provinces feel like there shouldn't be more privatization in the health-care system."
Saskatchewan respondents said somewhat fewer immigrants should be admitted to Canada. Those taking the survey also answered 'somewhat disagree' to questions about whether systemic violence against Indigenous women and girls should be recognized as a form of genocide and if the federal cabinet should be split evenly along gender lines.
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On Wednesday, CBC News' Poll Tracker showed the Conservatives polling at 47 per cent in the Prairies, which is a combination of Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The NDP was next at 23 per cent, the Liberals closely behind at 20 per cent, Greens at six per cent and PPC at two per cent.
Heading into the election 10 of Saskatchewan's 14 seats were Conservative, two were NDP, one was Liberal and one was Independent.
Nationally, the Conservatives are polling at 32.2 per cent and the Liberals are right behind at 30.8 per cent. The NDP are at 18.2 per cent.
Breton said the researchers try to get a wide range of issues covered in the 30 survey questions.
Curious how the average person in each province or territory compares with the average Canadian? Take a look at the document below.
How views from different regions stack up against the average Canadian (PDF KB)
How views from different regions stack up against the average Canadian (Text KB)CBC is not responsible for 3rd party content
- Compare your views to the party platforms
- What you need to know to vote in Canada's federal election
Vote Compass is a civic engagement application offered in Canada exclusively by CBC News/Radio-Canada and developed by a team of social and statistical scientists from Vox Pop Labs.
The findings were based on 407,374 respondents who participated in Vote Compass from Sept. 11, 2019, to Oct. 9, 2019.
Unlike online opinion polls, respondents to Vote Compass are not pre-selected. Similar to opinion polls, however, the data are a non-random sample from the population and have been weighted in order to approximate a representative sample. Vote Compass data have been weighted by gender, age, education, language, region and past vote to ensure the sample's composition reflects that of the actual population of Canada according to census data and other population estimates.
Click here to find the detailed methodology.
with files from CBC's Sarah Rieger