Windsor most susceptible to populist politics, EKOS poll finds

I find that amongst union members there is a somewhat statistically higher percentage that express ordered outlook.

Windsor may be one of the country ’s most multicultural cities, but a new poll suggests it also may be the Canadian city most receptive to the populist politics that elected U.S. President Donald Trump and led to Brexit in Britain.

The poll, entitled At the Crossroads of Hope and Fear: The New Axis of Societal Tension, was commissioned by the Canadian Press and conducted by EKOS Research Associates last year.

“If you look at this as an expression of, in some regards, populism, the populism is typically ideologically thin,” said EKOS president Frank Graves.

“It can express itself on the left, the right, or indeed the centre.”

The goal of the poll, also being called a populism project, is to get a better handle on what many are calling the rise of populism.

Graves believes that society is not so much divided on a left-to-right political basis, but more so on what EKOS refers to as an open-ordered spectrum.

Windsor was ranked the most ordered city in Canada among the 22 urban centres targeted in the survey, with ordered people holding specific views on things such as authoritarianism, nativism, isolationism and xenophobia.

Open people are more racially tolerant, view populism less favourably and have a positive economic outlook.

The poll found that communities that had experienced a great amount of economic upheaval were more likely to be described as ordered.

Graves said Windsor is blocked together with other southern Ontario cities such as London, Hamilton, Oshawa and Barrie, which have all lost a significant number of manufacturing jobs in recent decades.

In Windsor, 32 per cent of respondents were identified as open, 34 per cent in the middle and 34 per cent described as ordered.

“It happens that Trump and Brexit are very much on the rightwing side, but there are left-versions or progressive versions of populism,” said Graves.

“We haven’t seen a lot of them in Canada but we certainly saw it with Bernie Sanders, we saw it with (U.K. Labour Leader Jeremy) Corbyn, and the shared thing is the hostility to the elite prescription in the sense the economy is not working for me like it used to, and those factors can be mined by both progressives and a more right-wing populism.”

“I find that amongst union members there is a somewhat statistically higher percentage that express ordered outlooks,” said Graves. “It’s not dramatic, but it’s significant.”

University of Windsor sociology professor Jane Ku said it’s important not to read too much into the figures.

“It’s not that Windsor is more closed than other cities,” said Ku.

She suggested that the waves of immigrants from the middle of the last century whose children are now adults may be learning the difficulties of finding work.

“We’ve had a lot of European immigrants come who took up occupations where you didn’t necessarily have to know English,” said Ku.

“We’ve had a long time of that kind of experience, and it’s a lot more difficult now with the changing economy where immigrants are coming in and it’s a very different situation where these kinds of jobs are no longer available.”

Graves said about 150 Windsor households were part of the survey, which was conducted last June with 5,658 Canadians responding, and again in November and December with 7,882 interviewed.