The People and The Nation: The “Thick” and the “Thin” of Right-Wing Populism in

Chris Erl , McGill University

Objective. While Canada is commonly portrayed as a bastion of political moderation, two influen- tial right-wing populist (RWP) movements appeared in the past decade. This study examines sup- port for the People’s Party of Canada (PPC) and “Ford Nation” of the eponymous -based political family, comparing each movement’s supporters. Methods. Data from the 2014 Toronto Election Study and 2019 Canadian Election Study were analyzed with logistic regression models to assess differences between supporters of each movement. Results. Populism as a “thin-centered ide- ology” is displayed by the differences between each movement. Ford Nation advanced a suburban- focused neoliberal populism while the PPC blended and civilizationist–nationalist rhetoric. Contrary to both movements’ platforms, PPC supporters did not display significant an- imosity toward immigrants, while those of the Ford Nation did. The supporters of Ford Nation were distinct among conventional supporters of RWP movements because they tended to be both immigrants and economically secure. Conclusions. While both the PPC and Ford Nation are RWP movements, each movement is only nominally related, as evidenced by their different underlying “thick” ideologies and the substantial differences among their supporters.

Introduction

The 2010s proved to be a decade of incredible success for right-wing populist (RWP) movements around the globe. Their success in Canada, though, has been more restrained (Budd, 2020; Nanos, 2020). The insulation from widespread electoral success for more extreme forms of populism has been attributed to Canada’s cultural and political charac- teristics, such as the federal government’s promotion of multiculturalism as a Canadian characteristic, cleavages between linguistic and geographically situated groups, and the re- liance of minority governments on informal, moderating governing coalitions (Ambrose and Mudde, 2015; Gordon, Jeram, and van der Linden, 2019; Taub, 2017). Popular me- dia and think-tanks suggest that Canadian voters are not calling for RWP options from the grassroots (Morden and Anderson, 2019). The populist messaging that has appeared in recent Canadian campaigns has been driven by political elites themselves as a political strategy, rather than originating from popular outcry. Recent scholarship classifies populism as a “thin-centered ideology” (Freeden, 1998; Mudde, 2007). This conceptualization—the “ideational approach” to populism—argues that there is little ideological grounding to populism, which is merely appended to existing “thick” ideologies, such as neoliberalism, nativism, or libertarianism. Populism is thus a tool used by leaders to create in-groups and out-groups and situate themselves in opposi- tion to entrenched elites and attempting to evoke strong emotional responses among their

Direct correspondence to Chris Erl, Department of Geography and Centre for the Study of Demo- cratic Citizenship, McGill University, 805 rue Sherbrooke Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, H3A 0B9, Canada [email protected]. The author would like to thank Benjamin Forest (Department of Geog- raphy and Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship, McGill University) and the paper’s reviewers for their comments and guidance. SOCIAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY C 2020 by the Southwestern Social Science Association DOI: 10.1111/ssqu.12889 2 Social Science Quarterly followers (Kissas, 2020; Peetz, 2019). The adoption of “thin populism” can serve as a way for those with elite backgrounds to lead movements seemingly against their own interests (Jagers and Walgrave, 2007; Oliver and Rahn, 2016). The two major RWP movements that disrupted the Canadian political scene in the past decade—Ford Nation and the Peo- ple’s Party of Canada (PPC)—provide an opportunity for a comparative analysis between how two RWP movements can espouse differing core ideologies and appeal to distinct electoral bases. Ford Nation is a self-bestowed moniker referring to the Ford family and their support- ers. Beginning in the mid-1990s from their base in suburban Toronto, the Fords have campaigned on what they call a customer-service-oriented, small government, and pop- ulist platform (Ford and Ford, 2016). While finding early success at the municipal level in Toronto, Ford Nation has become a fixture in Ontario’s provincial politics, with the move- ment’s de facto leader, , becoming the Progressive Conservative (PC) Premier of Ontario in June 2018. The success of Ford Nation has come, in large part, by drawing on the support of working-class suburbanites in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA), many of whom are recent immigrants (Doolittle, 2014). The PPC is an electoral project begun by former Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) cabinet minister Maxime Bernier. Established in the lead-up to the 2019 Canadian Fed- eral Election, the party garnered considerable media attention and ran candidates in 315 of Canada’s 338 electoral constituencies. Despite this, the PPC earned only slightly over 1.6 percent of total votes cast and failed to secure any seats in Parliament. After the election, the Canadian media derided the PPC as a ‘vanity project’ that failed because “Bernier’s brand of populism was just too extreme, particularly when it came to his views on immi- gration” (Quan, 2019: no page numbers). From a classical political geographic perspective, the two movements appear to share a common space on the electoral map. As shown in Figure 1, the two movements did well in the same areas, specifically the working-class, postwar suburbs of Toronto. Nonetheless, analyses of survey data show that they have distinct bases of support. Moreover, their leaders advance distinct brands of populism. While Bernier draws heavily on a blend of libertarian, nativist, and antimigrant rhetoric, the Fords rely on a neoliberal, “common sense politics” message. Ford Nation attempts to exploit Canada’s rural/suburban/urban divide, highlighting the geographic cleavages in the GTHA while enthusiastically soliciting the votes of recent immigrants (Silver, Taylor, and Calderón-Figueroa, 2020). In contrast, Bernier’s PPC focuses libertarian economics while simultaneously making passionate defenses of settler colonial heritage and the preservation of “Western civilization,” borrowing rhetoric from the “civilizationist–nationalist” RWP parties of northern and western Europe (Brubaker, 2017a). This leads to a natural question: who are the supporters behind each movement? While scholars have examined the electorate supporting Ford Nation, particularly those who el- evated to the office of Mayor of Toronto (see Kipfer and Saberi, 2014; Kiss, Perrella, and Spicer, 2019; Silver, Taylor, and Calderón-Figueroa, 2020; Walks, 2015), the relative recent origin of the PPC has not allowed for any analyses of its supporters. Using the conceptualization of populism as a thin ideology to which distinct economic and social policy specifics can be added, I posit that the bases of support for the two move- ments and their leaders—Maxime Bernier as the leader of the PPC and Doug Ford as the de facto leader of Ford Nation—are, while sharing some commonalities, demographi- cally and ideologically distinct. Framing populism as a thin ideology helps to explain why movements of an ostensibly similar ideological outlook can sound so different and appeal to such distinct electorates. The “Thick” and the “Thin” of Right-Wing 3 FIGURE 1 Doug Ford’s 2014 Mayoral Vote and the PPC’s 2019 Toronto-Based Vote Aggregated to the City’s Forward Sortation Areas. 4 Social Science Quarterly I draw on data from two surveys of potential voters: the 2014 Toronto Election Study, focused on the city’s municipal election in which Doug Ford was a mayoral candidate, and the 2019 Canadian Election Study, which marked the first appearance of PPC can- didates on a general election ballot (McGregor, Moore, and Stephenson, 2014; Stephen- son et al., 2020). I find that, while the PPC and Ford Nation share ideological common ground, there are differences in the demographic composition of their supporters. Those indicating support of the PPC are decidedly more male, less wealthy, are dissatisfied with Canadian democracy, pessimistic about the economy, and maintain a dislike of feminists. Ford Nation supporters, alternatively, are less educated, foreign-born, living in less dense neighborhoods, and have a negative perspective toward immigrants. On issues-based ques- tions, PPC supporters and those behind Ford Nation defy expectations, warranting further analysis.

Thin Right-Wing Populism and Its Supporters

RWP has seen a global resurgence in the last decade, from the 2010 election of Viktor Orban’s Fidez in Hungary to Jair Bolsonaro’s assumption of the Brazilian presidency in 2019. In the year 2016 alone, the success of the Brexit Referendum, the election of Ro- drigo Duterte as President of the Philippines, and the election of Donald J. Trump to the presidency of the United States helped to fundamentally reshape the global order and show a tangible result of the global electorate’s fascination with populist campaigns (Norris and Inglehart, 2019). Recent scholarship asserts that populism is a “thin-centred ideology” consisting primarily of opposition to institutionalism and the promotion of the “will of the people” (Guderjan and Wilding, 2018; Mudde, 2007; Stanley, 2008). Consequently, populist movements can advocate a spectrum of economic or social positions in their political programs (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2008; Laclau, 2005). Populism, while maintaining some coherent com- mon principles—namely, an antipathy toward elites—is more an ideological addendum to other kinds of political ideologies. In this, populism can be understood as Neuner and Wratil note, a “valence” (Neuner and Wratil, 2020.: no page numbers). Thin populism thus consists of “the enactment of the political subjectivity of the people through the emotionally driven recontextualization of certain, pre-existing meanings of a people and its enemies” (Kissas, 2020:269). This can help to explain why populist leaders often have little in common with their supporters, aside from their rhetoric and emotive style (Jagers and Walgrave, 2007; Oliver and Rahn, 2016). Participants believe that they are part of a movement to save or restore their nation, accompanied by fervent support for the movement’s leader (Canovan, 1999). Populist leaders may, in calling for the suppression of a small group of elites, advo- cate for “democracy” but understand that as returning political sovereignty to a differ- ent limited group of insiders. Populism is sometimes contrasted to liberal democratic practices but is not necessarily a wholesale rejection of democracy. Rather, it may in- volve “a transmutation of democratic principles,” even when movements use antidemo- cratic principles and rhetoric (Urbinati, 2019:118). This transmutation occurs within a social space—defined most notably by Brubaker (2017b)—as one characterized by con- flicts, both vertical and horizontal, over the soul of the nation. The vertical opposi- tion establishes a three-sided conflict. The first side is a valorized “people,” imbued with morally correct qualities (where populist leaders position themselves). The two opposing sides—particularly to RWP movements—are distinct, but both stand in opposition to said The “Thick” and the “Thin” of Right-Wing Populism in Canada 5 “people.” Above is a wealthy, educated, entrenched elite, while a parasitic, disorderly un- derclass of moral turpitude dwells below. “The people,” in this narrative, must battle the elites who pander to and unfairly reward the underclass who, in return, keep them in power against the will of the previously “silent majority.” Simultaneously, a horizontal opposition pits “the people” (as insiders) against nefarious outside forces such as globaliza- tion, religious and cultural minorities, and political reformers, each of which threatens a mythologized way of being “the people” aim to conserve. The insider/outsider conflict is present in both Canadian populist movements, though is presented differently in each. Bernier’s nativist rhetoric characterizes supporters as brow- beaten patriots, under threat from “cancellation” and political correctness, and calls for them to rally to the cause of “Western civilization.” In contrast, Doug Ford appeals to tax-conscious suburbanites in the GTHA who reluctantly endure urban life for its benefits while venerating a mythical “real Canadian” rurality distinct from the “downtown elites” with their “special interests.” The framework of thin populism is useful for understanding the ideological diversity of populist movements and their leaders and, thus, raises questions regarding the social bases of each movement’s support. Agnew and Shin (2020) argue that voters, dissatisfied with “politics-as-usual,” are inspired by “ungrounded” politics on social media and by charis- matic leaders, fueling contemporary populism. Some studies suggest that RWP movements in particular have been able to emphasize their populist veneer and capitalize on voter dis- satisfaction arising from the similarity in policy positions of center-right and center-left parties and a disconnect between social and political elites and those in the working class (Agnew and Shin, 2020; Mckenzie, 2017). Yet key questions remain: What makes individ- uals more or less likely to support populist movements? Are there consistent factors related to populist support, or does an underlying thick ideology still impact support? Comparative studies suggest that gender, age, and class (specifically income and educa- tion) are consistent determinants of populist support. Norris and Inglehart (2019) argue that these associations arise from “cultural backlash” against the mid-20th-century social and political gains of women, nonwhites, and members of the queer community, as well as increased immigration and the effects of neoliberal economic policies. Men and working- class, native-born whites feel excluded culturally and left behind economically and, thus, focus their resentment on “outsiders.” RWP parties—particularly those in Europe—are typically led by, represented by, and supported by men (Mudde and Kaltwasser, 2015:22; Wurthmann et al., 2020). Previ- ous RWP movements in Canada of varying core ideologies have also been dominated by men (Finkel, 1993; Gidengil et al., 2005). Some of the most visible RWP social move- ments, such as the white supremacist “Alt-Right” (which the Canadian media reported as gravitating toward the PPC), the “western chauvinist” Proud Boys organization, and the antigovernment libertarian “boogaloo” movement similarly appeal to young—and male— supporters (Beran, 2020; DeCook, 2018; Grant and MacDonald, 2020; Hawley, 2017; Kamel, Patriquin, and Picazo, 2019; SPLC, 2020). Such appeals resonate with nationalist ideologies that emphasize traditional patriarchal gender relations and hostility to feminism and stand in opposition to the liberal, pluralist values purportedly advanced by elites. Class remains one of the most striking indicators of support. Working-class and low- income groups across Europe and the Americas have formed the core of RWP movements (Bornschier and Kriesi, 2012; Robert Ford and Goodwin, 2010; Han, 2016; Mudde, 2018). Lower education is also associated with affinity for such movements (Gidron and Hall, 2017; Spruyt, Keppens, and Van Droogenbroeck, 2016). Indeed, leaders often use anti-intellectualism as a tool, clumping elites and the educated together and encouraging 6 Social Science Quarterly a rejection of the “experts” and a reliance on one’s “gut and leader” (Merkley, 2020). Jaffe (2020) notes that there are racial, linguistic, citizenship, sexual, and regional cleavages within class groupings, but income and education remain important factors in the shift toward RWP parties and movements. Urban–rural (or urban–rural/suburban) differences, particularly as tied to economic anxiety, are a fourth factor. RWP support is notably higher in less dense and more sub- urban/rural areas. Homeowning working- and middle-class residents of lower-density ar- eas are strong supporters of parties such as Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland and the Netherlands’ Partij voor de Vrijheid, and enthusiastically supported the Leave side in the 2016 UK EU referendum (Robert Ford and Goodwin, 2017; Lees, 2018; van Gent, Jansen, and Smits, 2014). In Canada, Ford Nation’s base of support also lies among home- owning suburbanites around the downtown cores of the GTHA (Kipfer and Saberi, 2014). McGregor and Spicer (2016) note that homeowners are more active in local politics and that they tend to be more conservative due to concern for property values, making them an electorate primed for populist movements attacking elites and government waste. While cultural backlash accounts for the role of gender, class, and urbanism, there is a more complicated relationship between religion, religiosity, and RWP movements. Euro- pean RWP movements often co-opt religious imagery to underpin their insider/outsider rhetoric or to contrast the present’s moral degeneracy with a virtuous past, though religios- ity (having deeply held religious beliefs) is not a consistent predictor of support (Arzheimer and Carter, 2009; Huber and Yendell, 2019; Molle, 2019). In North America, however, Evangelical Christianity is closely associated with support for RWP movements (Guth, 2019; Malloy, 2011). While Bernier, Ford, and their associated movements are both populist, the “thick” ide- ologies onto which their brands of populism have been appended differ. Bernier’s populism focuses on his own unique pseudo-libertarian beliefs while highlighting ethno-national differences and emphasizing the threat of non-Western, “non-Canadian” outsiders. Ford’s neoliberal populism focuses on economic issues, playing to the anxieties and frustrations of low- and middle-income homeowners without much attention to ethno-national identity. In this analysis, I evaluate four hypotheses to test previous claims regarding those support- ing populism and how each movement’s appended “thick” ideologies impact support: • Hypothesis 1: Demographically, support for both the PPC and Ford Nation will be as- sociated with respondents who resemble the traditional voters behind populist move- ments: men, younger people, those with lower incomes, those with less education, and those residing in rural/suburban areas. • Hypothesis 2: Supporters of the PPC are more likely to be native born and will express hostility to immigrants and women. • Hypothesis 3: Ford Nation voters will identify urbanites and “elites” as their princi- pal antagonists, and it is unlikely that they will be native born or show hostility to immigrants. • Hypothesis 4: Non-Christian religious affiliation (Islam and Hinduism) will be nega- tively and positively associated with PPC and Ford Nation support, respectively.

Right-Wing Populism in Canada

RWP movements have, historically, helped shape Canadian politics. Rural movements, like the Social Credit Party (SoCreds) and the Reform Party/Canadian Alliance, were led by dynastic families and sprung from areas dominated by agrarian and resource-extraction The “Thick” and the “Thin” of Right-Wing Populism in Canada 7 interests. Each featured a notable working-class contingent, serving as outlets for a wide ar- ray of the population’s frustration at perceived economic and political exclusion (Conway, 1979; Harrison, 1995; Knopff, 1998; Macpherson, 1962; Patten, 1996). These move- ments produced dynamic populist leaders and the Reform Party/Canadian Alliance would be the dominant partner in the establishment of the CPC in 2004. Contemporary RWP movements outside Ford Nation and the PPC have been limited to the minor People’s Alliance of New Brunswick, which was able to elect two members to the 49-seat provin- cial Legislative Assembly in 2020 (Bissett, 2020), and to fringe far-right, white nationalist groups and candidates. The political histories of the Fords and of Maxime Bernier are similar, though their approaches and consistency differ. Ford Nation is a political dynasty, built from the suburbs of Toronto in the late 1990s. Inspired to run by his father—a provincial politician in his own right—Rob Ford would first be elected to in 2000 for the constituency of Ward 2–Etobicoke North (DeMara, 2000). Doug Ford would be elected to the same seat in 2010. Bernier is also a member of a political family; the PPC leader’s father was a PC MP for the same electoral constituency to which his son would later be elected (Harris, 2018). Both the Fords and Bernier have a penchant for generating controversy. Rob Ford was in- famous for his city council speaches that ranged from blaming cyclists for their own deaths after being struck by cars to comments like “Those Oriental people work like dogs…I’m telling you, Oriental people, they’re slowly taking over…” (“Grant it to him, Ford is un- bowed,” 2006; James, 2008:A06; Porter, 2007). Rob’s mayoralty remains characterized by his infamous admission that he smoked crack cocaine while in office (Doolittle, 2014; Kennedy and Valleriani, 2017; Kipfer and Saberi, 2014). Doug faced allegations during his mayoral campaign that he sold hashish while a teenager (Caruana et al., 2017; McArthur and Kari, 2013). For his part, Bernier, once a stanch libertarian, began a right-ward ideo- logical drift after his failed bid to lead the CPC (Rabson, 2018). In August 2018, Bernier took to Twitter to expound upon his new political philosophy, tweeting opposition to multiculturalism, Canada’s immigration levels, and tweeting: “I hereby officially declare the death of political correctness in Canada. ∗∗∗ Je déclare officiellement la mort de la rectitude politique au Canada.” (Bernier, 2018a, 2018b, 2018c). The voters of Ford Nation are drawn to the thin populism Rob and Doug have layered onto a classical Canadian neoliberal platform, appealing to what they call “common people all across the city” (Ford and Ford, 2016:107). In attacking downtown elites, cyclists, and local unions, the Fords create an elite class within the city, responsible for waste, civic bloat, and tax increases. Their anti-institutionalism is focused on the local bureaucracy and “career” politicians, despite both their own ambitions, career paths, and family dynasty. Doug summarized Ford Nation’s populist message in 2014 when he tweeted: “John Tory [Ford’s centre-right opponent] is out of touch with the common person. I will work hard for everyday people across all of #Toronto. #VoteTO” (D. Ford, 2014). Bernier, in contrast, launched the PPC by sparking a debate on Canadian multicul- turalism, long held as a key component of Canadian identity (Ivison, 2018). During the election campaign, Bernier and the PPC campaigned against multiculturalism and immi- gration, with billboards erected in Canadian cities imploring voters to “Say No to Mass Immigration.” The PPC aimed to draw the battle lines in an election culture war that, to their disadvantage, never materialized (Truelove, 2019). While Bernier’s PPC was the very real manifestation of anti-institutionalism, eschewing Canada’s conventional politi- cal parties for a new populist alternative, the “;silent majority” he aimed to mobilize to 8 Social Science Quarterly “save” Canadian culture did not exist and Canadian voters had little interest in his nativist messaging. If the supporters of each movement are responding both to the thin populism and thick traditional ideologies of Bernier and the Fords, Hypotheses 2, 3, and 4 will reflect this. Bernier’s “civilizationist–nationalist” populism will elicit a response among PPC support- ers of hostility toward feminists and immigrants. Ford’s “municipal common sense” pop- ulism will generate less antipathy toward such groups, as their focus will be on government waste and taxes. Bernier’s Islamophobic rhetoric and Ford Nation’s active pursuit of new Canadian support will result in their support among members of the Muslim and Hindu communities being low for the PPC and high for Ford Nation.

Data and Methods

To test these hypotheses, I used two large-N, Internet-administered surveys: the 2014 Toronto Election Study (TES) and the 2019 Canadian Election Study (CES). Core so- ciodemographic and opinion questions on both surveys were either identical or case-based variations of the same general question, allowing for comparative analyses. The main de- pendent variable is likely voters who indicated that they would support their local PPC candidate in the 2019 federal election (on the CES) or mayoral candidate Doug Ford in Toronto’s 2014 municipal election (on the TES). As these are binary variables (supporter or not), all analyses used logistic regression models. There are some differences in support between the surveys and final vote totals, although in opposite directions. Among respondents to the 2019 CES, 2.27 percent indicated they would support the PPC, while the party received 1.62 percent of the vote across Canada. In the 2014 TES, 26.84 percent of respondents indicated they would cast a ballot for Doug Ford in the mayoral election, which is lower than the 33.73 percent of the popular vote he received. Thus, survey responses overpredict electoral support for the PPC and underpredict it for Ford. Three sets of models were run. Two initial sets were run to compare the support for the PPC and Ford Nation with their competitors. For the PPC, these were the incumbent Liberal Party, opposition CPC, and the left-wing (NDP). For Ford Nation, these were Ford’s two main mayoral opponents: the center-right, PC-affiliated John Tory, and the progressive, NDP-affiliated Olivia Chow. The primary set (set A) fo- cused on supporters of the PPC and Ford Nation to understand the differences between those standing behind each populist movement. In set A, model 1 considers sociodemographic variables: age, gender, education, religios- ity (identification with a religious tradition), immigrant status, annual household after-tax income, sexuality, and homeownership. Three distinct religious variables are also included: Catholic, Muslim, and Hindu. These models provide a portrait of each party’s or candi- date’s supporters, allowing comparison of contemporary populist supporters in other coun- tries and historically in Canada. Model 2 includes the population density, median income, and ethnic population share of respondents’ neighborhood (White, South Asian, Chinese, and Black). Forward Sortation Areas (FSA), derived from Canadian postal codes, are used as a proxy for neighborhoods, and provides census data for these units. Model 2 has been included because, within political geography, scholars have argued that contextual effects have an impact on voter behaviour and opinions (Forest, 2018; Walks, 2006). Model 3 adds opinion-based variables: self-reported ideology on a left–right ideo- logical scale, level of dissatisfaction with democracy, belief that the economy has become The “Thick” and the “Thin” of Right-Wing Populism in Canada 9 FIGURE 2 Results of the Logistic Regression Model for Ford Nation Supporters.

worse in the last year, and feelings toward racial minorities in general, immigrants, and feminists.

Results and Discussion

The initial sets (results not shown) helped evaluate the effect of the independent vari- ables on support parties and mayoral candidates, and the results are similar to prior research for the former (Fournier et al., 2013; Gauvin, Chhim, and Medeiros, 2016). Set A (full results in the Appendix) provides a comparison between supporters of the PPC and Doug Ford as a mayoral candidate. Age is the only variable that remains significant across all three models, showing an in- verse relationship to support. Support for both the PPC and Ford is also associated with a right-wing orientation. The effect of other variables, both demographic and opinion, indi- cates that the two movements are distinct forms of RWP,and that the PPC is similar to the “classic” European RWP model. PPC support is associated with male respondents, while gender has no influence on Ford support, indicating that the PPC is characteristic of other contemporary federal RWP movements in Canada, which are supported by younger men (Gidengil et al., 2005). As shown in Figure 2, the PPC, but not Ford supporters, showed significant hostility toward feminism, indicating a patriarchal attitude and/or a backlash against progressive social values common in other RWP movements (Kamel, Patriquin, and Picazo, 2019). Further, Bernier’s unique blend of nativism and libertarianism focused on unincumbered egalitarianism and, thus, signaled that “special privileges” for women would be ended. Bernier’s Twitter comments on providing free menstrual products, while 10 Social Science Quarterly FIGURE 3 Results of the Logistic Regression Model for PPC Supporters.

couched in his libertarianism, were also notably anti-feminist in their presentation (Teitel, 2019). Similarly, lower-income respondents were more likely to support the PPC, as were those who were dissatisfied with democracy and who believed that the economy had worsened in the prior year. The first two of these factors were not significant for Ford supporters, and indeed, his support was associated with an optimistic assessment of the economy. Additionally, as shown in Figure 3, there was negative relationship with population density for Ford support. The independent effect of urban–suburban differences again suggests that Ford’s focus on “downtown elites” had a measurable impact on the nature of his support. The effects of education, Muslim identity, and population density all suggest that Bernier’s and Ford’s brands of populism helped create distinctions between their support- ers. Education is negatively related and significant across all three models for Ford support but drops out for PPC supporters with the addition of the final set of ideological vari- ables. Unlike Bernier, Ford’s populism featured contempt for higher education, suggesting that at least this element had an independent effect from ideology and opinion. Support among respondents with some university education or above remained negatively related to Ford, which may at least partly reflect his mockery of higher education. Ford, who dropped out of community college after finding himself “bored silly in the lectures” (Ford and Ford, 2016:92), has been consistently critical of universities and actively encourages young people to not pursue a university education during visits to high schools. General religiosity has positive, significant effects in models 1 and 2 for both Ford and PPC supporters, but the effect of specific religions is mixed. In the first two models, Mus- lim respondents have a strong negative relationship to PPC support, while there was no The “Thick” and the “Thin” of Right-Wing Populism in Canada 11 significant effect among Hindu and Catholic respondents. Much like Ford’s treatment of higher education, Bernier’s hostility toward Islam was one of the central features of his performance. He used his Twitter account to reference the dangers of “Islamism” on 20 occasions in the year before the election. At the party’s annual convention in August 2019, Bernier stated that the PPC was the only party in Canada that would stand against the “Islamist Menace” (Raj, 2019:no page number). In two distinct incidents during the 2019 federal election campaign, Bernier also pledged his support for PPC candidates who expressed Islamophobic sentiments online (CBC Windsor, 2019). Nonetheless, Muslim identity becomes insignificant once the final set of variables is taken into account. Figures 2 and 3 show that attitudes toward racial minorities had no effect on support for either the PPC or Ford, which perhaps hints at a distinction between RWP movements in Canada and elsewhere. Unlike many other movements, outsiders are not constructed in ex- plicitly racial terms, although the possible explanations for that are beyond the scope of this analysis. Attitudes toward immigrants also show unexpected patterns: It has no significant association with PPC support despite the Islamophobic nature of Bernier, but is negatively related to Ford. Support for European RWP parties has strong anti-immigrant sentiments, making the PPC distinct in this respect. Conversely, immigrants form a significant part of the Ford Nation’s political base. Anecdotes from the 2010 Toronto mayoral election help shed light on this apparent contradiction. During a debate on immigration, Rob Ford (for whom Doug served as a campaign advisor) noted that the city should stop taking in immigrants to focus on those already living in Toronto (Cohn, 2010). Purportedly, following the debate, the Ford cam- paign was “inundated with calls and emails. They were messages of support– many from immigrants,” (Doolittle, 2014:107). Anti-immigrant sentiments among immigrants may arise from a gatekeeping effect, with immigrants reflecting on their own situation and per- ceiving more recent immigrants of having “an easier time.” As Vitale notes, there may be a desire on the part of some immigrants to “achieve whiteness by encouraging the exclusion of new immigrants” (2018:179). Conservative viewpoints have been identified in immi- grant communities in Canada, particularly among South Asian Canadians, and the CPC has engaged in an aggressive campaign to incorporate them into their fold (Kwak, 2019). Other scholars have built on this, noting that conservatives in Canada do well when they emphasize hard work, independence, and opposition to vague “un-Canadian” values, but falter when they explicitly state which values they oppose, as was the case in 2015 when the CPC proposed screening immigrants for “Canadian values” (Tolley, 2017). Doug Ford may have gathered more support from those in opposition to immigration than Bernier precisely because of their underlying ideologies. Doug Ford’s neoliberalism allowed pop- ulist voters to indicate they were supporting a free-enterprise, pro-self-sufficiency candi- date, while Bernier’s nativism may have repelled the same voters for its bluntness.

Conclusion

Building on the work of Guderjan and Wilding (2018), Mudde (2007), and Neuner and Wratil (2020), among others, I considered the conceptualization of populism as a thin ideology that can be appended to thicker existing ideologies in the context of the two most prominent RWP movements in Canada during the 2010s. Though I posited that support for the PPC and Ford Nation would be associated with demographically similar com- munities, the analysis did not support my first hypothesis, indicating that the underlying thick ideologies to which each movement appended a thin vale of populism still matter. 12 Social Science Quarterly While PPC supporters were more male and low-income, Ford Nation supporters were less educated, foreign-born, and reside in less dense communities. Indeed, there was little sig- nificant overlap between the demographic compositions of each movement’s supporters. My fourth hypothesis was similarly challenged, as non-Christian religious affiliation was negatively associated with the PPC, though this lost significance when ideological variables were included and never held significance for support for Ford Nation. Most interesting were the challenges to my second and third hypotheses. While PPC supporters were more likely to hold a negative impression of feminists, there was no sig- nificance in their feelings toward immigrants or racial minorities. Ford Nation supporters, alternatively, held negative views of immigrants despite the close relationship between mi- grant status and support for the Fords, challenging my third hypothesis. Similar to the arguments of Kwak (2019) and Tolley (2017), I posit that this may be due to the core ideology behind the populism advanced by each movement. Bernier’s overt appeals to na- tivism sat less well with the Canadian public compared with the neoliberal, “boot-straps and hard work” message advanced by Ford Nation. The thinness of populism is on full display in the contrasts between the supporters of the PPC and Ford Nation. These contrasts reflect the differing approaches to populism and core ideological addendums of Bernier and Doug Ford. These unique brands of RWP appeal to different segments of an electorate united by a shared orientation on the political spectrum. While I found only uneven support for my four hypotheses, the distinctness of each movement’s supporters, specifically the demographic differences between the sup- porters of the PPC and Ford Nation, indicates that the core ideologies of Doug Ford and Maxime Bernier mattered, targeting different segments of the right-wing electorate. Doug Ford’s “common sense” neoliberal populism appeals to taxpaying suburbanites by attack- ing urbanites and intellectuals. This stands in stark contrast to the PPC. Despite the star power of Maxime Bernier, a prominent former cabinet minister with a Trumpian affin- ity for social media controversy, the party appealed to an electorate that was not large or influential enough to provide the party the votes needed to enter Parliament. The notion of populism as a thin-centered ideology is a compelling theorization of the larger movement. As this consideration of the two predominant RWP movements in Canada during the 2010s shows, populism as a thin vale can be appended to significantly different thick ideologies, which can appeal to distinct electorates and provide varying electoral results.

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Appendix

TABLE A1 The Results of Logit Models Holding PPC or Ford Nation Support as a Dependent Variable and a Host of Characteristics, Opinions, and Community Identifiers as Independent Variables

PPC Sup- Ford Nation PPC Sup- Ford Nation PPC Sup- Ford Nation porters Supporters porters Supporters porters Supporters Coef. Coef. Coef. Coef. Coef. Coef.

Age −0.02∗∗∗ −0.02∗∗∗ −0.02∗∗∗ −0.02∗∗∗ −0.02∗∗∗ −0.01∗∗∗ Gender (female) −0.53∗∗∗ −0.2∗∗∗ −0.56∗∗∗ −0.17 −0.41∗∗∗ 0.06 Some university −0.40∗∗∗ −0.87∗∗∗ −0.34∗∗∗ −0.79∗∗∗ 0.01 −0.59∗∗∗ and above Religious 0.27∗∗∗ 0.47∗∗∗ 0.26∗∗∗ 0.38∗∗∗ −0.01 0.22 Catholic −0.19 0.27∗∗∗ −0.2∗∗∗ 0.27∗∗∗ −0.15 0.23 Muslim −1.16∗∗∗ −0.09 −1.10∗∗∗ −0.13 −0.82 0.22 Hindu 0.25 −0.22 0.36 −0.24 0.73∗∗∗ −0.23 Canadian born 0.22 −0.51∗∗∗ 0.14 −0.45∗∗∗ 0.22 −0.38∗∗∗ Income over −0.50∗∗∗ −0.03 −0.47∗∗∗ −0.01 −0.46∗∗∗ −0.11 $60,000 Queer 0.04 −0.80∗∗∗ 0.05 −0.74∗∗∗ 0.03 −0.47∗∗∗ Homeowner 0.25∗∗∗ 0.33∗∗∗ 0.21∗∗∗ 0.19 0.17 0.1 FSA density per −0.05∗∗∗ −0.37∗∗∗ −0.01 −0.29∗∗∗ km2 FSA median −0.23 −0.25 −0.83∗∗∗ −0.39 after-tax household income FSA % not −0.01 −0.02∗∗∗ −0.01 −0.02 visible minority FSA % South −0.01 −0.02∗∗∗ −0.02 −0.02 Asian Continued 18 Social Science Quarterly TABLE A1 Continued

PPC Sup- Ford Nation PPC Sup- Ford Nation PPC Sup- Ford Nation porters Supporters porters Supporters porters Supporters Coef. Coef. Coef. Coef. Coef. Coef.

FSA % Chinese −0.02 −0.01 −0.02 −0.01 FSA % Black −0.02 0 −0.04 0 Ideology (1 0.22∗∗∗ 0.22∗∗∗ Left–10 Right) Dissatisfied with 0.37∗∗∗ 0.02 democracy Belief that the 0.23∗∗∗ −0.52∗∗∗ economy has become worse Opinion on −0.07 0.1 minorities Opinion on −0.09 −1.41∗∗∗ immigrants Opinion on −0.94∗∗∗ −0.39 feminists cons −2.47 0.17 1.3 7.66 5.97 8.71 N 22,079 1,742 22,000 1,652 14,621 1,385 Pseudo-R2 0.03 0.06 0.03 0.09 0.1 0.17

∗∗∗ ∗∗ NOTE: p < 0.01; p < 0.05.