About EKOS Politics

We launched this website in order to showcase our election research, and our suite of polling technologies including Probit and IVR. We will be updating this site frequently with new polls, analysis and insight into Canadian politics. EKOS's experience, knowledge and sophisticated research designs have contributed positively to many previous elections.

Other EKOS Products

In addition to current political analysis, EKOS also makes available to the public general research of interest, including research in evaluation, general public domain research, as well as a full history of EKOS press releases.

Media Inquires

For media inquires, please contact: Frank Graves President EKOS Research Associates t: 613.235-7215 [email protected]

Liberals and Conservatives in Dead Heat

[Ottawa – May 13, 2022] The Conservative leadership race has done little to break stalemate in the federal horserace. At 32 points, the Liberal Party holds a statistically insignificant, fraction-of-a-point lead over the Conservative Party. At 20 points, the NDP is in a distance third place. Interestingly, the People’s Party is down four points from January, suggesting that the media attention on leadership candidates such as Pierre Poilievre and Leslyn Lewis may be drawing the party’s supporters back into the Conservative fold. [More...]

Northern Populism

The following presentation was delivered by Frank Graves to Massey College at the University of Toronto on November 27, 2019. [More...]

Increased Polarization on Attitudes to Immigration Reshaping the Political Landscape in Canada

[Ottawa – April 15, 2019] In Canada, attitudes to immigration have never been a critical ballot booth issue. Unlike in America or Europe, where they have been deeply divisive the differences in Canada have been more moderate and there has been a political agreement on a broadly open policy on immigration. There have been significant differences across partisan boundaries, but they have not shaped election outcomes in a significant manner. This may be changing in important ways that reflect broader shifts in public outlook.

Our research is examining the evolution of what we have called ordered or… [More...]

Open versus Ordered

CULTURAL EXPRESSIONS OF THE NEW OUTLOOK

Please click here for the full report and data tables.

[Ottawa – October 10, 2017] There has been a fair bit of debate about whether the core drivers of the new populism are economic or cultural in nature. This latest version of what we used to call materialism or idealism is an important but unsolvable riddle at this point. Did economic stagnation and despair beget rising xenophobia and nativism or were these cultural expressions really the prime mover. Our sense is that both are equally important but the… [More...]

How the Yawning Chasm across Conservative and Progressive Canada Masks the Real Prospects for Harper’s Conservatives

RECONSIDERING THE ROLE OF VALUES AND EMOTIONAL ENGAGEMENT

[Ottawa – September 11, 2015] Over the past week there has been an outpouring of reactions to the Syrian refugee crisis that run from concern to horror. The searing image of the drowned three year old pushed the issue to the centre of media attention at a critical time – in the midst of a federal election campaign. The ensuing reaction to this has been a pretty broad sense that Stephen Harper’s Conservatives were emphatically on the wrong side of this and that it would have a catastrophic impact on… [More...]

Tolerance Under Pressure?

By Frank Graves

[Ottawa – March 12, 2015] Canada has been singularly successful in solving the postmodern riddle of the clash of civilizations. While Europe and America have torn themselves apart over issues of immigration and race, Canada has been remarkably spared this particular affliction. All of this may be drawing to a close.

Under the forces of growing economic and cultural insecurities linked to security and terror, we are seeing a sharp erosion of our openness to diversity and immigration. Moreover, these issues are now prominent in the rhetoric of the political parties jostling for position in… [More...]

Choosing a Better Future? – July 26, 2013

PUBLIC PREFERENCES ON LONG-TERM TRAJECTORY SHIFTS

Click here for the full report: Full Report (July 26, 2013)

[Ottawa – July 26, 2013] Consider the long term future from the perspective of the average Canadian. The short term outlook doesn’t look that bad. Fears of job loss are much lower than in the nervous nineties. The economy may have been basically stagnant since the September 11th attacks, but hey, we aren’t Spain, let alone Greece. But this might be the end of the good news. The same mythical average Canadian has experienced essentially zero real growth in income… [More...]

Immigration, Diversity, and the Political Landscape – April 19, 2013

IS THE FOREIGN-BORN VOTE SWINGING BACK TO THE LIBERALS?

[Ottawa – April 19, 2013] The two largest demographic forces in Canadian society are aging and immigration. Both of these are profoundly altering the political landscape and both of these forces have been favoured CPC fortunes in recent years. Here we will focus on how immigration is altering political fortunes of different parties and speculate as to how this augurs for the future. We will also look at attitudes to immigration itself, how this is evolving in Canada and how this links to party preference (and other factors).

Canada… [More...]

ATTITUDES TO IMMIGRATION AND VISIBLE MINORITIES

A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

[Ottawa – February 26, 2013] The topic of immigration is extremely controversial in Europe and America but typically has been a more muted concern in Canada.

In our previous release, we showed that over the past 15 years, that just as immigration and pluralism had burgeoned to make Canada more ethnically diverse than at any point in its history, attachment to ethnic group had dropped sharply and attachment to country had remained robust and much higher. In other words, as we became more diverse, ethnic identities diminished and national identity remained very strong.

There… [More...]