The Conservative Party mustn't sound like the old man on the park bench who says things were better in 1985, or 1955, or 1855.

-George Osborne



The Conservative Party has something that no other political party in Canada has: a defined, loyal and highly cohesive base with almost no second choice party to vote for.

Polling over the last few elections has shown that Liberal Party supporters often have the NDP as their second choice while NDP supporters often have the Liberal Party listed as their second choice. The competition for non-conservative voters has become increasingly more complicated with the emergence of the Green Party.

While more people than not do not identify with the Conservative Party, the Tories know who their supporters are, where they are, what matters to them and how they can be reached in order to get them to the polls.

When you look at the percentage of the vote the Conservative Party was able to obtain over the last few elections, an interesting trend presents itself:

2004: 29.6%

2006: 36.3%

2008: 37.6%

2011: 39.6%

2015: 31.9%

On average, the Tories could usually count on the support of roughly 7 in every 20 voters.

This relatively consistent level of support from election to election provokes two major questions:

Who makes up the Conservative Party base? And more importantly:

What do they care about?

This blog entry looks at how conservatives view different public policy issues along gender and regional lines. The next entry will focus on how conservatives view those same issues along age and educational lines.

Generally speaking, we know from historical polling trends that Conservative Party base tends to skew towards men, those who are above the age of 65, those who are married, those who live outside of major urban downtown cores, those who own their homes and those who live in Ontario and Alberta.

Geography aside, we know these demographics have higher probabilities of showing up to vote - great news if you’re a Tory strategist. There’s a small but growing problem though: as demographics shift, the Tories will be unable to draw water from the same well election after election. The party will, at some point in the near future, have to grow the tent as opposed to turning out their base.

In the interim, they still have an electoral advantage.

So what do Tories care about?

The 2015 Canadian Election Study asked voters whether the government should spend more, less or about the same as now on seven major public policy realms.

This is how conservatives overall viewed government spending: