Why 'conservative' Calgary keeps electing progressive mayors

Every four years, on the day after Calgary's municipal election, political junkies across Canada suffer a collective outbreak of cognitive dissonance.

How can it be, they ask, that "conservative Calgary" has elected such a distinctly un-conservative council?

Why is it, they wonder, that Toronto's mayors are named "Rob" and "John" and Calgary's are named "Naheed" and "Jyoti"?

Just what exactly is going on out there? 

Let's be honest: Calgary has a reputation as a conservative place. When we don't live up to it — for instance, when a member of the UCP cabinet tells Calgarians on election day to "vote right" and Calgarians respond with a friendly, "No, thanks!" — Canadians elsewhere are flummoxed. 

So let's tackle this reputation. Is Calgary really all that conservative? 

The answer is yes — sort of.

It depends a lot on the issue, and the level of government. On some issues, like energy policy, Calgarians have distinctively conservative tendencies. And there's a deep connection between Calgary and the federal Conservative Party. This makes us seem — and think of ourselves as — conservative. 

But, and this is the important part vis-a-vis the cognitive dissonance we provoke, Calgarians tend to hold clearly progressive policy attitudes in municipal politics.

In short: We're "policy progressives" but "symbolic conservatives." 

Let me explain what that means and why it matters for our municipal elections.

I know, dear reader, that your appetite for social science jargon is limited. But here's just a morsel of jargon that I think is actually quite useful: the distinction between policy ideology and symbolic ideology. 

Policy ideology is the name we give to our left-wing or right-wing policy preferences. These are the left-right patterns in our actual policy views. 

Symbolic ideology is about how we think of ourselves — where we feel we belong on the left-right spectrum.