A survey of Jewish voters in the 2025 federal election shows that Jews were motivated by a number of issues—not just antisemitism and support for Israeli government policies.
Canadian Jews consider both national and specifically Jewish issues, including when they voted in the 2025 federal election, and there is no distinct Jewish voting bloc. That’s according to a forthcoming paper by Robert Brym, who conducted a survey based on a sample of 500 Jewish Canadians in the two weeks before the 2025 federal election, between April 15 and 26.
Brym, a University of Toronto professor emeritus of sociology and a leading researcher on Canadian Jewish life, concludes that the country’s Jewish voters do not vote only according to the “Jewish interest” as often defined by the mass media and Jewish and Israel advocacy organizations. Only about one-half of Canadian Jews consider antisemitism and shoring up Israeli government policy the top issues when they vote.
Brym found that while 50 percent of decided Jewish voters said they would vote Conservative in the weeks before the election—down from 57 percent eight months earlier—there was a 12-point swing toward the Liberals in that period, largely because of the Trump tariffs and Mark Carney assuming the leadership of the Liberal Party. The survey shows that 38 percent of decided voters supported the Liberals, with 12 percent supporting other parties.
The CJN viewed a pre-publication draft of Brym’s paper about his study of voters, which will be published in the fall in Canadian Jewish Studies/Études juives canadiennes.
The April 28 election saw the Liberals return to government for a fourth consecutive term and a third consecutive minority government. Both the Liberals and Conservatives picked up more seats than they held in the previous Parliament, while the NDP lost seats and its official party status.
In the paper, Brym shows that the voting patterns of Jewish Canadians are informed not only by the issues of combatting antisemitism at home and support for Israeli government policy, but also by issues that motivate non-Jewish Canadians.
“It seems to me that the mainstream of the Canadian Jewish community was implicitly saying during the campaign that the Conservative Party of Canada is the one expressing the Jewish interest insofar as it was most vocal protesting… the antisemitic incidents taking place in the country and support for the current Israeli government.”
However, he says, “there are other issues, such as the Trump tariffs and the leadership of the Liberal Party, that are more important to one-half of Jewish voters.”
In other words: “Jews were voting as Jews but also as Canadians. They were influenced by both [sets of issues] … [and] the people who voted for parties other than the Conservatives were more influenced by issues other than antisemitism and support for Israeli government policy,” Brym told The CJN in an interview.
Brym’s sample was drawn from the Leger Opinion Panel of around 400,000 Canadians participating in surveys for payment, and in the paper, he explains how his weighting procedure produced a roughly representative sample of the Canadian Jewish population.
The study also examines where and how Jewish voters may have helped elect Jewish members of Parliament. Here, Brym zeroes in on eight electoral districts in metropolitan Toronto, Montreal, and Winnipeg, where five Jewish candidates won their seats—all in ridings with between 6.9 and 29.5 percent Jewish populations.
Investigating what drives different Jewish Canadian voting preferences also reveals a class element to how Jewish Canadians tend to vote, Brym found.
“The survey shows that Jews who vote Conservative tend to be wealthier than those who vote for other parties. There is a class basis for the Jewish vote.”
Brym notes that between 1953 and 1983, based on polling data, nearly 63 percent of all Jewish votes in federal elections went to the Liberals. However, in the 1970s, parallel with the upward mobility of many Canadian Jews, Jewish voters started to drift toward the Conservative Party.
“There’s a long-term trend of Jews moving up the socioeconomic hierarchy and voting more Conservative, and there’s a trend for Conservative voters now to be wealthier, having a higher annual household income than people who vote for other parties. The drift toward the Conservatives happened later in Quebec than in the rest of Canada, but my interpretation is that as the social and economic standing of the Jewish community improved, Jews became more inclined to vote Conservative.”
The study also finds that religious denomination is associated with Jewish voting patterns. Jews who identify with more traditional denominations (Orthodox and Conservative) are significantly more likely to vote Conservative than are Jews who identify with less traditional denominations (Reform and Reconstructionist) and Jews who consider themselves “just Jewish,” according to Brym.
He also says that “mainstream Jewish organizations do not say explicitly that Jews should vote Conservative, but often imply as much by arguing that the Jewish community should be unified and keep antisemitism and anti-Zionism at the forefront of our minds as we vote.”
The paper cites an open letter published days before the election by Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) national board chair Elan Pratzer, who reflected on attending a screening of the movie October 8, the Nova Exhibition in Toronto, and a Yom ha-Shoah event at the city’s Congregation Shaarei Shomayim.
“In tomorrow’s election,” wrote Pratzer, “we must never lose sight of what our history makes chillingly clear: Those who target Jews ultimately make no political distinctions among us.”
The letter concludes: “May we each roll up our sleeves and step up for our Canadian Jewish community.”
When asked about a post-election survey published by JSpace Canada, Brym says both reveal similar results, even though his survey on voting intentions was conducted during the April election campaign, while the JSpace one, conducted between April 29 and May 9, asked people how they had voted.
In the JSpace survey, 42 percent of Jews said they voted Liberal and 37 percent said they voted Conservative.
Differences between the two surveys are probably due mainly to undecided voters having made up their mind between the time of the Brym survey and election day, he says.
“The numbers are slightly different,” said Brym, “but they’re not hugely different.”
Both surveys show the Jewish community does not vote uniformly for any one Canadian political party, he says.
“The heterogeneity of the election results for Jews provides evidence consistent with the argument that Canadian Jews hardly vote as anything approaching a bloc.”
