Quebec: April 7, 2014

[DL]

Good! Hopefully PQ finally wins an absolute majority.

I didn't realize you were a fan of Front nationale-style xenophobia from the PQ?

[DL]

The president of Lac-Mégantic's chamber of commerce will run for the PQ. Theatre director Lorraine Pintal will run for them in Verdun. I must say the PQ does a great job on star recruitment. PLQ is lousy there.

Being president of a chamber of commerce is not what i would call a "star candidate" - that's a pretty standard kind of background for any major party candidate running in rural Quebec.

[DL]

Gazette reporter calls Benhabib the PQ's token Muslim and implies PQ is racist. Disgusting.

Well, its true - the PQ is a racxist party that is the Quebec equivalent of LePen's Front Nationale...the xenophobic so-called "charter of Quebec values" is the most flagrant example of that.

[DL]

I am from Montreal and speak French fluently (my written French is not so hot). The PQ has always been a party grounded in ethnic nationalism and that tendency has gotten worse and worse in recent years. Any party can find a token person from a minority group the party hates - be a self-hating "Uncle Tom" or "big fish in a small pond"...when George Wallace ran his blatantly racist campaign for the US presidency he had one pathetic black man in his entourage acting like Steppin' Fetchit' and telling people that Gov. Wallace was really nice to him in person.

[DL]

I don't deny it, I'm saying than Front National comparisons are bad.

For the record, all French political parties support the France ban on all religious symbols in public institutions (including students) and integral veil is banned in public places.

I personally think it's excessive, but it shows the FN comparison is bad, and the Wallace ones are even worse. Do you really think than the situation of the Anglophones in Quebec is similar to the one of the Blacks during the Segregation Era?

No, I'm less concerned about Anglos in Quebec who can defend themselves than I am by the wave of ISLAMOPHOBIA the PQ seems to want to escalate and provoke for cynical political reasons. Btw it seems the PQ has dumped That Algerian woman as a candidate in Trois Rivière

[DL]

Appropriate considering how they started out, also gave us our youngest premier. PLQ has never thought that way and I doubt they ever will.

I thought Robert Bourassa of the PLQ was the youngest ever premier of Quebec. He was only 36 when first elected in 1970.

[DL]

Yeah, 1 in the last 60 years isn't exactly a great sample size. FWIW 308 has her at 21% on average, with the fat doctor at 40%.

Despite him being a star candidate, I doubt he will get much personnal vote (I wouldn't be surprised if he had a negative personnal vote, everytime I heard someone talking about him, it was negative. I'm not in Montreal area, but I doubt he is much more appreciated there).

It really doesn't matter, La Piniere has quite a large non-francophone minority and since those people will vote about 95% PLQ that seat will be supersafe for the Barrette. Most independents get crushed when they try to run as independents and in the case of Fatima Houda-Pepin - what few votes she gets will probably be from Pequistes who like the idea of a pro-charter ex-Liberal and who know that the PQ can never win that riding anyways.

[DL]

How many times will the Anglo media ask about an English debate?

Interestingly there are just as many franco-Ontarians as there are anglo-Quebecers and yet the francophone media in Ontario wouldn't even dream of asking Mme. Wynne, Mme. Horwath and M. Hudak to have a debate in French and if they did they would be laughed out of the room!

[DL]

More retirements: Breton and Malavoy.

Daniel Breton?? he sure didn't last long...and his riding could very easily slide over to Quebec Solidaire this time

[DL]

It could be a slippery slope though, what's next, a Mandarin debate in BC?

You know perfectly well that English and French are official languages in Canada (though only New Brunswick is officially bilingual at the provincial level) - Mandarin has no legal status in canada

[DL]

That RC/CROP poll is 36/36/17 topline and 27/26/16 MPM.

The previous CROP poll had the PQ leading by 6 points 40-34 - so this represents quite a dramatic tightening

[DL]

My guess is he won't do much talking. PQ is aiming for the CAQ vote and ignoring QS.

True. CAQ collapse is key to winning a majority. I don't see much hemorrhaging to the QS over this. QS wont be winning anything outside the island, and I can't see them picking up more than 2 seats there (if any).

Yes but its not a question of QS winning seats in its own right - what if QS candidates in swing ridings off island get 10% of the vote instead of 4-5%? that could create vote splits that hand seats to the PLQ. Also, before we get carried away about what a CAQ collapse means - let's bear in mind that CAQ has already lost between a third and a half of its votes from 2012 - and those losses appear to have split evenly between the PQ and the PLQ. Polls indicate that the remaining CAQ voters are about three times more likely to have the Liberals as their second choice than the PQ - so I don't think we should assume that a CAQ meltdown helps the PQ - its also notable that CAQ voters tend to overwhelmingly be NO voters in a hypothetical referendum

[DL]

I may be a voice in the wilderness but i still think that the Peladeau gambit will backfire and for several reasons:

1. A sliver of leftwing PQ voters disgusted by the fact that Peladeau is a rightwing fanatic will shift to Quebec Solidaire...it may not give QS any additional seats but just a couple of percentage points here and there can cost the PQ some marginal seats.

2. By making such a ringing speech in favour of complete independence for Quebec and so much media speculation on another referendum - all of a sudden the election is no longer about the charter, its no longer about the economy. Its now all about "do you want another referendum?" and "Do you want Quebec to become and independent country?"...this is very dangerous ground for the PQ - they cannot win an election just with the votes of out and out separatists. The CAQ party voters are according to polls over 80% NON voters in a hypothetical referendum and are also way more likely to have the Liberals as tbheir second choice than the PQ...if the election is all about sovereignty i think the CAQ vote will meltdown and go mostly to the Liberals.

These two ingredients could add up to a PLQ win. You heard it here.

[DL]

Laurier-Dorion contains to many allophones to go anything but PLQ - it largely overlaps Trudeau's Papineau riding...St. Marie-St. Jacques is more analogous to Mercier and is a better fit for QS

[DL]

Major news flash. New CROP poll has the Quebec Liberals pulling into the lead!

PLQ - 39% (+3)
PQ - 36% (no change)
CAQ - 13% (-4)
QS - 10% (+2)

A three point lead for the PLQ would move the Libs into a plurality of seats

[DL]

If the Liberals are even tied with the PQ in "450" (let alone ahead by 2 points) it is very very very bad news for the PQ. For them to win a majority the need to sweep 450 and not split it...Hatman, do you know what the popular vote split was in 2012 in the so-called "couronne autour de Montreal/450"?

[DL]

Thats about what I suspected...well needless to say if the PQ goes from leading the Libs by 5% in "450" to trailing them by 2% this time - it would be absolutely LETHAL to their chances of winning. Of course polls don't vote...

[DL]

Thats about what I suspected...well needless to say if the PQ goes from leading the Libs by 5% in "450" to trailing them by 2% this time - it would be absolutely LETHAL to their chances of winning. Of course polls don't vote...

Look more carefully, the PQ led the Liberals by 11. CAQ was in 2nd.

Is it my imagination or does there seem to be a pretty consistent pattern in polls of the PQ vote being stalled while the CAQ vote is shifting en masse to the Liberals?

[DL]

Now Forum Research has the Quebec Liberals surging to a 13 point lead (I'm not sure I believe it)

PLQ - 45% (+5)
PQ - 32% (-6)
CAQ - 13%
QS - 7%

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/quebec/2014/03/20/quebec_election_poll_finds_liberals_surging_over_pq_with_first_debate_tonight.html

[DL]

Some discussion about it not being weighted by language.

Yeah right - with a 13 point lead - you could disenfranchise all anglophones and the Liberals would still be ahead. I see Pequistes are starting to sound like Romney supporters grasping at straws with "Unskewed polls" (sic.)

[DL]

I sceptical of the size of the Liberal lead here but the overall trend is unmistakable - every single poll has had growing Liberal support and a drop off for the PQ Leger (=), CROP (PLQ+3), Ipsos (PLQ+5) now Forum (PLQ+13) - something is happening...just not sure how big it is.

[DL]

I have my issues with Forum but at least they offer us a poll that is telephone based and that uses some form of random digit dialling. The "reputable" polling companies - CROP and Leger use online panels (as does Ipsos)...I am not knocking online polls - but they can be "garbage in and garbage out" and we saw in BC that over-dependence on online panels can produce totally distorted results.
 

[DL]

They must have done a very disproportionate survey with a lot of weighting. They only did 300-odd surveys in Montreal out of 3,600 when the Island of Montreal is about 25% of the population of Quebec - if not more

[DL]

Its worth noting that while the Saguenay-Lac St. Jean region as a whole is a bit of a PQ stronghold and was a BQ stronghold in the past - Roberval much less so - in fact the federal riding of Roberval has a Conservative MP! Denis Lebel and it was a Creditiste stronghold from 1962 to 1980.

Nonetheless, it is not inconceivable that the PLQ could win the election and Couillard could be personally defeated in Roberval...as happened to Bourassa when he ran in Bertrand in 1985. if that happened you can be sure a PLQ MNA would quickly resign so that Premier Couillard could get a seat in a byelection.

[DL]

I guess Couillard is also following a more successful example in Jean Chretien. He insisted in running in his old home riding of St. Maurice in 1993 and onwards even though its 99% francophone and it was clear that the BQ was sweeping francophone Quebec that year...Chretien still managed to eek out a win by 500 votes in 1993 and help on subsequently though the moment he quit the seat went BQ in '04, '06 and '08 and then went NDP in 2011.

The elderly and ailing NDP MP from Montreal Lise St. Denis soon switched to the Liberals since they were OK with her not doing any work - she has already announced that she will not run again in 2015.