Quebec Municipal Elections 2017

[DL]

Would be pleasantly surprised if Coderre loses.

That poll strikes me as very bad news for Coderre. Normally an incumbent mayor is a shoe-in for re-election. For him to be at just 30% is very very bad, true he has a 5% lead, but that leaves a very large proportion who are not sure they want to re-elect him...and he has an incalculable advantage in name recognition compared to Valerie Plante...she likely has no where to go but up.

[DL]

When Coderre refers derisively to Projet Montreal as “that clan from the Plateau”, it can’t be very helpful to candidates running under Coderre’s banner in the Plateau

[DL]

One thing to keep in mind is that these polls also have an impact on city council races. If the mayoral vote is very close, it suggests that even if Coderre eeks out a win, his party would likely suffer major losses to Projet Montreal on council

[DL]

I don't actually know enough about the municipal governance structure in Montreal to know what powers the mayor has as an executive and how much of his agenda is stymied by council etc... Would it be a French-style co-habitation that would happen when Chirac was President and the left controlled parliament?

[DL]

Does the "Coalition" even really exist as anything more than a paper party in Montreal? Seems to me that given how many people are likely to vote a straight party line ticket we are really witnessing a return to the old two party system in Montreal:

Projet Montreal = left of centre, new version of the old MCM from the 70s/80s, mostly NDP, QS and left leaning Liberals and pequistes (such that they exist)
Equipe Denis Coderre = right of centre, new version of Drapeau's Civic Party, business elite, corrupt Tammany Hall type Liberals, CAQuistes and federal Tories

[DL]

Duceppe endorses Coderre. 

That should help shore up Valerie Plante's support among anglophones and allophones!

[DL]

That's not true at all. John Tory's majority on council is made up almost exclusively of suburban councillors - he systematically excludes any downtown councillors from having any say in anything and won't let any of them even sit on the public works committee. Under Tory and before him under Ford, Toronto has been run by and for the suburbs and downtown has been screwed every step of the way