It is not a forecast. But it is not an impossibility. An election is always a roll of the dice. Political graveyards are full of party leaders who thought their election — or re-election — was assured.
In Quebec, by October 3, what would it take for François Legault to bite the dust? Its worst adversary is the most difficult to grasp: abstention. The latest Léger poll credits him with 42% of the vote, 25 points ahead of the Liberals. This advance contains, in hollow, the seeds of the slide. If your voters are absolutely certain that you are going to win, that the game is over, why would they all bother to go to the polls? The absence of suspense is the enemy of mobilization.
The danger of abstention
The certainty of the re-election of the CAQ, integrated from the signal of departure, also pushes the electorate to discuss not the name of the winner, known, but the appropriateness of giving him, or not, a strong mandate. A large part of the kitchen discussions of the Normans that we are can therefore relate to the importance of ensuring a strong opposition, of sending a signal of wisdom, of counterbalancing.
A campaign ending with reasons not to give “all the power to Legault” would draw more attention to the inadequacies of the ruling party, real and amplified by the opposition and the media. To the CAQ voters who are too confident, and therefore abstentionists, would thus be added the CAQ voters not disappointed enough to change parties, but cool enough to stay at home and let the opposition train pass.
This phantom data of the truant election is sometimes decisive. In 2014, part of the PQ vote shunned the PQ. To the point that in 19 ridings, the outgoing PQ MP was beaten by an opponent who had collected fewer votes than in the previous election. This means that, in all these cases, the two candidates had fallen, but the PQ more than his main opponent. It was a race, but backwards.
Since the voters do not have a detailed map of the impact of their abstention on the result, it is impossible, especially during struggles of three, four or five, to predict what the sum of these absences will be when putting colors on the constituency map.
Underrated Opponents
The second factor threatening the CAQ is the underestimation of its adversaries by public opinion. By dint of hearing that the oppositions are weak, absent, on the verge of death, expectations are so low towards them that Dominique Anglade, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois and Éric Duhaime can only exceed, in the countryside and, especially, at the time of the debates.
This will be the first time that many voters will see these four leaders in the flesh, for an extended period, on screen. Almost every time a new face appeared in a debate, it gained points. This was particularly true for Mario Dumont, for Françoise David and Manon Massé. It’s math. If the person is competent, articulate, combative – which is the case of the four new leaders – the debate allows him to find in the suddenly attentive electorate partisans who, until then, were not aware of his assets and of his arguments.
The four opposition leaders can therefore only progress thanks to the campaign. It is enough for each to take five points – and for Legault to lose 20 – for the gaps to narrow dangerously.
The spiral
Then there is the downward spiral. A moment in the campaign when things go bad enough for the point guard to lose his footing. All it takes is a bad statement, a star candidate who blunders, a slight drop in a poll for the cycle to set in. The leader then needs a lifeline. During the 2018 campaign, François Legault experienced one of those anxiety-provoking periods when he could no longer answer simple questions about immigration, yet his favorite subject at the time. Fortunately for him, the electorate ultimately found it more important to vote for the CAQ to get rid of the Liberals than to punish him for his unpreparedness.
This safeguard is not available in 2022. François Legault and his party no longer represent change. They are not a bulwark against the liberals of yesterday. The hunting season for candidates, which is coming to an end, has perhaps significantly scratched the teflon that seemed to cover the credibility of the CAQ trademark until now. As recruitment progressed, it became clear that the common denominator of CAQ stars is a taste for power, not a thirst for change. If this feeling were to settle permanently, it would soap the board.
The question of the ballot box, at the end of the race, could become, with a question mark: let’s continue? And the outgoing party would be forced to campaign, not on the quality of its team and its program, but on the presumed non-existence, among its adversaries, of a replacement government. “Where is their finance minister? will be able to thunder the CAQ tenors.
What the electorate could answer: we’ll see!
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