Blessed is the ruling party, fully focused on their favorite task: governing. For the caquistes, the autopsy of the elections is easy. Despite a disastrous campaign, they may say, Quebeckers have re-elected us. This is proof that we had accumulated a sufficient capital of sympathy before the election was called so that, despite the losses incurred during the campaign, the result remained favourable.
This opinion is confirmed by the post-election poll conducted by Léger for the Quebecor empire. Asked to indicate when they made their choice, 45% of Quebecers admitted that their idea was made up before the campaign even kicked off, a proportion which rose to 61% of the CAQ electorate.
I had fun calculating what the result would have been if only those early deciders had voted. If, therefore, there had been no campaign. The CAQ victory would have been even stronger (51% of the vote rather than 41%), the Conservatives and the Liberals would have obtained the same result – their campaigns were therefore useless – the Solidarity and the PQ would have been more sheepish Again. In their case, the campaign allowed them to take, for the solidarity, 3.5 points, for the PQ, 3.9 points.
Since non-predecided respondents then tell us whether they made their choice at the start of the campaign, when the parties reveal their initial positioning, after the leaders’ debates or in the last days of the campaign, the parties can retrospectively see the effectiveness of their interventions at each stage.
Solidarity and conservatives made their best harvests of undecided at the start of the campaign (more than 20%). But the champions of late growth were the PQ. They found few takers at the start of the campaign (9%, the lowest result), had the best score after the debates (17%, ahead of Éric Duhaime at 12%), heated QS in the last week ( 17% of new voters captured, against 18% among those in solidarity), did better than the others during the last weekend (11%, against 10% for the Liberals) and beat everyone in the voting booth (10 % of PQ voters decided at the last minute, compared to 7% of Liberals, 6% of Caquists, 4% of Solidarity and 4% of Conservatives).
The rise of Paul St-Pierre Plamondon was also very clear in the opinions, good and bad, with respect to each of the leaders measured by Angus Reid at the end of the campaign. At 43% of good opinions, he topped Legault (42%) and Nadeau-Dubois-Massé (40%) a little, but Duhaime (24%) and Anglade (22%) a lot. When we balance the good and bad opinions, the result is even more striking: PSPP was the only one with a positive balance (+1), ahead of the solidarity spokespersons (-9), Legault (-13), Duhaime (-42) and Anglade (-44). Yes, you read that right. Paul St-Pierre Plamondon is the most popular party leader in Quebec. And that was before he launched his anti-monarchist offensive, widely acclaimed in public opinion.
Of the results of all the opposition parties, that of the PQ is therefore the least painful. The result testifies simultaneously to a historic electoral setback and a real movement of rebound. Although defeated, the PQ was the party that came second in the most ridings (45 in total, well ahead of the PCQ, with 24, and QS, with 18), and voters indicated that if they grew tired one day of the CAQ, it is towards the PQ that they would set their sights. Downside: 45% of PQ voters are still happy that the CAQ won the election!
It is this weekend in Drummondville that the Conservatives will meet. Disgruntled people intend to question certain strategic decisions there. The central question is this: why did the Conservatives cap? Beyond the moods surrounding the chief’s unpaid taxes and property taxes and the spelling mistakes on the signs, a substantive debate should focus on Éric Duhaime’s attempt to flirt with the English-speaking community. This did not serve him in 2022. But won’t there be post-liberal non-francophones in 2026 looking for a new refuge?
Among those in solidarity, we are witnessing the predictable reaction of the radical wing of the party: it is because QS has refocused itself too much that it has not captured the ire of the people against capital. A detailed analysis of the result by solidarity economist Mario Jodoin shows that this electoral stagnation hides two movements in opposite directions. The solidarity vote increased by 3% in the main cities of Quebec, but fell in the suburbs (-3%) and fell squarely in the provinces (-12%). These findings are troubling, the path to power necessarily passing through gains in the regions.
Many will judge that this regional disenchantment comes from the threats of orange taxes on SUVs, champions of the roads in the region. Maybe. But a theater teacher friend suggests another hypothesis to me: the Montreal accent of Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois is much more audible than that of his predecessors (especially when he pronounces the words in “-aires”), which would reinforce, even subliminally, the aversion of the regions for Montreal lesson givers.
However, no post-election exercise is more painful than the PLQ. Dominique Anglade may well have kept the position of leader of the official opposition, she cannot claim to represent anything other than the rejection, by a large part of the non-francophone vote, of Quebec nationalism. When the ridings yesterday represented by party leaders—Sherbrooke for Jean Charest, Roberval for Philippe Couillard—vote Liberal at less than 6%, we are no longer in failure, we are in rejection. On the territory, the PLQ is champion of the fifth places: it accumulates 65! Worse, according to Léger, three-quarters of remaining Liberal voters do not believe Dominique Anglade ran a good campaign. It’s no longer an autopsy, it’s a vivisection.
“There was a moment, a defeated candidate confided to me, where the problem was no longer the face, but the color on the sign. »
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