You, dear readers, are part of the tip of the democratic iceberg. You combine the merits of being interested in politics to the point of reading a daily newspaper which devotes itself to it abundantly, then of pushing your curiosity to the point of granting interest to the feathers which, in chronicles, claim to be able to explain some of them to you. ins and outs.
Do you know that, below the waterline, there are about half of the citizens, who have, with regard to politics, about the interest that you have in the Pakistani cricket championship? They don’t read newspapers, or just for sports, stars and recipes, don’t listen to news broadcasts. It is their right.
Candidates and deputies meet them every day, door-to-door and by telephone solicitation. Often, they don’t know that an election is coming up, whether it’s for Quebec or Ottawa. Many are interested in the thing only at the very end of the course. The leaders’ debates are a key moment, but half the voters don’t watch it. Finally advised, especially by those around them, that the ballot is imminent, 4 voters out of 10 make their decision during the very last days of the campaign; 1 in 10 do so on the day of the vote, when filling out their ballot.
For about half of people, the main political information crossing their field of vision during the campaign will appear on poles: the famous signs. This is why no ecological effort to make them disappear works. They are essential. Hence the importance of choosing the right slogan.
How to judge the quality of a slogan? Its primary objective is efficiency. It must allow the party to address not all voters, but those likely to vote for it. To be effective, it must be readable, that is to say immediately understandable, by passers-by, bus passengers, car drivers or cyclists. It must be divisive, ie it must assert something for the party using it, and insinuate something against the other parties, especially the main adversary, normally the party in power. He says: we have something that others do not have.
Originality and creativity are therefore not essential elements. “We give ourselves Legault” was a clumsy slogan, but, at this point in the existence of the CAQ, perfectly effective. “Les vrais affaires”, by Jean Charest, relied on the fatigue of his potential electorate with regard to PQ themes. A slogan that fulfills these basic conditions and, moreover, makes people smile with its originality, reaches a higher level of effectiveness. One of the best slogans in our recent history was that of the Bloc Québécois in 2004, in the midst of the Liberal corruption scandal, on sponsorships: “A party specific to Quebec”.
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Gold medal “Free with us! Individual freedom, especially in the face of health requirements, is the leitmotif of Éric Duhaime’s party. His challenge was to repackage a worn-out (even mocked: “Libartééé”) theme for the campaign and give it momentum and nobility. To associate the current conservative struggle with the historic slogan of Jean Lesage is a masterstroke. This formula encapsulates exactly the central idea of the conservative program: individual freedom must come first. The choice is both effective and completely devious. “Masters in our own house” was the slogan for the nationalization of electricity. However, the Conservative Party of Quebec is the party of privatization. Especially since the last historic Conservative leader, Maurice Duplessis, had campaigned in 1936 for this nationalization, then had betrayed his promise once elected.
Silver medal “The Quebec that assumes itself. For real. The Parti Québécois is specifically targeting voters who feel that the Coalition avenir Québec is not “for real” nationalist. How many are they ? There are about 17% of pure and hard separatists in Quebec, some of whom voted for the CAQ in 2018. They are invited to come home. Beyond that, 44% believe that “Law 96” will not, for real, reverse the decline of French. It is a ground that the PQ is the only one to occupy.
Bronze medal ” Let’s go on. This is the CAQ’s strongest argument. Despite the errors, the troubles, the problems, let François Legault continue his work. The slogan is lazy, without originality, without appeal to effort. Soporific. That’s the goal: let’s stay wise, don’t stir the cage, let’s continue.
No medal “Vote true. Real issues. Real solutions. If your slogan can be adopted by all parties, it sucks. This is exactly the case with the liberal slogan. If the Prime Minister and the other leaders had a reputation for being liars, and Dominique Anglade a truth-teller, the slogan would have value. But since this is not the case, we do not understand to whom or to what it is addressed. Pure waste.
Failure of the year “Change era. Québec solidaire offers a case in point of counterproductive slogans and advertising. The objective of QS is to comfort its voters and convince others, in particular young liberals and new adults, to join them, by playing the card of change and credibility. But the word “era” refers in the popular imagination to the Ice Age, the Age of Aquarius or, worse, the Soviet era. The image of Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois and Manon Massé back to back, staring into the distance against a background of the rising sun, recalls the Stalinist graphic style, which QS should run away from at all speed. Manon’s added value, for example, is closeness to people. In this photo, she is not looking at anyone, and is, like GND, detached from reality, in her own universe, in her own era. Hard to do worse.
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