The leader of the Parti Québécois (PQ), Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, congratulated himself on Tuesday on the “excellent result” that his political party obtained by coming second behind the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) in the by-election. in Marie-Victorin, a riding that is being misrepresented as a PQ castle.
The leader of the PQ has a great ability to see the glasses half full, even if it means making them overflow. It is true, as he pointed out, that the PQ garnered a percentage of the vote, at some 30%, equal to that which it garnered in the 2018 general election. But on Monday it was all about even a by-election, where voters often take the opportunity to send a message to the party in power without too much consequence.
In the person of Pierre Nantel, the PQ presented a candidate of choice, known in the riding and experienced in electoral campaigns. The last few weeks had been trying for the Legault government. After the mess around the tramway in Quebec, the latest revelations on the lamentable management of the scandalous situation at the private CHSLD Herron have allowed the opposition parties to fire red balls at the caquistes, starting with the ministers Danielle McCann and Marguerite Blais .
The campaign of the CAQ candidate, Shirley Dorismond, was not free of controversy. As a trade unionist, she had accused François Legault of being “accomplice in organizational violence” suffered by nurses and denounced the “systemic racism” which, according to her, the health network in Montreal North was showing. His answers in interviews were particularly laborious.
Half-heartedly, the PQ leader acknowledged that recently, the PQ was expecting to suffer a thaw. He recalled that the CAQ, six months ago, pranced at 48% of voting intentions in the polls. With its score of 30% of the votes against almost 35% for the CAQ, the “tight” result is within “the margin of error” and bodes well for the general elections, he said. However, given a low turnout, 36%, typical of a by-election, the difference of 797 votes in favor of the new CAQ member is not within the margin of error. If we report this difference by applying a participation rate specific to general elections, we end up with 1400 more votes for the winner, a significant advance. Moreover, the notion of PQ fortress is obsolete. In 2018, the PQ MP for Marie-Victorin, Catherine Fournier, was only ahead of the CAQ candidate by the narrow margin of 705 votes.
The PQ cannot find comfort in their latest score. Circumstances should have favored them more. But you can’t blame Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, who says he can expect a win in Bourget, the riding in which he will run in October. We reassure ourselves as best we can.
And then, Québec solidaire (QS) and the Liberal Party (PLQ) did worse, with a decline of 7 points for QS, which had to settle for 14% of the vote, and 8 points for the Liberals, who fell to 7 % of the votes, behind Éric Duhaime’s Conservative Party. For QS, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois provided a plausible explanation. Young people, from whom the party draws its main support, do not participate much in the ballot of a by-election.
There are no similar reasons to explain the PLQ’s rout. On Tuesday, Dominique Anglade did not fail to praise the quality of the candidate, Émilie Nollet, who did “remarkable field work”. The candidate therefore has nothing to do with it. The Liberals did not come out to vote, observed the leader: it is that the message of the party is not heard. It is true that his nationalist and environmental turn fell flat. So much so that Dominique Anglade returns to the basic game: the PLQ is the economy, Quebec in Canada and individual freedoms, she listed.
Of course, the PQ is playing its survival in the next elections. The prophecy of René Lévesque, who had mentioned the possibility that the PQ would disappear after having had its day, could come true. But the situation of the PLQ is not much better. While his support among Francophones hardly exceeds 10%, Anglophones, this unwavering base – in principle – of voters, show signs of dissatisfaction. Some of them are thinking of creating their own political party, as in the heyday of the Equality Party. To those, one could say to be patient: the party that the French speakers will have abandoned could return to them in their own right.