The Conservative Party of Quebec (PCQ) hoped to surprise by having several elected members elected to Parliament. But all its candidates were defeated, including the leader, Éric Duhaime, who bit the dust in the riding of Chauveau.
As these lines were written, around 11:45 p.m., none of the Conservative candidates had been declared elected, including the mayor of Saint-Lambert-de-Lauzon, Olivier Dumais, who a poll had predicted would win this week. in Beauce North.
After a very close race with the PCQ, the Coalition avenir Québec retained its two seats in Beauce.
Éric Duhaime was easily defeated in Chauveau. The incumbent, Sylvain Lévesque, prevailed over the Conservative leader by more than 15 percentage points.
The Conservatives spent election night at the Manoir du Lac Delage, in the riding of Chauveau. An evening of modest size, in which only a few dozen activists participated. The organization had not opened the rally to all its supporters, but to dozens of volunteers handpicked by each of the candidates.
Our greatest accomplishment is to have made it possible to debate ideas that ended up at the center of the electoral campaign.
In the middle of a rather moribund evening, the first cries of joy rang out in the room around 9 p.m., when TVA indicated that the candidate in La Peltrie, Stéphane Lachance, was ahead of the incumbent, Éric Caire. But this momentum was short-lived, the bad news following one another until the leader came to comment on the defeat, around 9:45 p.m.
“Electoral Distortion”
“We are of all parties, and by far, the one that is experiencing the strongest growth,” said Éric Duhaime in a brief speech. The Conservative Party of Quebec won 13% of the votes, compared to 1.46% in 2018.
The PCQ, he pleaded, garnered as many votes as the Liberal Party “with 20 fewer deputies, he argued, denouncing the “electoral distortion” induced by the first-past-the-post system. . “We will have to talk about it again,” he said.
Éric Duhaime did not, however, call for a reform of the voting system. He has often said that he wants to distinguish himself from all the party leaders who have promoted it in the past, only to then back down.
“Our greatest accomplishment is to have made it possible to debate ideas that ended up at the center of the electoral campaign”, he said, referring to private health, the relaunch of the LNG project and the “freedom of choice” for parents in terms of child care services.
Before joining his supporters, he had spent the evening surrounded by his relatives in a hotel room to follow the release of the results. He had voted at the end of the morning, accompanied by his spouse, who ensured a discreet presence at his side during the campaign.
Comparing this election to the first period of a hockey game, he said that the second period would allow his party to “train for four years”. “I will still be there in the next election campaign,” he promised, triggering loud applause in the room.
There for ten years
For Mr. Duhaime, victory never seemed certain in Chauveau, where the polls always gave him second, despite the great enthusiasm shown by his militants. “We hope he will come back,” confided Lison, a volunteer who had worked for him in the riding with her husband, Rémi, at the start of the evening. ” We cross fingers. The score in neighborhoods where the population was older was certainly worse, he noted.
The Conservative leader had been repeating for several days that the success of the advance poll in the Quebec region would be favorable to him. The riding where he was running is one of those where advance polls were the most popular in Quebec, with a third of voters having already voted.
Aged 53, Éric Duhaime served for several years in political circles, before becoming a radio host. He was notably a political adviser for the Action Démocratique du Québec during the Mario Dumont era, before joining the team of the Bloc Québécois and then that of the leader of the Canadian Alliance Stockwell Day.
Since his accession to the head of the PCQ, he has sought to distance himself from the polarizing radio host that he was, presenting himself as a unifying candidate opposed to the discourse of “division” of François Legault during the pandemic. However, he had to defend, on several occasions, some of his past positions, such as this declaration according to which the Gaspé had to be “closed” because its economy was not dynamic enough.
When he was elected leader of the Conservative Party, he made it known that he intended to devote ten years to this cause, regardless of the results. His longer-term objective was to give a greater place to right-wing ideas in political debate in Quebec, to “normalize” them, he said recently in an interview with host Jeff Fillion.