You have undoubtedly seen this famous photo of Louis Cyr, the Quebec strongman, or seen the film where the event is recreated.
• Read also: Electoral projection of Qc125: the CAQ would collect only 11 seats
The colossus has ropes wrapped around each arm. At the end of the ropes, there are horses.
At the signal, the horses try to move in opposite directions.
Will the hero be able to resist being quartered?
Photo Wikipedia and POOL PC
Transfer
In the fall of 2022, the CAQ was re-elected with 41% of the popular vote.
The PQ, QS, PLQ and PCQ obtained 15%, 15%, 14% and 13% respectively (I round the figures).
Today, the CAQ receives 22% of voting intentions and the PQ receives 34%.
The other three parties are standing still.
The decline of the CAQ and the rise of the PQ can be explained by a phenomenon of communicating vessels: the PQ seduced by the CAQ returned to their ancestral home.
Overall support for sovereignty does not change.
To stop this hemorrhage, one might believe that the CAQ would have every interest in becoming more nationalist again, in toughening its tone towards Ottawa.
This is where it gets damn complicated.
In June 2022, when CAQ supporters were asked their voting intention at the federal level, 45% of them said they would support the Bloc, 33% would support Trudeau’s Liberals, and 12% would support Poilievre’s Conservatives. .
- Listen to Joseph Facal’s column via QUB :
Two years later, in February 2024, the exodus of the PQ returning to their original party profoundly changed the composition of the remaining CAQ electorate.
Among these 22% of CAQ supporters, 42% prefer Trudeau, 31% support the Bloc and 20% support the Conservatives.
The largest contingent of Caquists now lines up behind the federal party historically most hostile to Quebec nationalism, and whose current leader rejects every request from the Legault government in the blink of an eye.
In short, it is torn apart: to counter the PQ, the CAQ should criticize and challenge the federal government, but its most numerous supporters would take a very dim view of these tests of strength.
You should go one way, but many of your supporters don’t want to, and would even prefer that you get closer to the one who has been bothering you for years.
Oxygen
If the next leader of the PLQ also succeeds – you never know – in bringing the federalists back to their ancestral home, what will be left at the CAQ?
The CAQ therefore perhaps has an interest, rather than seeking to win back the sovereignists who abandoned it, in becoming resolutely federalist to deprive the PLQ of oxygen.
From now on, we understand why the CAQ is confused, criticizing Ottawa one day, wanting to dialogue the next day.
It won’t last long.